Skånberg & Hallberg have walking as an integral part of their practices as curators and artists. They work as a duo and also do individual work. They share studio at BKN on Björkö and are based in Stockholm and Gothenburg, Sweden
SKÅNBERG
Ami Skånberg's artistic interests are practice-led and concern Japanese dance, screendance, gender codified movement practice, non-hierarchical treatment of global dance techniques, and auto-ethnographic accounts from within the practice. Her debut film won an honorary mention at VidéoDanseGrandPrix in Paris 1995. A collection of her films are released by Njutafilms. She received the Slow Food Award at Scenkonstgalan 2015 for her performance A Particular Act Of Survival For her PhD thesis in Dance at University of Roehampton, she researched suriashi as a socially engaged practice. Ami is the current Head of M.A.D.E – Master Dance Education at the Stockholm University of the Arts, and also works at the University of Gothenburg.
Link to her talk on Walking as choreographic agency for Stockholm Research Week 2024 >>>
She has held keynotes at Nordic Forum for Dance Research, Latvian Academy of Culture, University of Philippines, Royal College of Art (UK), Stockholm University of the Arts and University of Bologna. studiobuji.com
HALLBERG
The works by Anna Viola Hallberg include thorough research and are presented in art installations with fluid and multiple ways of interpretation. Video, photography, sound and text are used for installations or interventions. She is socially and politically engaged. Often the duration of work stretch over several years of commitment. Central is her approach to everyday life and the rendering of collective memory and social justice topics. Hallberg has been working with and/or exhibiting on with these thematics in Russia, the US, Sweden, Belarus, Mexico, Austria, Lebanon, Ukraine and Germany. Hallberg also works as a curator on socially engaged topics. She is the in-house curator for BKN residency program in Northern Stockholm Archipelago. annaviolahallberg.com
WAP23 and RAD24 is the foundation of BKN booth at Supermarket Art Fair. Berg Duo was represented with two RC exposition concepts as well as the screendance piece "Current" >>>
"We walk slowly to increase our awareness of space and of each other. A sensitive and slow pace is created collaboratively when we slowly walk over the bridge together, and with our ancestors." Ami Skånberg
The WAP23 session were made through configuration of a transformative, dynamic space for art engaging with life and nature towards critical and poetic explorations, influenced by the immediate surroundings; the forest, lakes, sea, creatures and humans.
During WAP23, a number of Suriashi walks were made with the full group, as well as shorter introductory walks, and longer walks following animal trails.
We also had a number of co-walkers, emerging themselfs for shared session, shorter stays or joining the full WAP program.
The diverse group carried out their walking practices in different ways. Each artist unpacked their walking practices.
The focus is on how walking is interlocked in our practices. Fieldworks and seminars are jointly done to locate and entangle structures, narratives and forces. We believe in a safe and friendly attitude as part of the art scene we share. BKN fosters a peer-based environment: “thinking together, learning together” - a resource and semi public forum to explore and experiment.
Suriashi as introduction to attentative walking
Sept 4th 2023, with the first set of WAP artists. As there were shifts of artists in the program a new suriashi was made. On Dec 3rd the last with in the program was performed together with with BKN artists and local community. In addition throughout WAP, a number of sessions were made. All Suriashi walks were ledby Ami Skånberg. In addition the curators led a number of other walks including the BKN welcome walk.
Location: Wooden pathway, Skenninge, Björkö, Sweden, September.
Instruction: From Suriashi in Norrtälje June 30, 2023
Video: ANNA VIOLA HALLBERG
WALKING AS PRACTICE (WAP)
WAP23 was a process-based residency, where artists delve into each others’ knowledges and things they encounter together in the Northern Stockholm Archipelago in Sweden. The focus for this specific residency at BKN was on how walking is interlocked in our artistic practices. Fieldworks and seminars were created jointly to locate and entangle structures, narratives and themes. The residency form a transformative, dynamic space for art that engages with life and nature towards critical and poetic explorations. All influenced by the immediate surroundings; the forest, lakes, sea and people living in the rural area.
The selected artists had cross-over practices in primarily drawing, photography, video, performance and dance. They worked both individually, in spontaneous constellations, and they also created group sessions. The dissemination of the program took place in share sessions upon arrival of new artists - including dinners, open studios, walks, workshops etc. In addition, as the program unfolded, each artist developed their own exposition. The individual RC expositions, together with the ”baseline”, reflects the work during WAP23 residency September to November 2023. It was the first walking program taking place at BKN, Björkö Sweden, and one of the first taking place in Sweden.
BKN fosters a peer-based environment: “thinking together, learning together” - a resource and semi public forum to explore and experiment. BKN serves as a counter-position to the competitive art scenes by forming a safe and friendly space as part of the art scene we share. In other words, BKN reaches beyond issues regarding long CV:s and prestige. WAP23 residency attracted many applying artists. The successful candidates were selected from 91 applications.
Studio grants were provided by Region Stockholm.
Keywords: walking, asymmetry, entanglement, beyond violence, not-knowing, desire, nature, responsibility, deep listening, close seeing, territory, contested sites.
BKN / BJÖRKÖ KONSTNOD (ART NODE)
The main objective of BKN is to provide an opportunity to, within the stay, focus on, the artistic practice and experience life in the Northern Archipelago of Stockholm - where the sea meets the forest, fields, and lakes - a serene rural milieu. BKN is a transformative, dynamic space for art engaging with aspects of life and nature, towards an experience beyond egoism, deforestation, narrow-mindedness, repression. From its core, providing (self directed) residency studios, BKN also has (semi-directed) residency programs and public programming. It extends to using segments of the larger studio spaces, the yard and at times other specific sites indoors and outdoors on or off the island. >>>
CURATORS
The curatorors Anna Viola Hallberg and Ami Skånberg summarize three different walking projects in 2023 with the article Conditional walking (currently in peer review). The text disseminates practices and knowledges derived from three curatorial contexts, positioned in-between walking as protest, resistance and interventions. The first, a workshop, accentuated relational strategies of creating and sharing space. Methodologies in artistic practices were unfolded in order to raise awareness on disregarded or unfamiliar spaces. The second, audiences were invited to walk with their ancestors and to merge with space.The third, WAP23 - a process-based residency, fieldworks and share sessions were carried out to locate and entangle structures, narratives and forces. The residency took place with a back drop of increased and acute geopolitical tension and the embeddedness of a safe place practicing ”Thinking Together Learning Together".
BERG STATEMENT: "Working at the intersection of lens and embodied practices - we are interested in movement and space within and beyond language, and ask how movement can bring spaces together, and how several spaces can be made into one, through embodiment. As time collapses, space is put at the forefront of our artistic research."
2023
- April , they held the workshop WALKING IS ALSO SPACE in Korpoström Finland with One by Walking Network.
- May, they were in Indonesia and made the projets FAKK THE SISTEM, CURRENT and CONSEQUENCES.
- July, Hallberg was the curator for TRICKLE-ART IN THE RIVER, Norrtälje Sweden where Skånberg participated with two performances SURIASHI FOR NORRTÄLJE and TERRITORY.
- August, they have several works in the exhibition BECOMING LANDSCAPE, including a SURIASHI FOR BONN at DasEssZimmer - Raum für Kunst+ in Bonn, Germany.
- During the fall of 2023 they are among other things editing CURRENT and working with WAP in addition to their individual practeces.
- They share a fellowship studio at BKN. >>>
Joint walking projects: >>>