painting 21×63 cms,
charcoal, leaf silver, oil paint and blackboard paint on wood panel;
five subsequent stages
Almost there.
21 x 63 cms II
art, painting, recent work
art
21 x 63 cms I
art, painting
Two Workshops and One World Premiere
art, recent work, time-outNovember came and went… I got a few days in the studio, but most of the time was spent carrying out commissions in nearby city Södertälje and rural village Gnesta. First, I did this Dreams workshop at Södertälje konsthall – together with curator-educator Sarah Guarino Florén – where partaking teenagers shared daydreams and night dreams, making conceptual self portraits (a homage to contemporary artist Anna Sörenson!) and a huge, gold-laced dream catcher…
Dream workshop with secondary school students at Södertälje konsthall; photo HHW.
…and then, I suddenly found myself being the organizer of a very unique event in Gnesta: the world premiere of True Intention, a short documentary film by Ronnit Hasson about branding artist Linda Nordfors and Art Agency Reflection Company. This came about because of my involvement with Långsjö teater – a regional theatre group in Gnesta, the village close to my homeplace where also Ronnit and Linda are based. My undertaking at the theatre is to develop the Artist-in-Residence and community work… and, well – this was a collaboration too appealing not to explore…
True Intention invites us to follow an art project with focus on sustainability; the artist reflects upon and re-interprets the brand of BillerudKorsnäs – a leading paper packaging and pulp company. Linda’s response comes out as the ingenious design of a series of objects such as fashion dresses, director’s chairs, a history cabinet and pine tree trunks – all made from various kinds of paper. The artefacts end up forming a pedagogical space at the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology… and the BillerudKorsnäs staff are left with new ideas about sustainability, innovation and corporate identity.
The film documentary mirrors this fascinating hybrid process, mapping out a place where sustainable innovation, philosophy, enterprise and pedagogy fuses into art. But that’s just half the story; while realizing her project, Linda engages a number of local entrepreneurs, job seekers, trainees and craftspeople in Gnesta.
And so, it made a lot of sense to launch the premiere right here. We set the date to Sunday, November 20th… and, to really make a statement, we decided to have two screenings, each followed by a panel discussion; the first one on Cultivating Sustainability by Enterprise, and the second on Cultivating Sustainability by Art. From the day the idea arose, we had little more than three weeks to realize the project. And we did it!
Here’s a few photos from the double event – the first screening at local cinema Elektron, featuring Linda and Ronnit together with councillor Johan Rocklind (municipality of Gnesta), Daniel Lundqvist (NAV Sweden), Gustav Edman (Fabel Kommunikation) and Emilia Rekestad (REALS), moderated by cultural advisor Carina Nilsson (municipality of Gnesta); and the second one at Långsjö teater matching the artists with Magdi Beky Winnerstam (artistic director at Långsjö teater), Anna Emmelin (Albaeco), artist and curator Paula von Seth, and cultural advisor Carina Nilsson (here representing the municipality), with myself moderating…
All event photos by Artur Kowalski. And many, many thanks to everyone involved!
Linda Nordfors at Elektron
Ronnit Hasson, David Lundqvist, Linda Nordfors at Elektron
Gustav Edman, Johan Rocklind at Elektron
Daniel Lundqvist, Linda Nordfors, Emilia Rekestad at Elektron
Cultivating Sustainability by Enterprise; panel discussion at cinema Elektron.
Local contributors and participants in True Intention documentary – on stage at Elektron!
Ronnit Hasson, Linda Nordfors, Helena Hildur W. at Långsjö teater
Magdi Beky Winnerstam, Paula von Seth, Helena Hildur W. at Långsjö teater
Carina Nilsson, Anna Emmelin, Ronnit Hasson at Långsjö teater
Linda Nordfors, Paula von Seth, Magdi Beky Winnerstam at Långsjö teater
Magdi Beky Winnerstam at Långsjö teater
Cultivating Sustainability by Art; panel discussion at Långsjö Teater.
Good collaborations are truly nourishing. Which was my good luck, by the way… because on the very next day (hardly having slept), I plunged into another workshop at Södertälje konsthall. Once more, I had the pleasure to team up with Sarah Guarino Florén – gracefully improvising together, on the firm ground of embodied knowledge. This week, our coworkers were fifth-graders and the workshop theme was Words and Images. We put forward the task of re-inventing language – without letters! – and gathered inspiration from emojis, roadsigns, Chinese characters and Bliss symbols… and Rudyard Kipling’s story How the First Letter Was Written. The response was immediate; not one single kid sidestepped the challenge. Through the week, we read dozens and dozens of inventive messages about pets and Christmas wishes, vacation trips, parents fleeing from war zones, love for family and friends and a mother falling ill… Their creativity was impressive, but even more so was the sincereness; both in writing, and in reading each others’ scripts.
Words and Images workshop – lunch break, tracks remaining; photo HHW.
In all of this, I did find some time for painting and a project of my own; but that’s quite another story…
studio work (continued)…or: shit happened, plans changed
art, painting, recent work…and now that my contribution to Satan’s Delirium is up and running with the rest, it’s time for me to land in the studio again. Had scheduled this October mainly for printmaking, but sadly, the graphic department at the Royal Institute of Art suffered from a devastating fire some weeks ago. No person hurt, but dire material damages – above all, a number of students lost all of their works – and since then, the building isn’t safe and nobody is allowed into the workshops except for carpenters and construction workers.
Graphic department at the Royal Institute of Art, september 21st, 2016.
Photo: Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT)
So, serious shit did happen at the RIA. But I was lucky not to have too much stored in those workshops. I can just stay home and take up painting where I left it in September… a very suitable option, in fact.
Back in the House of Nameless Storeys; part two, Satan’s Delirium
art, recent work, time-out
accessing the Nameless Storeys
So, last year I joined the crew of 100+ artists who set the scene for Satan’s Democracy; a piece of immersive theatre – equally playful & dead serious – based on Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita and inspired by Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More in New York… Three floors of a former office building transmuting in a creative flow of consumeristic debris, human-sized dolls, graffiti galore, UV-light installations and fresh asphalt (not to mention a minor forest of birch-trees)… The construction of my own contribution, the Passage Room, can be seen here. Once, it was a brightly-lit space where office workers gathered around the photocopier; distorted angles, muffling thick felt pieces, semi-transparent shadowscreens and black sand covering the floor turned it into a tiny maze where people actually get lost at times…
The project as a whole was conceived, produced, curated and directed by some truly courageous people: Jimmy Meurling, Py Huss-Wallin and Andreas Blom. They couldn’t foresee it would end up a success, but it did – every single performance got sold-out. Furthermore, the demolishment of the building (scheduled for the summer of 2016) got postponed… so why not keep on playing?
“Woland” tag outside window
Woland Presents: Part Two: Satan’s Delirium… The grand opening was couple of weeks ago, now playing until Dec 31st (a few tickets still available)… The public, provided with masks and flashlights, find their way through a darkness mimicking the satanic delirium of a Prosecutor run amok, haunted by Woland (embodied by Otto Milde and Angela Wand). As for the Passage Room; since four out of five spotlights were removed, it’s really dark… so I have adapted it a bit, mainly by adding more mirror shards.
from the Passage Room, reconditioned October 2016
studio work
art, recent work
from the studio, March – August 2016 (photo HHW.)
So, writing and commissions aside, there’s always the studio. And during the past week, I’ve returned to this canvas (started out in March). It’s strongly related to the graphic work, but I don’t know yet where it’ll take me; only thing I know is that by now it’s calling for another one. And I need to give it time. Attention.
Grayscale Drawings IV
art, grayzone, recent work
160728, graphite pencil on paper, 28 x 21 cms
Grayscale Drawings III
art, grayzone, recent work
160705; graphite pencil on paper, 28 x 21 cms
Examination passed…
art, recent work, time-out
…and I’m free. Birds are still singing, sun is warm. Clouds passing. Future’s come. And, here’s the text (in Swedish, with English abstract):
Thinking Practises; the Artwork Reconstituted as Essay
160627; graphite pencil on paper, 28 x 21 cms
Litho workshop revisited
art, grayzone, recent work
Waiting for spring temperatures, I relocated from my studio to the graphic department at the Royal Institute of Art; a detour, but a productive one. In painting, I have been blending red, yellow and blue to achieve neutral gray shades. Now, using lithography, I print overlapping fields of the same primary colours in various sequences. The resulting hues are all but neutral, and (more interesting) they turn out very different according to the order in which they’re printed.
red and blue on yellow; litho print on paper
yellow and blue on red; litho print on paper
red and yellow on blue; litho print on paper
Helena Hildur W. 