Cia Rinne

Cia Rinne is an artist, writer, and poet. She was born in Sweden (Göteborg, 1973), spent her childhood and youth in Germany, as a student she moved to Helsinki and later Denmark. She is now based in the South of Berlin suburbs. For six years, she has been documenting the daily lives of Roma communities in Hungary, India, Greece, Romania, France, Russia, and Finland while working on a book called The Roma Journeys with Joakim Eskildsen (Steidl 2007). Experiencing the continued switch between many languages and places brings awareness to the political and cultural implications lying in subtle gaps and shift of meanings. Her work has been naturally influenced by Fluxus artists such as Tomas Schmit, Arthur Köpcke, and Moscow Conceptualist Lev Rubinstein.

Music plays a key role in her sensibility, exemplified by the work of Steve Reich and John Cage. Cia studied for a master’s degree in philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt where she was influenced by the writings of Hannah Arendt and did her thesis on Hans Jonas, author of The Phenomenon of Life. Jonas argued against the human domination of nature and insisted that human survival depends on our efforts to care for our planet and its future. He wrote: “Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life”. The language of philosophy can be felt in Cia’s work.

Works:

Collections of poetry:

• zaroum where she typewrites texts in multiple languages, intertwined with graphic elements like boxes, drawings, witty and ironic multiple-choice questions, conveying her interest in visual composition and crossing languages and genres;
• notes for soloists developed over seven years and deals with language and its acoustic qualities, which led her to experiment with the performativity of the text both in readings and collaborations with sound artists and musicians. The collaboration with Sebastian Eskildsen, sound designer at the Copenhagen Royal Theatre, resulted in the sound work sounds for soloists (2012);
• l’usage du mot (2017), focuses on the use of language and its implications;
• sentences is an artist book that focuses on the sentence as linguistic unity (2019). The included text I am very miserable about sentences consists of sentences by Gertrude Stein. The book has been released in Norwegian and Swedish translation.

Cia also writes for music (libretto for the opera Liebestod, Problems as well as Science Frictions), shows her work in multiple art spaces (Copenhagen, London, Berlin, Paris, Seattle, New York, and others).

For the Centre Pompidou Paris, Cia made a video based on the book l’usage du mot in collaboration with Stefan Neuberger (2020). Her most recent video work is sentences.

Among other awards, Cia is the laureate of the Prix littéraire Bernard Heidsieck–Centre Pompidou 2019.