Everything you want was already here 2022
August 2022
In August 2022, we return to our investigation of site-responsive art practice in rural settings by hosting the Master level KUNO course, Rural Contextual Practice: Everything you want was already here offered jointly by the the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design in Stockholm and the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts.
For more information: https://www.kunonetwork.org/ongoing-past-intensive-courses/2022/8/9/everything-you-want-was-already-here-a-kuno-intensive-course-focused-on-rural-contextual-practice
Everything you want was already here is a two-week intensive, site-responsive course that takes place in Rejmyre. Participants explore issues central to making site-responsive art in rural contexts and create an artwork in response to the site of the course. Group exercises, collective meals, study visits in the area, shared and individual work time as well as evening presentations of participants’ past work are core components of the course. The workshop is funded under the Nordplus/KUNO framework.
The selected group of 15 participants are from: The Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki Vilnius Academy of Arts Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design Trondheim Academy of Fine Art
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
Represented departments include: Site & Situation/Time and Space Arts Photography & Media Art Printmaking Painting Fine Arts Craft Spatial Design
Nationalities represented include: Finnish, Lithuanian, Swedish, Russian, Norwegian, Danish, U.S., Portuguese, Turkish, South African, South Korean
FACILITATORS
Daniel Peltz
Professor of Site and Situation Specific Practice, Department of Time and Space Arts
Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland
https://www.uniarts.fi/en/units/academy-of-fine-arts/
Dr. assoc. prof. Vytautas Michelkevičius
Head of Photography, Animation and Media Art Department and Head of Doctoral Programme in Fine Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
https://www.vda.lt/en/
Vitalij Cerviakov, PhD, artist
Doctoral Programme in Fine Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
Sissi Westerberg
Senior Lecturer, Smycke & Corpus: Ädellab, Department of Craft
Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden
https://www.konstfack.se/en/
David Larsson, visual artist
Stockholm, Sweden
Excerpt from the course description: This transdisciplinary course explores contextually responsive art practice with a specific focus on the rural. The dominance of the urban in artistic discourses and the marginalization of the rural, as an often invisible space of industrial production and resource extraction, combine to form a strong argument for focusing our attention, within the space of master-level art and craft education, on developing our conceptions of the rural and rural publics and our capacity to make complex works within and about rural contexts.
Our chosen theme, Everything you want was already here, is an opportunity to explore conceptions of abundance and lack in our respective approaches to art, craft and making. Rural spaces have historically attracted artists seeking a respite, or a near total escape, from the implicitly urban art worlds. All of the participants in this space are currently enrolled in art academies in different large cities of Europe. These urban areas, and the academies themselves, are places of abundance in many ways, in terms of the resources and opportunities they present. Those of us who inhabit these urban institutional art spaces also come to recognize that, in all this seeming abundance, there is also a great deal of lack (over regulated time and space, disconnection from the natural world/the source of the materials we consume and the people who produce them). Rural areas in turn present different forms of abundance and lack, real and imagined (‘open’ space, decreased regulation, different conceptions of time, social disconnection etc.).
The course is an opportunity for students pursuing master’s degrees in fine and craft arts as well as media art, to meet and engage in a site-responsive exploration around these issues, through their own existing practices.
PRODUCTION RESIDENCY OPEN CALL
REJMYRE ART LAB’S Center for Peripheral Studies
PRODUCTION RESIDENCY OPEN CALL on the theme of ‘refuging’
THE APPLICATION IS NOW CLOSED.
Place: Rejmyre, Östergötland, Sweden
How does a factory town that produces glass, become a factory town that produces refuge?
Rejmyre Art Lab invites artists from fine, performing and craft backgrounds, who are engaged with conceptual and contextual practices, to participate in a funded eight-week, production-based residency in Rejmyre, Sweden, in the spring and summer of 2023. Rejmyre has, since 2009, played host to a long-term, place-based, artistic research project with a focus on site-responsive practice.
RESIDENCY DURATION
The residency consists of a funded eight week working period, with six weeks on site in Rejmyre:
One week of Ensemble Residency (for more on this structure see below): April 24-30, 2023
Individual research and production on site in Rejmyre: May 1 – June 5,2023
Reflection and post-production, off site: Two weeks of work spread out over the summer & autumn of 2023
WHO SHOULD APPLY?
We invite artists, working in any medium, who are interested in engaging their practices in exploring the research topic of ‘refuging’ (for more on the research topic see below) to apply. We offer support for the participation of:
Two artists from any country outside of the Nordic/Baltic region
Two artists from the Nordic/Baltic region (outside of Sweden)
Two regional artists based in Östergötland, Sweden
We encourage all professionals working within the contemporary art and craft fields to apply.
Application period: The application is open between January 16-31, 2023.
Notifications of acceptance: notifications will be sent out by February 24, 2023.
If you have any questions please contact our programming director Louise Johansson Waite louise.waite@rejmyreartlab.org
RESIDENCY SUPPORT
Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies is able to offer support to artists from all geographies. All artists participating in the residency will have shared use of the Refuging Pavilion and Engelska Magasinet exhibition spaces for public interactions, events, sharing, and research related practices. We have limited possibilities for tools and workshops on site but a strong network of collaborators both locally as well as regionally.
We look forward to have a diverse cohort of practitioners and thereby offer three types of support:
Artist Residency for international applicants beyond the Nordic and Baltic regions (funded by IASPIS): Participation stipend of 24 000 SEK, material/production stipend up to 12 500 SEK, travel stipend, housing in Rejmyre (individual bedrooms with shared bathroom and shared communal spaces), shared production space in historic early 20th century factory buildings with the possibility of individual (bookable) space + 1 communal lunch per week
Artist Residency for Nordic and Baltic artists (funded by Nordic Culture Point) : Participation stipend of 24 000 SEK, material/production stipend up to 12 500 SEK, travel stipend, housing in Rejmyre (individual bedrooms with shared bathroom and shared communal spaces), shared production space in historic early 20th century factory buildings with the possibility of individual (bookable) space + 1 communal lunch per week
Artist Residency for regional and local artists of Östergötland (funded by Kulturrådet, Region Östergötland, Finspångs kommun): We invite artists in the vicinity of Östergötland to participate in the Refuging Production Residency by offering studio space in the Refuging Pavilion in Rejmyre to compliment their practice. We seek artists who are able to be present for the Ensemble Residency week as well as at least 2 days/week during the residency period but who do not need overnight accommodations. Participation stipend of 10 000 SEK ex. VAT, material budget up to 5000 SEK, a travel budget of 1500 sek, studio space within the shared Refuging Pavilion, a conceptual art work created by artist Daniel Peltz in collaboration with Danish architect Atelier Kristoffer Tejlgaard + 1 communal lunch per week
Please note that all artists will be present during the same time in Rejmyre. In connection to this residency there will also be an autumn presentation in our exhibition space, Engelska Magasinet, in Rejmyre, of the individual and shared processes and practices produced during the residency: September 23 – November 5, 2023. Exhibition fees following the Swedish MU agreement will be applied.
ON THE RESIDENCY THEME ‘REFUGING’
One of the organisation’s primary research themes has, since 2018, been refuging: an exploration of how giving/taking refuge, as an act and practice, can be developed and facilitated through multiple artistic interactions and interventions. The theme has been developed by the project’s research leader Daniel Peltz, who, together with artistic director Sissi Westerberg, will introduce the theme and projects developed thus far during the ensemble residency week.
Refuging is a call to action for artists to develop the practice of giving/taking refuge. The initiator of this project, the U.S./Swedish artist Daniel Peltz, asks us to reconsider the notion of refuge, not as a noun (a refuge, a refugee, etc.) but as a verb, as a vital, inherently reciprocal set of actions. He asks us “how might we, as artists, use this thin sliver of time, while the worst impacts of climate change are still in the future, to develop our capacity as a society to give and to take refuge?” Refuging takes the form of a series of productions-in-residence, that will result in a broadly distributed refuging toolkit, a set of artist-shaped models for how to do this complicated work of refuging. Peltz writes, “perhaps in the not-to-distant future, people facing the need to refuge will pick up this toolkit and say, ‘I heard they tried it this way in Rejmyre.’”
One question that has become central to Peltz’ thinking around refuging is: How does a factory town that produces glass, become a factory town that produces refuge? Here Peltz references and is responding to the appropriation of small towns like Rejmyre as temporary refuges for newly arrived people, while ‘better housing’ was built for them in, implicitly, ‘better places’. Peltz, who has been investigating the town of Rejmyre for over 15 years, challenges the logic of this articulation. He asks, What if this was actually a better place than many to do this thing called refuging? Here he performs a shift on our usual association with the word ‘refuge’, moving it from a noun, referring to people and places, to a verb referring to a set of actions. In this shift refuging expands to become a practice that encompasses everyone. The subject positions of the refugee who comes seeking refuge and the one who gives refuge collapse and we are left with a reciprocal state that we all might learn to perform and inhabit better. Further, Peltz makes a claim that sites like Rejmyre, that have been used up in the cycle of extraction, depletion and abandonment, are not just good enough places to house refugees but places that are uniquely well suited to developing the practice of refuging because they themselves are in need of refuge.
ON THE RESIDENCY STRUCTURE
As an artist-run organisation, the purpose of our work together in Rejmyre has been to create a post-institutional teaching and learning space for ourselves, and others, to continue to grow, engage in sustained critique and explore topics of collective interest. Our research strands have emerged from our time together and thus follow a loose, associative line from one to the other. Rejmyre Art Lab’s programming is born of a long-term engagement with and commitment to the village of Rejmyre in the Östergötland region of Sweden.
Rejmyre Art Lab’s residency program is run and constructed by artists in response to our own needs and changing modes of production. Our residencies often consist of a mix of dedicated time for developing ideas and work, collaborative exercises, intensive peer critique, and co-hosting the group through cooking and caring for each other. In an effort to explore alternatives to the pervasive ideology of individualism in contemporary art practice, Rejmyre Art Lab has adopted a model we refer to as ensemble residencies, borrowing the notion of the ensemble that is far more common in performance practices. Within this model, we commit to explore topics together in a small group, at least at the outset of an investigation, and to welcome the members of the ensemble into the development process of the work. In this spirit, each member, of the selected refuging ensemble, will be asked to design an exercise, based on their own artistic practice, that engages the other members in their interests within the theme.
ABOUT REJMYRE ART LAB
Rejmyre Art LAB’s Center for Peripheral Studies is a long-term, place-based, artistic research project, co-founded by artists Daniel Peltz and Sissi Westerberg in 2009. We come together to explore issues of vital concern through and with our varied artistic practices. We utilize an ensemble residency model to conduct this research, coming together to collectively think about aspects of our complex existence in this place and time.
Our activities include a post-MFA fellowship program, an international artist residency program, a platform for experimental and conceptual glass projects in the Reijmyre Glass Factory, public seminars, our pedagogical program Konstlabbet, exhibitions in Konsthallen Engelska Magasinet and a program of installations in and around the town of Rejmyre. Our installation program attempts to re-radicalize the notion of site-specificity through a commitment to a philosophy of embedded installation in which there is an element of co-inhabitation and inseparable dependence at play in the relationship between an artwork and our site. In this place designed largely for export, of its forests, quartz and craft labor, we ask the question, what is not for export?
ABOUT REJMYRE
Rejmyre is located amongst the forests and lakes two hours southwest of Stockholm. With a population of approximately 1000, Rejmyre is a small factory town centred around the Reijmyre Glasbruk, a glass factory founded in 1810 and still in operation.
SELECTION PROCESS
Notifications of acceptance: notifications will be sent out by February 24, 2023.
The selection group for the production residency is: Louise Johansson Waite / Program Director Sissi Westerberg / Artistic Director Daniel Peltz / Refuging Project Research Leader Tracy Jonsson-Laboy / Executive Director
There is also a reference group for the production residency consisting of representatives from local and regional cultural institutions.
THE APPLICATION IS NOW CLOSED.
The residency program is made possible through a collaboration with IASPIS, The Swedish Arts Grants Committees’ International Program for Visual and Applied Arts and funding from Nordic Culture Point, Kulturrådet, Region Östergötland and Finspångs kommun.
TILDA DALUNDE – Längtan efter tryggheten i det omöjliga
Light installation by Tilda Dalunde
Tilda Dalundes verk är en del av det tre-åriga konstnärliga forskningsprojektet “DeTox – Clean it up!” där Rejmyre Art Lab bjudit in en grupp konstnärer att arbeta utifrån situationen med 200 år av föroreningar bakom Reijmyre Glasbruk. Ljuskonstverk är placerat innanför det avspärrade området, där marken är förorenad och kan ses genom staketet när skymningen kommer.
“Förbjudna platser finns i många sagor. Det kan vara en grotta full av guld, ett palats där borden ständigt dignar av mat eller ett träsk som en gång var ett slagfält och som nu är fullt av de fallnas irrande själar. Regeln på sådana platser är alltid densamma: Du får inte röra vid, eller äta, någonting. Om du bryter mot regeln kan du förvandlas till sten, glömma bort vem du är eller drabbas av en evig förbannelse. När jag ställdes inför den avspärrade platsen bakom glasbruket fick jag en känsla av att befinna mig i en av dessa sagor. Träden såg så fridfulla ut, glasbitarna på marken glittrade som en förlorad skatt, fjärilar flög genom maskorna i metallnätet som spärrade av området – för dem var det inte en gräns. Men ändå fanns det något där, något osynligt som kunde skada mig om jag bröt mot sagans regel om att inte röra vid någonting. Det märkliga är förstås varför sådana platser alltid får en att längta. Är det så enkelt som att vilja ha något som man inte kan få. Ibland blir världen obehagligt påtaglig, oftast när den innebär ett hot. Ibland är världen så svårnådd att vi inte ens inser att hotet kommer från oss själva. Kanske handlar längtan snarare om att slippa förstå. En längtan efter den sortens oskyldiga magi som finns i sagorna, där det inte behövs förklaringar och där det som hotar oss inte är vårt eget fel.” – Tilda Dalunde
outdoors in the contaminated area
Detox/Clean it up ensemble residency II
This residency was part of the three-year research strand “DeTox- Clean it up!” where Rejmyre Art Lab, contributes to the ongoing investigation led by Finspångs kommun, around the remediation of the toxic waste behind Reijmyre Glass Factory. The artists met with an archeologist, representatives from Finspångs kommun, the local Historical Society and Byarådet and invited their fellow artists into their research through afternoon workshops. After the residency and a year of investigation each artist presented a site specific installation in Rejmyre as a response to the situation.
The philosophical proposition of Detox is that ‘waste’ is ‘valuable material’. Engaging artists in a clean-up process allows us to tap into this latent value. In order to ‘clean it up’, we need to take responsibility not just for its safe disposal but to account for its potential as a resource that allows us to consider who we were, who we are and who might be becoming.
For hundreds of years, the Reijmyre Glasbruk has produced glass objects and sold the ‘finished products’ while keeping some of the leftovers in piles behind the factory. At first the piles were clearly separate from the surrounding landscape but with time they merged with and became the landscape. Through this multi-year project we will engage a group of regional and international artists in ‘researching’ this situation, i.e. the waste that is slated to be ‘cleaned up’.
This residency was part of the three-year research strand “DeTox- Clean it up!” where Rejmyre Art Lab, contributes to the ongoing investigation led by Finspångs kommun, around the remediation of the toxic waste behind Reijmyre Glass Factory. The artists met with an archeologist, representatives from Finspångs kommun, the local Historical Society and Byarådet and invited their fellow artists into their research through afternoon workshops. After the residency and a year of investigation each artist presented a site specific installation in Rejmyre as a response to the situation.
The philosophical proposition of Detox is that ‘waste’ is ‘valuable material’. Engaging artists in a clean-up process allows us to tap into this latent value. In order to ‘clean it up’, we need to take responsibility not just for its safe disposal but to account for its potential as a resource that allows us to consider who we were, who we are and who might be becoming.
For hundreds of years, the Reijmyre Glasbruk has produced glass objects and sold the ‘finished products’ while keeping some of the leftovers in piles behind the factory. At first the piles were clearly separate from the surrounding landscape but with time they merged with and became the landscape. Through this multi-year project we will engage a group of regional and international artists in ‘researching’ this situation, i.e. the waste that is slated to be ‘cleaned up’.
FRIDA HÅLLANDER – Fabrikens Lunga
Fabrikens lunga utforskar Reijmyre Glasbruks deponi och riktat fokus mot lungan som en del av den mänskliga kroppen och en berättelse om hur gifter lagras både i kropp och mark. Hon återvänder också till arbetarrörelsen och en återblick till hur man tagit strid i Rejmyre, bland annat genom att leta upp och dokumentera en fana från Svenska Fabriksarbetareförbundet Avdelning 376 – Rejmyre (som för närvarande förvaras mellan silkespapper på Norrköpings Föreningsarkiv). Fanan aktualiseras tillsammans med motiv från fabriken och lungan genom fotografier, film och teckning. En del av verket finns som grafiskt tryck på silkespapper för inslagning av glasföremål i Rejmyre Antikaffär. Frida Hållander är konsthantverkare, utbildad på institutionen för Keramik och glas på Konstfack där hon nyligen avlagt en doktorsexamen med arbetet Vems hand är det som gör? i samverkan med HDK – Högskolan för design och konsthantverk i Göteborg. Avhandlingen är en praktikbaserad studie som ställer frågor kring konsthantverk, klass, feminism och om viljan att ta strid.
Rejmyre Antik
RETENTION – Erna E Skúladóttir & Karin Blomgren
“Giftiga ämnen som ända fram till sjuttiotalet dumpades bakom Rejmyre glasbruk, sipprar ut i våtmarken nedanför. I alla år har våtmarken hindrat ex. bly och arsenik från att nå sjön Hunn, Rejmyres vattentäkt. Växter kan ta upp gifter i rot, stjälk och blad. Sedimentering, sand och vegetation bidrar till filtreringen och likt en tvättsvamp suger det sanka området upp föroreningarna. Men vad händer om klimatet förändras? Om somrarna blir längre och torrare eller om höstar och vintrar bli väldigt mycket blötare? Vi kan se framför oss en framtid där förändrade förutsättningar kan få denna “tvättsvamp” att släppa ifrån sig sina gifter och på så sätt bli ett hot mot dricksvattnet. I arbetet “Retention” samlas regnvatten upp, leds vidare och används till att måla verket. En del av föroreningen bakom fabriken är tungmetaller som var viktiga för att få fram färger som rött, grönt och blått i glaset.”
Konstnärerna Erna E Skúladóttir (IS) och Karin Blomgren (SE/NO) har arbetat tillsammans under flera år med plats-specifika installationer. De studerade samtidigt vid Bergen Academy of Art and Design, där de tog magisterexamen 2014. Duon har arbetat hela juni månad i Rejmyre och visar nu första steget av sitt projekt.
Rejmyre
MATTIAS HOFVENDAHL – Wetlands
Mattias Hofvendahl har skapat en ljudinstallation som tar sin utgångspunkt i de föroreningsgrader som uppmätts i våtmarksområdet bakom glasbruket. Verket är uppbyggt av sinus-toner vars vibrationer tillsammans med glaset, som är i placerade i högtalarelementen, skapar en ständigt föränderlig komposition. Installationen är uppbyggd kring produktionen som pågar i hyttan. Mötet mellan dessa två skeenden bidrar till att förkroppsliga verkets intention: att skapa ett icke-kristalliserat rum där glasbrukets historia belyses i nuet men också får möjlighet att följa med in i framtiden. Mattias Hofvendahl är ljud- och videokonstnär bosatt i Linköping och utbildad på Konsthögskolan Valand och Lunnevads Folkhögskola. Han är en av deltagarna i Rejmyre Art Lab´s tre-åriga forskningsprojekt DeTox – Clean it up! där konstnärer reflekterar kring de historiska föroreningarna bakom Reijmyre Glasbruk och den förestående saneringen
Rejimyre Glasbruk
HARRIE LIVEART – Markens Psyke
Markens Psyke Video 3 min 7 sek I ett jordfyllt badkar funderar en människa kring sitt inre landskap, som avspeglar sig i marken bakom glasbruket i Rejmyre.
Historien Upprepas Video 1 min 21 sek Vad gör vi idag som i framtiden kan ses som ansvarslöst?
Harrie Liveart är en finsk duo bestående av konstnärerna Meri Linna and Saija Kassinen, båda utbildade på KUVA (Bildkonstakademin i Helsingfors). Harrie Liveart tar lätt saker på allvar men allvarliga saker med en konstruktivt lätthet och använder sig av uttrycksformer såsom, performance, video, installationer och events. Harrie Liveart har deltagit i flera projekt i Rejmrye sedan 2014.
Public bathroom, Rejmyre
HASTI RADPOUR – Out of sight, out of mind
“Mitt verk består av en överdimensionerad slangbella, redo att skjuta iväg en stor glasklump. Inspirationen till verket föddes då jag lyssnade på Sara Erjeby, en av forskarna som gjort markprover och en förstudie av föroreningarna i Rejmyre. Hon talade om olika lösningar för att hantera den förorenade marken. En av dem är att skicka avfallet till ett annat ort där det kan tas om hand på rätt sätt. Denna lösning väckte frågor och funderingar hos mig. Är det så att om vi skickar det vidare till någon annan så är det inte längre vårt ansvar? Lyfts tyngden från våra axlar? Känns det bättre när det är lång ifrån oss? Då kom jag att tänka på denna mening: Out of sight, out of mind!”
Hasti Radpour är konstnär bosatt och verksam i Linköping och utbildad på konsthögskolan i Teheran och på Linköpings Universitet. Typiskt för Hastis konst är en lek med perspektiv och proportioner som utmanar och väcker frågor.
Reijmyre Glasbruk
Detox/Clean it up ensemble residency I
Ensemble Residencey deltagare 2018: Hasti Radpour (IR/SE), Mattias Hofvendahl (SE), Frida Hållander (SE), Harrie Liveart – Meri Linna & Saija Kassinen (FI), Maddie Leach (NZ), Sissi Westerberg (SE), Daniel Peltz (US/SE) & Kristoffer Tejlgaard (DK)
This residency was part of the three-year research strand “DeTox- Clean it up!” where Rejmyre Art Lab, contributes to the ongoing investigation led by Finspångs kommun, around the remediation of the toxic waste behind Reijmyre Glass Factory. The artists met with soil scientists, historians and the local municipality and invited their fellow artists into their research through aftrenoon workshops. After the residency and a year of investigation each artist presented a site specific installation in Rejmyre as a response to the situation.
The philosophical proposition of Detox is that ‘waste’ is ‘valuable material’. Engaging artists in a clean-up process allows us to tap into this latent value. In order to ‘clean it up’, we need to take responsibility not just for its safe disposal but to account for its potential as a resource that allows us to consider who we were, who we are and who might be becoming.
For hundreds of years, the Reijmyre Glasbruk has produced glass objects and sold the ‘finished products’ while keeping some of the leftovers in piles behind the factory. At first the piles were clearly separate from the surrounding landscape but with time they merged with and became the landscape. Through this multi-year project we will engage a group of regional and international artists in ‘researching’ this situation, i.e. the waste that is slated to be ‘cleaned up’.