Practicing art - as a habit? / Att utöva konst - som en vana?

Annette Arlander

This bilingual exposition (English and Swedish) presents and problematizes the relationship between artistic practice and habit, describing two projects that deal with repetition and place. The projects 'Solsidan' and 'Summer at Söder' were undertaken during the years 2015-2016 in Stockholm. The idea of repetition and returning to the same site were crucial, as in much of my previous works. Unlike them, neither of these two projects involved performances for camera; in both the actual practice consisted of video recording the view. The shift in emphasis from an artistic practice aiming to produce an artwork, into an activity undertaken mainly as an exercise, an activity, could be seen as a strand in the general trend in contemporary art since the 1960s and accentuated in this century towards valuing the 'working' of art above the work of art as an object. This trend can also be related to research and linked to the preference for various terms like practice as research, performance as research, creative arts research or, indeed, artistic research. - This exposition combines a description of the actual practice, with an encounter with the material generated through that practice and proposes that these works can exemplify artistic research as a speculative practice.