a niche of my own



Elsa-land is a personally adapted place that calls me into connection with it, in ways that affirm what I need, to be able to understand, work and sustain. It has all bare necessities, but no unnecessary frameworks that interfere with the soft search for unknown unknowns. Here I am held by natural rhythms and frequencies that  that ground. Such as rain on the roof, wind through branches, bees hum, swaying with streams standing on an ocean floor. Here the  interruptions by societal expectations or organisational bureocracies are few. I have come to think about it in terms of "structured niche".


Species's niche

Biological environments are shaped by conditions (like temperature or pH) and resources (like nutrients or water). Conditions affect organisms but aren't used up, while resources are consumed. Organisms can change their environment, and different species can share space by using resources in different ways. These interactions help explain species diversity. The set of conditions and resources affecting an organism represents its “niche”. when organisms change their environment in ways that affect themselves and others, influencing evolution, its called "niche construction" (McCormack, J 2009). This can create feedback loops that shape how species evolve, passing on not just genes but also modified environments.


Artist's niche

The neurodivergent hyperconnected mind that constantly deals with large amounts of sensory impressions are more dependent on a stable, structured niche to be able to organise thought and agency (Constant,2018). By customizing the work environment to accommodate their specific affordances and creative processes, the neurodivergent artists can offload some aspects of creative thinking and action onto their surroundings (Saarinen, 2022). The environment becomes an extension of their person and vice versa.


Outside niche

The importance of the artists studio has been recognized an mythologized. ...Virginia Wolfs room room of ones own emphazised the importance for any marginalized group to gain control of a space to gain control of ones life. ...Though access to a personal space of ones own is a rare priviledge, especially to members of maginalized groups. 

fetishization of place

Place not as individual realization - but species realization - back up to before some societal structures to connect with others through needs that has been rendered invisible in current .



For me creaturely, biological needs and cognitive, creative needs are intertwined. Combining the studio and the home into one environment supports a thinking and making that doesn't impose artificial separations between life and art, but instead allows them to inform each other.


  • Group play compositions
  • Daily routine compositions
  • Joint cycles (composting, hair-birdnests)
  • Home building - Painting with tar to sustain the wood panel that sustain the insulation layer, that sustain the heated air that sustains my body temperature, that sustains my life. Bare essentials, creaturely needs for shelter and sustenance. Learning by doing, electricity, plumbing.
  • Soil cultivation
  • forest cultivation
  • insect relations
  • growing together


the improvised journey towards this place:  

  • a longing away, grafik stugan
  • 30 years of collective puzzlement
  • making space for childhoods
  • solitary knowledge finds
  • co2 experiments
  • reductions - shrinkings
  • hoarding materials - building a studio








Saarinen, J. A., & Krueger, J. (2022). Making Space for Creativity : Niche Construction and the Artist’s Studio. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 80(3), 322-332. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpac021


Constant, A., Bervoets, J., Hens, K., & Van de Cruys, S. (2018). Precise worlds for certain minds: An ecological perspective on the relational self in autism. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-018-0121-8


McCormack, J., Bown, O. (2009). Life’s What You Make: Niche Construction and Evolutionary Art. In: Giacobini, M., et al. Applications of Evolutionary Computing. EvoWorkshops 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5484. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01129-0_59