In a Place like this
(2025)
author(s): Johan Sandborg, Duncan Higgins
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
published in: Research Catalogue
In A place Like This sets out to investigate and expand the issues and critical discourses within Sandborg and Higgins' current collaborative research practice. The central focus for the research is concerned with how art, in this instance photographic and painted image making and text, can be used as an agent or catalyst of understanding and critical reflection.
The research methodology is constructed through photography, painting, drawing and text. This utilises the form of an artist publication as a point of critically engaged dissemination: a place for the tension between conflicting ideas and investigation to be explored through discussion.
The research question is focused on how the production of the image and the act of making images can communicate or describe moments of erasure or remembering in terms of historical and personal narratives with direct reference to moments of violence and place.
This is seen not in terms of a nostalgic remembrance of the past; instead as one that is rife with complicated layers and dynamics where recognition is denied the ability to locate a physical representation. Embedded in this is an exploration of particular questions concerning the ethics of representation: the depiction of ourselves and other? In this sense it brings into question an examination of the act of remembering as a thing in itself, through the production of the image and text, contexts of knowledge and cultural discourses explored through the form of an artists publication.
Galaxy Revolution – Space travel as a tool for reimagining
(2025)
author(s): Whyte&Zettergren
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
Welcome to Galaxy Revolution, the space station of Historical Spiritual Vibrations space agency. At the station you can access training sessions and game instructions we use to imagine training and healing practices for the new space race. You can experience glimpses of our space journeys and learn more of the history of the tools and knowledge we bring with us on our missions. Dock at our space station and (mis)use our methods to reshape and imagine the past, present, and future in your own way.
The exposition gathers documentation of Whyte&Zettergren's live actions and ritual practices at locations in Iceland where the Apollo 11 astronauts trained for their journey to the Moon. It also includes infrared imagery, a technology used in space visualization to capture light waves invisible to the human eye, recorded during the duo’s space journeys. The duo explores space both as a site where future colonial projects are planned and as a fictional realm for imagining alternative worlds.
In their work, Zettergren's speculative technofeminism and Whyte's ritual dubfuturism intersect. Practices that reshape futures in various ways; through an intersectional feminist and technocritical lens, and through the experimental remixing of history, ritual, and rhythm in dub culture. When the present feels dystopian, dreams of life in space become a way to envision change, a transformation of the world through imagination, whose echoes vibrate into the future.
Diary Notes of a Curator-in-Residence
(2024)
author(s): Rossana Mendes Fonseca
published in: Research Catalogue
Under the theme "Deviations", we will seek to create an exposition that narrates the immersive experience in Split's creative community and the curatorial process of a collective exhibition that integrates our artistic background from Porto with the talents of local Split artists. During the residency, we will seek to gather a group of artists willing to challenge their usual media, themes or approaches, contributing to a dynamic and thought-provoking collective.
Collaborative Processes and the Crisis of Attentiveness
(2015)
author(s): Hanna Kuusela
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Collaborative artistic processes have become increasingly popular in the past decades. Different forms of community art, relational art, and participatory art, as well as artistic collaborations, and art collectives have occupied a central role in the art world. Does this collaborative taken on art, with its focus on the artistic process, entail a move towards openness and communality, or is it rather an obligation put on us? Is the growing interest in the artistic process a fruitful approach that enriches our understanding of art, or is it an unfortunate sign of art being subordinated to capitalism that pressures us to produce constantly new products, without critical reflection or qualitative criteria? This exposition investigates this dialectics between artistic processes and art objects by following my own research process on collaborative writing.
A consideration of projects from the FUNDBÜRO art research initiative
(2015)
author(s): Cynthia Kros, Georges Pfruender
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
FUNDBÜRO: a collective art research laboratory conducted between members of the postgraduate research institute Datdata associated with the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Lyon and Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg that explores notions of the meaning of loss and recovery for objects and subjects in transit.
The exposition describes the progress of three selected projects within FUNDBÜRO, discussing the working methods and the interim outcomes. They are:
1. Field Notes: Cynthia Kros presents a selection of her field notes and contextualises the taking of field notes within theorising of the arts. The format allows playful interaction with thought processes in FUNDBÜRO as a theorising space.
2. 'Chop Shop': this project creatively engages with disassemblage/reassemblage in both regulated and unregulated ways. It replays the vernacular practice of chop shopping in the field of art.
3. 'I had a dream': this project builds on the principles of 'chop shopping' and explores the possibilities of extraction, retelling, and reperforming. As a further sequence of chop shop actions, we interrogate how dreams can become source material for a collective art/theory project.
Our collaborative work allows us to create/produce at and with distance. As we examine our projects in the making and the ways in which they interact with each other, we gain an understanding of generative processes which are at the heart of modern 'urban life'.
The Institute for Piedilogical Research
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Diana Ferro
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
DoPeopleLikeYourFeet?
The first workshop held by the Institute for Piedilogical Research aims to question basic assumptions at the foundations of spatial practice such as how we orient in space, what is the ground we stand on, how we move through space with our feet and so on. As xenofoot research scientists, we propose an intensive training schedule alternating between walking practices in the territory of Calarasi and reflective/ making/transcendental moments on the grounds of EASA community.
As walking is really close to doing nothing (Solnit,2000), it opens up a world of possibilities for the participants that allow encounters with local inhabitants, found materials, conversations, random observations and visions of other dimensions to affect what they will make or write or perform or preach throughout the time of the workshop.
Whyte&Zettergren
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Whyte&Zettergren
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Whyte&Zettergren is an artistic duo comprising Jamaican dancer and performance artist Olando Whyte and Swedish visual artist Rut KarinZettergren. The duo’s works constitute an ongoing investigation of places, materials, and bodies as bearers of historical memory. Their collaboration makes visible how contemporary and historical connections between the Nordics and the Caribbean, shaped by the transatlantic slave trade, continue to affect cultures in the Atlantic world. Through their creative processes, they search for methods to process historical traumas and strive to create rituals that envision possible futures.
Their works have been performed and presented at various venues, including 3:e Våningen, Galleri Gerlesborg, TEGEN2, and Konsthall C in Sweden; The Living Art Museum and Explorer Festival in Iceland; Fd Molyne's Sugar Estate, Stokes Hall Grate House and Fort Charles in Jamaica and the Museum of Impossible Forms in Finland.
Owning Our Madness
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Whyte&Zettergren
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Owning Our Madness is a pre-study initiated by Whyte & Zettergren on how mental illness, PTSD, and historical traumas impact artistic expressions.
Today's society is marked by conflicts, violence, and environmental disasters, which create generational traumas and increase mental illness both locally and globally. We aim to investigate how these psychological effects shape art and how art, by processing and visualizing traumas, can contribute to healing on both micro and macro levels. The project aims to explore this synergy and its role in artistic renewal.
Historically, culture, religion, and rituals have been used to provide comfort in times of mental illness. PTSD treatment with art therapy is believed to help heal the brain's structures and functions damaged by trauma. In the pre-study, we will gather knowledge through interviews and practical sessions. By experimenting with methods to visualize the body's changes during trauma, we aim to develop techniques that combine choreography, moving images, and neurotechnology (EEG and EMG). We are exploring the stage of chaos and transformation that unites the creative process and trauma processing to develop a new artistic method.
The question of the 'mad artistic genius' attributed to the creation of groundbreaking art is long-lived, but is there any truth to it? The goal is to lay the foundation for a future project where more participants contribute to exploring the connection between mental illness and artistic innovation. The pre-study is supported by seed money from Kulturbryggan, Konstnärsnämnden.
Scylla’s Opulent Noise Generator (S.O.N.G.)
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Scylla’s Opulent Noise Generator (S.O.N.G.)
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Scylla’s Opulent Noise Generator (S.O.N.G.) is a collective of multi-disciplinary artists living and working in different time zones. S.O.N.G. believes in collectivity to build worlds and imagine art for the future. SONG’s core members are Rut Karin Zettergren (FI), Choterina Freer (U.K.) and Anna Kinbom (SE).With three core members, they regularly expand the framework: inviting multiple artists into their polymorphic practice.
S.O.N.G.’s art practice takes many forms such as: collective drawing and writings; video installations; game creation; performances; seminars; and rituals. Past exhibitions and performances include BFI London Film Festival, Woven Places, AR-exhibition by Swedish Art Associations, Futureless Festival in Stockholm, Tallinn Feminist Forum, and Work Hard! Play Hard! Minsk. With 0s+1s Collective (2013-19) which focus was cyberfeminism they exhibited in Casa Victor Hugo, Cuba, Södertälje konsthall, Göteborgs konsthall and Gotlands Konstmuseum.
Herring, Iron, Gunpowder, Humans and Sugar
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Whyte&Zettergren
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Herring, Iron, Gunpowder, Humans & Sugar (HIGHS). With the project they visit locations historically linked to the triangular trade, the economic system underpinning the transatlantic slave trade. At these historical sites, Whyte&Zettergren perform live acts with choreography, storytelling, and ceremonial actions. In the acts they use objects crafted from materials extracted, manufactured, or exported from these locations.
HOW TO (NOT) PRODUCE - Fragmente zu sorgender Kunst als Gegenkultur
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Lotte Dohmen
connected to: EU4ART_differences
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
„after the revolution who is going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?
...
what is the relationship between maintenance and freedom?
what is the relationship between maintenance and life‘s dreams?“
- fragt Mierle Ladermann Ukeles in ihrem „Manifesto for Maintenance Art“ (1969). Als alleinerziehende Mutter und Künstlerin im New York der 70er Jahre, bleibt ihr aufgrund ausufernder Sorgeverpflichtungen der Zutritt zu Kunsträumen verwehrt. Die Beziehung zwischen instandhaltenden und schöpferischen Prozessen ist eine konkurrierende, nach wie vor. Sorgearbeit muss aus der künstlerischen Sphäre ausgelagert, verschleiert oder wegorganisiert werden, darf in Förderanträgen nicht auftauchen und steht in zeitlicher Konkurrenz zur kreativen Arbeit. Neoliberale Dispositive führen dazu, dass Produktion grundsätzlich höhere Wertschätzung erfährt als Erhaltung, doch wo nähern sich die beiden Bereiche einander an?
Ukulese Ladermann konterte die Zurückweisung mit einem feministischen Manifest, in dem sie Windeln wechseln, Wäsche waschen, Wohnung putzen und Essen kochen, all diese sorgenden Tätigkeiten zur Kunst erklärte. Die künstlerische Recherchearbeit folgt diesen Spuren der Maintenance Art in die Gegenwart, versammelt weitere zeitgenössische best practice Beispiele, reflektiert anekdotisch über aus-Fehlern-lernt-man-Produktionen und versucht sich an einer nicht-hierarchischen Versammlung dieser Fragmente.
Fragmente, die die Dichotomie zwischen Lebensträumen, kreativer Selbstverwirklichung und Freiheit auf der einen Seite und reproduktiver Arbeit, die die Dinge am Laufen hält auf der anderen in Frage stellen. Fragmente, die nach der Kunst im Müßigen, im Notwendigen und Unproduktiven suchen, die Strategien entwickeln entwerfend und gleichzeitig regenerativ zu Arbeiten. Fragmente, die sich um den Prozess sorgen und nicht um das Produkt.
DoPeopleLikeYourFeet? The first workshop held by the Institute for Piedilogical Research aims to question basic assumptions at the foundations of spatial practice such as how we orient in space, what is the ground we stand on, how we move through space with our feet and so on. As xenofoot research scientists, we propose an intensive training schedule alternating between walking practices in the territory of Calarasi and reflective/ making/transcendental moments on the grounds of EASA community. As walking is really close to doing nothing (Solnit,2000), it opens up a world of possibilities for the participants that allow encounters with local inhabitants, found materials, conversations, random observations and visions of other dimensions to affect what they will make or write or perform or preach throughout the time of the workshop.open exposition comments (0)
Herring, Iron, Gunpowder, Humans & Sugar (HIGHS). With the project they visit locations historically linked to the triangular trade, the economic system underpinning the transatlantic slave trade. At these historical sites, Whyte&Zettergren perform live acts with choreography, storytelling, and ceremonial actions. In the acts they use objects crafted from materials extracted, manufactured, or exported from these locations.open exposition comments (0)