Work in progress
Earlier projects
A two year (fall 2006-spring 2008) artistic research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, Ciné-scape aims to investigate the relationship between the urban landscape and filmic representations. The moving image is today far from merely a matter of entertainment, artistic expression or commercial manipulation. An increasingly accessible mass medium, easy to both produce and distribute, film has come to play a central part in the planning and design of an increasingly complex urban space.
The project will scrutinize this mutuality between film and urbanity from three different perspectives. Firstly, the issue of film and urbanism as different, yet overlapping representational practices will be addressed. Secondly, the question of abilities and competences will be discussed. What new skills are developed by different actors in an incresingly 'filmic' urban landscape? Thirdly, the question of participation, engagement and democracy will be raised. How does the intermediary relation between urbanity and the filmic imaginary affect peoples' possibilities to take part, to actively affect and change a setting that is no longer merely physical, but also fictive?
"SPIRIT OF UNSETTLEMENT - a filmic interpretation of the urban fringe"
How is the idea of the urban landscape constructed? Where does it start and where does it end? Spirit of Unsettlement is to be understood as a poetic implementation of the ideas developed in the Ciné-scape project. With a deliberately vague and transient title, the work is exploring alternative ways of moving about or approaching a similarly vague or even wicked phenomenon - the urban fringe. With the starting point in a psychogeographic 'tradition' , the aim is to roam this fringe as an extended border, where spatial potentials transform into physical realities.
LAND USE POETICS - an international workshop on spatial practices, technologies and imaginaries (2009-2010)
Land Use Poetics is the comprehensive title for an international collaboration between researchers and artists in architecture, landscape architecture and Fine Arts with the overarching objective to initiate a new cross-disciplinary field of arts-based research.
What is concealed behind the physical planning term ”land use”? This is the question in this cross-disciplinary project, engaging ten artist and researchers from around the world. In an intense, four day workshop, and
through the use of arts-based “methods” or poetic practice, the group will examine how we humans affect the land we have at our disposal. The area of investigation is delimited to the intensely exploited and at the same time historically complex landscape between Malmö and Lund. Here, agriculture, shipping, and industry, already left non-erasable imprints. Today, however, also entirely different kinds of activities leave traces and dislocate meanings. Through different forms of spatial engagement – bus tours, walks, gathering of specimens, study visits and discussions – these traces and meanings will be explored, scrutinized and mapped out.
The first phase of the project included ten participants
Maria Hellström Reimer, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Dept of landscape architecture;
Robin Wilson, University College London, Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning;
Staffan Schmidt, Malmö University, School of Arts and Communication;
Kerstin Ergenzinger, artist, Bremen;
Nigel Green, artist, London;
Rona Lee, artist and lecturer, London and Cardiff University;
Jane Philbrick, artist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
Gunnar Sandin, artist/senior lecturer, Lund University, Dept of Architecture;
Meike Schalk, architect/senior lecturer, Royal College of Technology, Stockholm;
Apolonija Šušteršic, artist and PhD candidate, Lund University, Malmö Art Academy.
MULTIPLE TRIVIALITIES - a Boston - Malmö Studio Chronicle (March 2002)
"multiple trivialities" was a project carried through during a one year stay as a visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It consisted in the interconnection of a temporary studio space in Boston and a gallery space in Malmö (Galerie Leger) through an intermediary website. The activity in the studio was continously broadcasted, but could also be re-staged or 'edited' through the movement of a number of tagged artifacts that would potentially affect not only the website but also the activity in the studio. Depending on the spatial configuration in the studio as well as in the gallery space, the website would show the webcam broadcast, an archive of visual and literary fragments, a chat window, or a combination of these options. The spatial editing thereby initiated a game of communication and telepresence between participants and spaces.
In this project I tried to co-read the studio and its web representation, both of which would represent a transient borderline between the private and the public.
In collaboration with Peter Warren and Malin Gülich
"MOVING STORIES" - fragments of reconfigurations (2001-2002)
An interactive video documentation of people in the process of moving.
What does the concept of "dwelling" imply? Moving Stories was an ethnographically inspired study of the deconstruction, move and reconstruction of home environments. We followed five individuals in a state of transition. The video documentation resulted in three edited and thematized film sequences, all of which presented different aspects of the interaction man-artefact-space.
In collaboration with Anna Brag, Eva Brandt and Isa Hardemo
"TOWNSCAPE TRANSFER" - a video gameboard for EXPO 2000 (May 2000)
Townscape Transfer was an interactive presentation of the video material collected in a study of young people's use of urban space. In a first stage, the project followed teenagers around the city of Malmö, mapping their appropriation of spaces and places. The project also focused on how their patterns of movement changed due to the use of new technology.
In a second stage, a concept of tangible computing was developed, which resulted in an interactive video game board for the Expo 2000 in Hannover. Townscape Transfer here formed part of the larger Interactive Institute installation, occupying one of four interactive cabinets. The cabinet setting consisted in a city plan, a number of designated positions, a video clip database and three tagged dolls. Through the interaction with the set, the visitor could experience the city from the teenagers' point of view.
In collaboration with Ane Skak, Camilla Grunnet, Per-Anders Hillgren and Svante Sjöstedt.
"The HUMAN MACHINE ACTION" - mapping dialogues (June 1999)
A mobile unit for initiating dialogue, the Human Machine Action was an attempt to merge artistic practice with design research. In contrast to the Townscape Transfer project, the Human Machine Action was a low-tech or even ”non-tech” experiment, addressing the same issues of spatial practices of appropriation. If the research ambition was to collect geographical information from teenagers concerning their routes through the city, the artistic ambition was the dialogic interference with a socially constructed urban space. An old wardrobe was turned into a fake slot machine, thereby creating a “pay-by-information“ situation or event. The slot machine was manually operated from the inside and activated by the teenagers through a physical handshake. The machine delivered rudimentary maps, where the teenagers could describe their own paths through the city as well as highlight their own favourite places. Once completed, the map was returned back through the incision on the front, whereby - after final approval - a soft drink would thud down into the frontal pigeon-hole.
In collaboration with Ane Skak and Camilla Grunnet
The reflections on young peoples' use of the city was also presented in the interactive "To Be Located" website, where spatial aspects and aspects of identity were intertwined in a labyrinthine constellation.