Rejmyre Art LAB’s Center for Peripheral Studies is a long-term, place-based, artistic research project. We come together to explore issues of vital concern through and with our varied artistic practices. We utilize an ensemble residency model to conduct this research, coming together to collectively think aspects of our complex existence in this place and time.
Our activities include a post-MFA fellowship program, an international artist residency program, public seminars, exhibitions in Konsthallen Engelska Magasinet, project studios in The Refuging Pavilion and an annual program of installations in and around the town of Rejmyre. Our installation program attempts to re-radicalize the notion of site-specificity through a commitment to a philosophy of embedded installation in which there is an element of co-inhabitation and inseparable dependence at play in the relationship between an artwork and our site. In this place designed largely for export, of its forests, quartz and craft labor, we ask the question, what is not for export?
Our mission is to create a platform for encounters between artists, contemporary art and the public, to test and develop new models for site-dependent artistic practice, to explore the role of the artist within society, especially within rural contexts, and to support artists’ practices at the intersection of contemporary art, craft and societal engagement.
As an artist-run organization, the purpose of our work together in Rejmyre has been to create a post-institutional teaching and learning space for ourselves, and others, to continue to grow, engage in sustained critique and explore topics of collective interest. Our research strands emerge from our time together and thus follow a loose associative line from one to the other.
Rejmyre Art LAB’s programming is born of a long-term engagement with and commitment to the town of Rejmyre in the Östergötland region of Sweden. Rejmyre is located amongst the forests and lakes two hours southwest of Stockholm. With a population of approximately 1000, Rejmyre is a small factory town centered around the Reijmyre Glasbruk, a glass factory founded in 1810 and still in operation. Why Rejmyre? As our co-director Sissi Westerberg says, without a drop of irony, Rejmyre is “as good a place as any.”
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