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.
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’.
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’.
Robyn Backen
Robyn Backen was selected, in collaboration with SPACED, as our 2016-17 resident artist. She conducted a research visit in 2016 and is in the process of planning her return residency in 2017, where she will realize a significant project in Rejmyre that will also be exhibited as part of the SPACED 3 traveling exhibition. You can view images of Robyn’s evolving work here.
Robyn Backen är Rejmrye Art Lab’s artist-in-residence från Australien. Hon har nu spenderat två månader i Rejmyre och i samband med Östgötadagarna presenteras resultatet av hennes arbete: ”Jag är glas” en talande glas-installation och “Barn Wall” en utomhus-skulptur som inspirerats av ladugårdarnas falufärgade brädor. Inbäddad i brädväggens transparens finns en text, som endast blir synlig då solen projicerar de spegelvända bokstäverna på marken. Verket kommer att flyttas runt på olika ställen i byn under torsdag och fredag. Boende, besökare och barn bjuds in att skapa skuggritningar av verket med gatukritor.
Robyn Backen ingår i programmet Spaced 3: north by southeast (http://three.spaced.org.au/spaced-3-north-by-southeast/) som utlokaliserar nordiska och australiensiska konstnärer till små samhällen i Västra Australien och i Norden. Rejmyre Art Lab är en av de Nordisk värd-institutionerna.
Bidragsgivare för detta projekt
Performing Labour ensemble residency
The 2016 residency involved the implementation and inhabitation of an artist-guest-worker program within the factory. The artists worked the same hours, took the same breaks and where payed the same salary as the glass workers in the factory. Our task is to develop and produce a product line in response to the situation of our own labour and the labour of others around us.
The project considered how a conceptual performance of labour, about labour, in the context of this hybrid industrial/tourist factory, might be used as a strategy to invoke a parallel state of consciousness in a group of artist-researchers. From inside this state, we attempt to explore the evolving roles of the contemporary labourer.
International participants section 1: Alex Auriema (US), Robyn Backen (AUS), Ioana Jucan (RO), Filip Olszewski (US), Daniel Peltz (US/SE), Sissi Westerberg (SE) Etnografer: Ioan Jucan (RO)
Nordic participants section 2: Unndór Egill Jónsson (IS), David Larsson (SE), Meri Linna (FI), Mattias Åkesson (SE), Daniel Peltz (US/SE), Sissi Westerberg (SE) Etnografer: Konstantin Economou (SE)
Bidragsgivare för detta projekt:
Infinite Gestures ensemble residency II
Bruce Chao [US] and Christine Mackey [IR] were selected as our 2013-14 residents. They both conducted research visits in 2013 and longer return residencies in 2014, where they conducted projects and contributed to the Nordic Studio for Continued Engagement’s 2014 post-MFA workshop. You can view documentation of Bruce’s project in Remyre here and download the publication from Christine’s work Balsam Bashing here.
In 2013, through the longer-term support of IASPIS, Rejmyre Art LAB was able to move to a two-year residency model. Invited artists are selected through an open call and come to Rejmyre for an initial research visit, followed by an extended residency period. During the research visit, artists are permitted time to freely explore the site and their impressions. After a period of gestation, they make project proposals, to be realized during a one-month residency the following year.
Bidragsgivare för detta projekt:
Infinite Gestures ensemble residency I
Under tre veckor i augusti hade sex konstnärer från USA, Tyskland och Sverige samlats för en längre arbetsvistelse; ett så kallat ”artist-in-residence” där de har arbetat med projekt som installerats på olika platser i Rejmyre. De har även haft möjlighet att experimentera i varmt glas i glashyttan på helgerna genom det nya projektet Transparency Lab.
The 2012 ensemble-residence were the first to benefit from the new structure of the Transparency Lab, a platform for experimental work in hot glass at the Reijmyre Glasbruk. The aim of this new structure is to explore how contemporary art practices can inform and co-exist alongside factory glass production. The artists, coming from a range of disciplinary backgrounds [Jewellery, Photography, Performance, Glass and Media Art], got the chance to work with experienced glass blowers. The objects and processes produced were incorporated into performances and installations in locations throughout the town. Alongside the art projects, a series of conversations with the glass factory, local organisations and Finspångs kommun explored sustainable models for future engagements.
Participants: Zoë Sheehan Saldaña (US), Betina Speckner (GE), Simon Klenell (SE), Aldís Ellertsdóttir Hoff (SE/IS), Sissi Westerberg (SE), Daniel Peltz (SE/US)
Bidragsgivare för detta projekt:
Transparency and Mediation Ensemble Residency
Transparency and mediation were the twinned themes of our 2011 international artist residency and workshop.