Rural Resistance / Glesbygds-motstånd
När uppmaningen till motstånd skallade som svar på auktoritära, nationalistiska rörelser runt om i världen, vände vi vår uppmärksamhet åt att studera och kanske utveckla strategier för motstånd som är inneboende i vår konstnärliga praxis.
Forskningsnoden “Rural Resistance” (glesbygds-motstånd) genomfördes som en del av vårt nordisk/baltiska post-MFA-program som samlar en grupp nyutexaminerade utövare från utvalda nordiska och baltiska konst- och designhögskolor för en period av intensiv forskning i Kalbo, Rejmyre. Den här sidan ger en glimt till vårt arbete och tid tillsammans.
Vi tillbringade några dagar med att bekanta oss med temat och platsen genom samarbeten och individuella övningar. Vår första dag började med anmodan: “Skapa en struktur för att andra att göra motstånd mot”. Som konstnärer försätter vi oss ofta i rollen som motståndare till olika saker, men många av sätten att vara, strukturerna och mekanismerna som spelar in i den professionella samtidskontens praxis är i högsta grad normativa. Denna motsägelse sam-existerar med det ögonblick som deltagarna befinner sig i, övergången från att vara i rollen som student, till att bli lärare för nästa generations konstnärer. Vi valde att börja vår undersökning genom att erkänna denna position och tänka kring motstånd som handling utifrån den som bygger strukturen, snarare än den som bryter eller utmanar den. Andra övningar följde efter denna och vår tid tillsammans avslutades med skapandet av en verktygslåda. Var och en av oss konstruerade ett verktyg för att fortsätta utforskande av “Rural resistance” som vi hade påbörjat. Vid en bestämd tid på en bestämd plats, vi träffade i skogen och deponerade våra verktyg.
It will be small instructions on how to go somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going. Or if you don’t want to know where you’re going. Or you can’t decide which way to go. You can look at these and it will tell you where to go but it won’t tell you where you’re going. It can be read anywhere. If you had this kind of instructions, you wouldn’t need to decide, and you wouldn’t need to be in doubt of if you had taken the right path.
In my process I find it hard, maybe, to talk about ideas very early on. That I want to keep it a bit secret before you know what it is, or before you’ve developed something. It was a good reminder to think about what it actually can give also, in return, in sharing something. We’re dealing very much with in between spaces maybe. That it’s like—well, just think about love. How amazing it is but also how vulnerable you become the more you love somebody. There’s a feeling also that you could lose that.
There is a guy who’s trying to figure out a kind of “pain scale.” But it’s not fixed for every person, since pain is subjective. It’s based on what you’re willing to give up to get out of the pain you’re in. If you’re willing to lose an eye it’s a much bigger pain that willing to be blind for a week. You need to know what that person values. But I think it’s an important attempt to measure something that is so difficult to measure. - Tilda
I found this attic. I really had trouble working because I was thinking, where should I work? So I found this, and it was kind of personal because I also lived in an attic for two years. I like attics and I don’t like cellars. I’m an attic person, I want to be high up, I want light in the air, it’s kind of dry, there’s a good feeling about it, like a shelter, like an escape place. - Marileen
I realized I can do something with this short of period. I think I’ve found something again. Because sometimes I think that maybe I’ll just stop doing art and do something else, but now I realized that that’s not an option. - Marileen
(presenting her tool, Mari Leen shows us a section of folded tape, pressing droplets of water and dust and a blade of grass.) Here I made a self-portrait. And yesterday I walked out and recorded the night. - Marileen
I think I liked the feeling that the soil didn’t want to be glued, and the soil was resisting it. But I wanted to shape it anyways. I progressed a little bit, I had a good feeling, and also the soil was from the specific place I picked. The first part of it was from this area, right around this house, and the second part was from the soil around the house (outside of Stockholm) that I just recently inhabited. - Ludmilla
I had decided that I was going to leave something behind, somewhere here, in some form. It’s interesting for someone to have something to find sometime, or to have a reason to come back here. I want it to have a life on it’s own.
(sitting in forest, presenting his tool for rural resistance, “Whale” to the group) Now we are going here, and now we are sitting here. Just read it with your eyes. It’s written on sandpaper because sand lasts forever and paper lasts short so it’ll last somewhere between forever and short. There’s a whale in the forest now.
When you’re in the city, you always want to “escape to the countryside” in that very romantic way. And then you’re here, and not everything is perfect, and there are things that annoy you, or don’t fit. That kind of friction I’m very interested in. - Augustin
Resistance. I don’t know yet what to do. I kind of also want to resist the theme. One idea was just to resist: don’t do anything. Just leave to Stockholm and wait for your flight to Riga. I had one idea to go hitchhiking back to Stockholm for these three days. But maybe also, I want to do something. - Janis
I lost track of days. I think it’s Tuesday. It’s not moving at all. It’s one gap that we are into now. It seems longer probably but then it passes really quickly. I think all the projects I do are gaps that I jump into. This “movement” is real time, reality. It takes you one day to go from Latvia to here, and that’s real-time. And then you jump into some type of project, and that’s a gap. Sometimes in life there are more gaps, or just one big gap. Sometimes there is movement all the time. - Janis
