Ptarmigan operated in Tallinn from 2011-2014. We no longer maintain any presence in Tallinn, but this website will continue to serve as an archive of the activities produced at Ptarmigan during these years.
Ola Ståhl is a writer, cultural theorist and sound & text based artist based in Malmö, Sweden. He received his BA with First Class Honours in The History of Art, Design and Film with Professional Writing from Sheffield Hallam University, and his MA with Distinction in The Social History of Art and PhD in Cultural Studies from the Department of Fine Art, Art History and Cultural Studies at The University of Leeds. He is a founding member of artist collective C.CRED with which he has participated in several international art exhibitions and festivals including BIG Torino 2002: BIG Social Game (Turin, Italy), ISEA 2004 (Tallinn, Estonia), Version>05(Chicago, USA), and Urban Festival 2005 (Zagreb, Croatia). His work has also been shown in exhibitions and at venues such as Public Space With A Roof (Amsterdam, Holland, 2004), South Hill Parks Arts Centre (Bracknell, UK, 2007), Kunsthaus Erfurt (Erfurt, Germany, 2007), Esbjergs Kunstmuseum (Esbjerg, Denmark, 2008), Ormeau Baths (Belfast, Northern Ireland), and NEON Gallery (Brösarp, 2009).
In 2003-2004 he collaborated with NYC based artist collective the 16Beaver group on a series of projects and in 2006-2007 he worked with Philadelphia-based artist group Basekamp on, amongst other things, a contribution to the Locally Localized Gravity exhibition at the ICA, Philadelphia (USA). As an occasional cohort of the artist group Red76, he’s been working on projects both at Reed College, Portland, Oregon (USA) and at The Bureau for Open Culture, Columbus, Ohio (USA).
His writing has been published in several journals including Parallax, Angelaki, Journal of Visual Cultures, ArtQuest, Unrealized Projects and Pequod, as well as in a forthcoming volume edited by Simon O’Sullivan and Stephen Zepfke under the title Deleuze and Contemporary Art (Edinburgh University Press), and between 2001-2003 he was part of the editorial collective of Parallax, an international journal of cultural studies. Additionally, he has contributed papers, readings and performances to many international festivals and conferences including the annual conference of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature on the theme Writing Aesthetics (Leeds, 2003), the CentreCATH conference The Ethics and Politics of Indexicality and Virtuality (Bradford, 2005), The Living Thought of Gilles Deleuze at Copenhagen Business School and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art (Copenhagen, 2005), and the Beckett & Company centenary conference at The Tate Modern and Goldsmiths College (London, 2006), and between 2003-2008 he taught at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.In 2010 he was selected to participate in the prestigious residency program at The Headlands Centre for the Arts in California, USA.
Ola Ståhl is currently working out of shared studio and project space Ystadvägen 13 in Malmö where he is also part of the editorial collectives of the journal FASAD and the independent press In Edit Mode. During his Ptarmigan residency he will work on his project FILM.
