Rejmyre Art Lab presenterar ett online-seminarium den 3 februari 13.00-16.30.
Zoom link:
https://zoom.us/j/98774287037pwd=b3NSa29rZUVmYURWL1B3ZnFNdmc0UT09


Registration
via email is appreciated, but not required at
info@rejmyreartlab.org

What happens when we include artistic investigation as a core competency in remediating a contaminated site? A clean up effort would often begin with consulting experts: soil scientists, geologists, etc. What if we positioned artists as part of this group of expert consultants? What kind of findings does art find? How do these findings alter the act of cleaning up?

This seminar gathers artist participants in the “DETOX-Clean it up!” project along with artists, curators and thinkers who have engaged with related projects.

About the project
For the past three years, Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies has been working on the artistic research project DETOX – Clean it up! Together with a group of Swedish and Nordic artists, we have been conducting an investigation of the contaminated land underneath our feet in Rejmyre. We began by negotiating our position, as official members of the local government’s working group charged with studying, developing and executing a plan to ’clean up’ this contaminated site.
The soil around the glass factory contains pockets of concentrated lead, cadmium and arsenic, by-products of the 200-year-old glass industry in Rejmyre, that are now recognized as toxic materials. The local government inherited the land from the glassworks in 2015, in one of the multiple factory bankruptcy proceedings. In the process, the waste from the historic production processes transferred from the owners of the business to become a public responsibility. We are now the owners of a major environmental problem that the regional government has deemed so toxic that it must be ‘cleaned up’.
 

One of the propositions of artistic research is a repositioning of the artists’ role in society, as one who, through the making of artworks, engenders a process of public reflection and the consideration of contemporary complexities. The core work of this project is to think the act of cleaning up. We approach what has been deemed ‘waste’ as ‘valuable material’, engaging ourselves as artists in the clean-up process allows us to tap into this latent socio-poetic value. In order to ‘clean it up’, we need to account for the potential of this waste as a resource that allows us to consider who we were, who we are and who we might be becoming.
– Daniel Peltz, research leader Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies
 

Presenters / Participants
Sissi Westerberg, artist, project participant and co-founder of Rejmyre Art Lab
Daniel Peltz (SE/US), artist, project participant and co-founder of Rejmyre Art Lab
Cecilia Jonsson (SE/NL), artist, project participant
Frida Hållander, PhD (SE), artist, project participant
Harrie Liveart – Meri Linna & Saija Kassinen (FI), artist group, project participants
Caroline Mårtensson (SE), artist
Vytautas Michelkevičius, PhD (LT), curator, researcher and artistic director of Nida Art Colony, Vilnius Academy of Arts
Per Nilsson, PhD (SE), archaeologist, Östergötlands Museum
Taru Elfving, PhD (FI) – writer, curator, artistic director CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago, Helsinki.

DETOX – Clean it up! project participants
Hasti Radpour (SE/IR), Mattias Hofvendahl (SE), Frida Hållander (SE), Harrie Liveart – Meri Linna & Saija Kassinen (FI), Cecilia Jonsson (SE/NO), Erna E Skúladóttir (IS) & Karin Blomgren (NO/SE), Stine Bidstrup (DK), Tilda Dalunde (SE), Nicolas Cheng (SE/HK), Ulla Ridderberg (SE), Saad Hajo (SE/SY), BOOM! (SE) Sissi Westerberg & Kerstin Ribers (SE), Daniel Peltz (SE/US) & Kristoffer Tejlgaard (DK).

About Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies
Rejmyre Art Lab is an artist-driven organization, active since 2009 in Östergötland, Sweden. We work to create a dynamic meeting place for artists and craft practitioners with a focus on long-term, site-dependent research.
 
Rejmyre Art Lab, Glasbruksvägen 42, 61271 Rejmyre.

www.rejmyreartlab.org
info@rejmyreartlab.org
 
Seminar collaborator: Konstfrämjandet.
Funders: Finspångs kommun, Statens Kulturrråd, Nordisk Kulturfond, Kulturkontakt Nord.