Portfolio of Design and Social Context

2007

2020

Raising consciousness through life-research 2.3 Auto/biographical creative nonfiction as queer narration 2.4 Considering forms of sharing in conference contexts 2.5 Finding an appropriate frame for my research: social sculpture as self-experiment 3 The question of agency 3.1 A social sculpture perspective 3.2 Situating myself 3.3 Perspectives from Transformative Learning theory, psychoanalysis, and alchemical psychology 3.4 Shifting paradigms: agency on the intersection between micro and macro 3.5 Where does this leave me? 4 In and about life: multidimensional artistic research 4.1 My blog: Artists of Society 4.2 The Thinking Pieces 4.3 Overview of published Thinking Pieces 4.4 Collaboration with Allan Laurent Colin 4.5 Reflections on my creative process 4.6 Doing justice to the data of lived experience 4.7 Sharing my work-considering impact 4.8 Taking experience seriously 4.9 The value of a processing process 4.10 Reclaiming presentational methods for social sculpture-inspired life-research 5 The limits of radical honesty 5.1 Encountering boundaries 5.2 Sensitive transformative experiences 5.3 When life-research exceeds the boundaries of PhD research: issues of ethics and ownership 5.4 On ideals and choices 6 Conclusion 6.1 Recap of the research questions

" Creativity isn't the monopoly of artists. This is the crucial fact I've come to realize, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art. When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever. " – Joseph Beuys, in an interview with Frans Hak, 1979, (Beck 2004, p.7) In 2012, we, Lott Alfreds and Charlotte Åberg, co-founded the artistic collective ArtAgent based in Stockholm, Sweden, focusing on participatory and situation-specific art. Through art practices in the public realm, we aim to develop an increased awareness of the potential and capacity of art to impact society and we have created artistic projects at various locations such as neighbourhoods, schools, social institutions, workplaces, public squares and art institutions, both in Sweden and internationally. The works include different international contexts such as social sculpture, (Beuys, Harlan 2004) participatory art, (Milevska 2006) and situation specific and new genre public art. (Lacy 1994) In addition to these concepts we have used a stream of questions and experiments undertaken by thinkers and art practitioners that have influenced the condition of local communities in a global change. Referring to Arjun Appadurais belief, we now live in globally imagined worlds and not simply in locally imagined communities. We also live in a world in which deterritorialisation, the breaking-down of existing territorial connections affect us on a daily basis as well as a parallel vision were we are moving towards a more comprehensive and internationally including approach. (Appadurai 2000) In this shift we see the enhanced possibility of sharing thoughts, feelings and imagination through art. One strength that we possess as artists is that we continuously work with the unspoken, with tacit knowledge that cannot be easily described with words and therefore needs other means in order to be expressed. (Harry Collins 2010). To allow for also imaginary worlds to take part for example in the often dull and repetitive actions at a workplace, we create a possibility of exchange based on thoughts. As artists we have a long experience to work collaboratively with communities by engaging them in artistic actions aiming towards social change. We wish to contribute to this section on methodological reshaping and spatial transgression in glocalised social work by introducing strategies that we have been using in our artistic practice with marginalized communities in Albania, Macedonia, Croatia and Sweden. In particular we wish to describe the interplay between practice and theory in our projects, to discuss theory by way of practice, and in so doing highlight how artistic practice embodies and modifies theory. This will be demonstrated by bringing to attention different situations and conditions for art projects in Sweden and in the Western Balkans. We will begin by introducing a theoretical framework to our methodology building on Joseph Beuys ideas of social sculpture (Sacks 2016) and Grant Kester's notions of the potentiality of conversations in art practices. (ed. Kucor, Leung 2004) We then present examples of our interpretation of what a " social sculpture " can be as the basis of our artistic and social practice. We have heterogeneous artistic backgrounds as visual artists working with sculpture, graphic art, textile design, video and photography. <FIGURE 10.1 HERE> The figure attempts to describe in a simple form the journey that both the artists and participants can take. The timescale can vary from days to months and the creative inputs and outcomes are hugely variable. What we have tried to make clear is that process and product are entangled and must be understood as a whole. While a final presentation or event must be artistically credible it is also informed by the process that created it. (Dix, Gregory 2010). Graphics: Lott Alfreds 2014

2014

In sculpture practice, artists are challenged by a 3D digital medium within which digital data intangibility also embeds a tangible form. The focus of this study is to understand how a 3D technological context extends spatial and medium boundaries in sculpture practice and affects artists' conceptual and practical approaches to the creative process. The study explores the sculptors' relation to space, time, and the medium inside a gravity-free spatial context, which proposes a redefined concept-process relationship. The research methods include a Research Creation experiential mode of inquiry and a case study interview approach. The Research Creation project documents the artistresearcher as sculptor's conceptual investigations (which are focused on environmental concepts). The main sculpture installation work, Vulnerable: The Salmon Project, conveys a concept of memory and proposes a visual metaphor of the vulnerability of the living condition. The data collection method is informed by the artist-researcher's creative exploration guided by an experiential learning of 3D scanning, in-depth investigations into the structure of digital objects, and applied knowledge of 3D modelling and rapid prototyping processes. The case study focuses on three professional sculptors: Kiki Smith, Evan Penny, and Trevor Gould. The artist-researcher presents an interpretation of how the artists' conceptual explorations, professional backgrounds, and experience play a role in the way they approach 3D technology in their creative process.

2015

Co-Edited with Dorothee Richter. The curatorial project “social sculptures” took place in four different parts over one and a half years, the curatorial concept evolved through time as more participants became involved. An archive of shared interests was developed with the artists: Marina Belobrovaja, Ursula Biemann, Corner College, Jeremy Deller, eggerschlatter, Finger (evolutionäre zellen), forschungsgruppe f, Heinrich Gartento, Hanswalter Graf, Fritz Haeg, Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller, Michael Hieslmair & Michael Zinganel, interpixel, Martin Kaltwasser & Folke Köbbeling, San Keller, Pia Lanzinger, Michaela Melián, metroZones, Peles Empire, Frédéric Post, Public Works, Alain Rappapor, raumlaborberlin, RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co), Oliver Ressler, Shedhalle, Erik Steinbrecher, support structure (Celine Condorelli and Gavin Wade), Szuper Gallery, tat ort, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Markus Weiss. Their contributions to the archive questioned the idea of community, and was exhibited at the White Space, Zürich and secondly at Kunstmuseum Thun. “Social Sculpture” – the German notion even downplays this term as “Soziale Plastik” was coined by Joseph Beuys, as new form of creating art, and influencing society, his expanded notion of the area of the arts was initiated by the confrontation with Fluxus practices, when he hosted one of the first Fluxus Festivals in Düsseldorf. In considering the notion of social sculptures, this issue of On Curating reflects on the projects encountered by the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, and explores this topic into an international context of artists working with social change, housing, politics, food and economics. The range of interviews and essays presented are reflective of the dynamic range of practices that exist in the social sphere. Many of the projects presented exist beyond the art circuit, and enter the social consciousness of the spaces they encounter. With contributions from Grandhotel Cosmopolis Augsburg, Marina Belobrovaja,Søren Berner, Ursula Biemann, Michael Birchall, Dario & Mirko Bischofberger, Fabrizio Boni & Giorgio de Finis, Eyal Danon, Altes Finanzamt, San Keller, Beta Local, Oliver Ressler,Planting Rice,Dorothee Richter andMartin Schick, featuring works by Jeanne van Heeswijk, San Keller and Szuper Gallery. Interviews conducted by students in the Postgraduate Programme in Curating: Nadja Baldini, Silvia Converso, John Kenneth Paranada, Eleonora Stassi, Agustina Strüngmann, Adriana Domínguez Velasco and Dina Yakerson

CIHA 2024 LYON - 26 June 2024

This session focuses on the materiality of exhibition devices and their role in shaping knowledge. It is interested in examining the changing ontology of exhibition design, arising today from new curating approaches, such as hybrid installations, speculative narratives and aesthetic experience. Expanding existing scholarship and research on exhibition design studies, this session considers exhibition-making processes, materials and structures, and explores how the materiality of the exhibition (the curatorial and exhibition design practices) can spatialize aesthetic experience, foster spatial perception and, importantly, reposition the individual at the centre of newly-created social and spatial narratives.

This paper will present grassroots urban creative placemaking as a co-produced and performative artform. It will conceptualise this activity as the logical extension of urban arts practice, from public/new genre public art (Lacy 2008) and participatory arts to a ‘new situationism’ (Doherty 2004). This is a polylogic performative artform with space/place the non-human actant (Whybrow 2011, Kwon 2004) to the human ones of creative process and urban creatives. It will position participatory art as lacking a meaningful collaborative ethos and practice, and a co-produced one as a new paradigm of art practice of social relatedness (Gablik 1991, Miles 1997) and place this practice within a placemaking taxonomy (Legge 2013 and authors working paper). The paper will problematize the notion of urban arts practice and the formal arts sector as a critical spatial practice (Rendell 2006, Petrescu 2006) and will extend geographers critical thinking on the co-production of art as constructive of new spatial configurations and emergent relations between users and space, impacting public life (Meejin Yoon 2009), whereby locating it in the socio-political of urban life, this practice has to be understood as an art form that dematerialises the art object and is concerned with creative and social processes and outcomes. It will present research findings of fieldwork case studies that work in the public realm and aside from the formal galleries/museums sector, in a community co-produced context. Specifically, Art Tunnel Smithfield, Dublin; W Rockland Street, Philadelphia; and in the UK, Homebaked, and Greyworld.

Open Philosophy Experience in a New Key, 2019

This article proposes a direction—inspired by a reading of Heidegger’s reflections on sculpture— in which thinking enriched by artistic experience can unfold an alternative mode of being-in-the-world. Heidegger points out that, in contrast to a scientific understanding of space as an empty container, the special character of space in sculpture is characterized by a clearing-away (Räumen), which presupposes and points to an open, receptive attitude toward experience that is necessary for dwelling to take place. From Heidegger this article proceeds to reflect on artworks by Eduardo Chillida and Janet Echelman. These offer concrete examples of how a thinking of sculpture can apply to different notions of place. While Chillida’s sculptures present a sense of place as rooted and embedded in the landscape, Echelman’s artworks explore an expanded notion of place through a multisensory sense of immersion. Applying Heidegger’s meditations on Räumen, it turns out that the differences between these artworks are of greatest significance in illustrating the breadth of the experiential space that they share: an openness to dwelling and a receptivity toward being-in-the-world. In this way, Heidegger’s reflections on sculpture are unfolded in a contemporary context and the potential of sculpture for a thinking of experience is established.

Social & Cultural Geography, 2006

This paper traces the creative processes employed by artists participating in the 2004 Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail and examines relationships between, place art and site-specificity. The Trail is a popular, temporary annual local arts event that invites international artists, students and community art groups to create and exhibit site-sensitive sculpture within Hardcastle Crags in Yorkshire, England. We consider some of the multiple ways in which artists mediate relationships between ‘site’ and artwork. We connect geographical concepts of place that highlight location, locale and sense of place, with mobile understandings of site as porous and flowing. The paper positions geographical research of art, opening out art and site in a non-urban environment through comparative discussion of concepts of ‘place’ and three ‘paradigms’ in site-specific art (phenomenological, social/institutional and discursive, Kwon 2002). Three elements of site-specificity – histories, natures, interactions – are then explored through fourteen artists’ creative practices and our documentation of the installation of their artwork in the Trail. We highlight the juxtaposition of ‘sites’ within the Trail, the over-lapping of ‘paradigms’ within individual artworks, and transitory aspects of ‘site’ to suggest that ‘time’ holds great significance in understanding site-specificity, place and art outdoors

2020

21st century Iran is often said to be a country in the grips of isolationism: imposed by both internal and external factors. On one hand, the sanctions applied by the US government isolate the country and restrict the living conditions and mobility of Iranian people, merchants, artists, and designers. On the other, international sanctions lead to political and cultural isolationism at the national level, making the country turn inward as a reactionary response and reinforcing the alienating cycle. Through the lenses of art practice, sensory ethnographic filmmaking, and architectural design, this paper examines the power and effectiveness of an art exhibition that features interdisciplinary sculpture installation, to express ideas about connectivity in such a climate of isolationism. The sculpture installation works in the exhibition highlight a social openness and necessity for global international connectivity, by applying the figure of the arch bridge (symbolic for Iran’s once imp...