Research Catalogue

This exposition serves as an archive for the project "Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees", where Annette Arlander spends time with specific trees and poses for camera together with them. The exposition is under construction

A collaboration between multi media artist Tina Douglas and composer/performer Magda Mayas funded by Musikfonds

The title of this project is inspired by geological specimens collected by the Apollo 11 astronauts during their historic lunar landing in 1969. These so-called contingency samples were gathered quickly and somewhat at random, ensuring that at least one specimen would return to Earth should the mission encounter unforeseen difficulties. Before embarking on their journey into space, the astronauts trained in Iceland, learning to identify minerals and geological formations in preparation for their work on the Moon. Both this training and the very idea of a contingency sample invite us to reflect on our own planet: as we confront what many see as the end of times, what might be Earth’s contingency sample? At the same moment that the Moon landing was taking place, a new industrial era was beginning in Iceland and Jamaica. Aluminum, long celebrated as a symbol of the future, was becoming central to the country’s economic and political landscape. Through a triangular relationship connecting Jamaica (bauxite ore export) Greenland (cryolite export), Iceland (aluminium smelters), and through the colonial and decolonial histories embedded in the aluminium industry, we propose to consider aluminium itself as a contingency sample: a material holding the potential to catalyze alternative futures. In this reimagining, the conventional narratives of progress and futurity surrounding this metal give way to a more urgent question: Who holds the right to produce the future? Within the project, we will use artistic methods such as sculpture, video, poetry, and dance to explore how aluminum interlinks geologies, alters landscapes, disrupts environments, and shapes social and cultural histories in the three islands. The artworks created will serve as material manifestations, containers holding the knowledge gained during the research. To share our methods and learn about how aluminum affects communities and the environment, we will invite local children to workshops where they can both practically engage with the material and explore its world-building potentials, creating their own contingency samples and imagining the futures they wish to strive for. The research, artworks, and outcomes from the workshops will come together in an exhibition, which will be presented in Iceland.

It Is Indeed a Dance is a project exploring the emotional, psychological, and cultural shifts within contemporary romantic discourse. Using the metaphor of dance as a dynamic, often asymmetrical interplay between self and other, the project investigates love and post-love conditions marked by ambivalence, hyper-awareness, and emotional fatigue. Drawing on concepts such as limerence, attachment theory, fantasy bonding, and “situationships,” it examines how psychological language has entered everyday dating vocabulary—shaping not only how we talk about love, but how we experience it. Through autotheoretical writing, visual media and spatial compositions, the project seeks to map and mediate intimate dynamics in an era where connection feels both over-analyzed and elusive. It reflects on the contradictions of contemporary intimacy, where vulnerability is praised but rarely safe, and communication is vital yet often ineffective in post-romantic conditions.

The Arrangement of Objects examines the intersection of functionality, aesthetics, and artistic practice through experiments with glass and metal. Central to the project is the notion of burden, understood both physically, as pressure or weight, and metaphorically, as imprint, deformation, or trace. This theme is expressed in layers, grooves, and perforations that evoke landscapes or the life cycles of objects. The work situates itself between design and fine art, emphasizing material research as a driver of innovation and interdisciplinarity. It also highlights the role of conceptual thinking and autoethnographic reflection, integrating personal experience into the creative process. Through layering and transformation, the project questions the porous boundary between utilitarian and artistic objects while expanding the expressive vocabulary of glass and metal.

Through drawing, installation, and handmade objects, the exposition explores popular culture, spectacle, and visual symbolism. It uses the duality between physical materiality and virtual environments as a framework to construct and analyze fictional realities, often reflecting states of exhaustion, overload, and alienation as symbols of contemporary culture. The low-budget materials and do-it-yourself methods create tension between craftsmanship and intentional “amateurism,” subverting capitalist logics through the recontextualization of its visual language, and referring not only to an aesthetic experience but also to a critical lens on everyday consumer routines, media-shaped reality, and processes of personal self-reflection.