Hugarflug 2025 - Unstable Systems by Sigmundur Pall Freysteinsson

Unstable Systems Instability can be a creative force in art, design, and architecture. Artists, designers, and scholars work both with and against systems that are ever-changing, fragile, or unpredictable. Whether dealing with technological systems, ecosystems, social structures, or sensory experiences, instability is often a prerequisite for creation. Instability opens pathways for new ideas and processes, reshaping how we approach and redesign the systems that shape our lives. It can also refer to the creative act itself—one that does not follow predetermined trajectories or established norms. Art, design, and architecture serve as tools to disrupt stable systems and/or shed new light on systems that appear stable but in reality, they are not. No system is truly stable, and when we resist that instability, it becomes a problem. Instability is perhaps the only certainty we can rely on. Hugarflug 2025, the annual conference on artistic research, will take place on September 11–12. It will serve as a platform for research that engages with instability across various systems—from technological advancements such as AI and interactive systems to issues related to politics, society, and the environment. We will explore how instability functions as a tool for generating new possibilities while also fueling unrest and transformation within society and academia. The Iceland University of the Arts invites proposals of all kinds, including presentations of ongoing or completed research by our faculty, students, and collaborators.

This presentation explores instability as a central theme in my visual art over the past two decades. Through works such as Uncertainty Principle (2008), Tremor (2012), Flatland (2014), and Ljósvaki (2018–2022), I look at changing systems, disruption, and imbalance as material and how they are integrated into working methods. The works are often site-dependent installations, responsive to time, space, and the viewer’s perception. Instability operates both as content and as a work method. The presentation invites reflection on how artistic practice can confront the illusion of stability and embrace instability as a creative and critical force within contemporary research.

Hugarflug annual conference on artistic research

11. - 12. September 2025

Iceland University of the Arts

Instability as a central theme in visual art

Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardótti

Thursday, 11. september, 2025 - 15:30 - 17:00

3x20 min Presentation + 3x10 min Discussion

Moderator: Berglind María Tómasdóttir

Room:

Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardótti
Visual artist and program director of BA fine art at IUA

Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir (b. 1977) completed her BA degree from the Icelandic Academy of Art in 2001 and an MA degree from the School of Visual Art in New York in 2013. Sirra’s work is cosmic in nature, often connected to speculations about our position within the inner workings of nature, physics and the forces that drive the world. She has held solo exhibitions at the Reykjavík Art Museum, the Living Art Museum, the Árnes Art Museum, Hafnarborg and Kling & Bang. She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions worldwide, including China, Finland and England. Sirra has been a member of the artist-run space Kling & Bang since its inception in 2003.

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