Emanuel Almborg

Nothing is Left to Tell is the title of both a film and social experiment. In the summer of 2010, Almborg and a group of eleven strangers of varying ages and backgrounds traveled to a small, uninhabited island off the coast of Sweden. Their mission was to collaboratively build a wooden structure without plans or blueprints and while on the island they would not communicate using spoken or written language. Three individuals in the group were responsible for documenting the process, however, their task was similarly governed by rules: they could film no more than 30 minutes of activity per day. The resulting film explores the limits of language and the relationship between communication and community.

TALKING HANDS is a film about a pioneering school for deaf-blind children. Established in 1963 in Zaborsk, north of Moscow, it was known as the "synchrophasotron of the social sciences". Its founder, Marxist philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, claimed, "By studying the brain you will Iearn little of the mind - just as little as you will learn of the nature of money by studying the material properties of the material (gold, silver, or paper) in which the money form is embodied." Or, as one of his deaf-blind students Alexander Suvorov exclaimed: "Who told you we see nothing and hear nothing? We see and hear through the eyes and ears of our friends, all people, the entire human race."

Baby Group is a film and research project exploring early childhood development, collective learning, and the role of affect in education. The project draws on historical and contemporary theories of pedagogy—particularly those influenced by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who emphasized the social nature of learning—as well as Almborg’s observation that studies of early childhood development often presuppose the presence of the mother, rather than investigating babies’ senses of themselves. Almborg’s film documents a series of experiments the artist conducted over several months with a group of six-month-to-one-year-old children in London to investigate how infants interact, communicate, and form relationships before acquiring language. Baby Group is an insightful exploration of early socialization that proposes that the basis of complex social interactions, and perhaps civilization itself, is present in the earliest stages of development. - Amant

The Majority Never Has Right on its Side is a film project about the Summerhill School in England, established in 1921 and still open. The school is known for its anti-authoritarian educational methods founded on the egalitarian principles of A.S. Neill, a socialist schoolmaster from Scotland often described as a “cynical utopian”. In this project, Almborg has been looking at the school today in relation to its image, by researching and using the school’s film and video archive. The idea has been twofold: to trace a visual history of a place and to look at what can be described as a “utopian image,” how it might be constructed and what potentials and problems it might encompass.