Konstön/Art Island (2013)

 

Over the course of the last year an invisible process has been going on, resulting in Art Island, an art project in conjunction with the centenary jubilee exhibition of the Norrköping Art Museum. It originated with the idea of creating an artwork that reached beyond the boundaries of central Norrköping. We fell for the small mill town of Skärblacka. Plans for development of the Island, a peninsula in central Skärblacka, were already initiated by local organisations. The creation of a sculpture park was part of the plan and Art Island was well received as the first realisation of the idea. The artwork is exhibited at the Island in Skärblacka as well as at a dedicated space in front of the Norrköping City Library.

Local A.'s project is inspired by William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies. Learning from the dark dystopia, but replacing violence with creativity, instigated a positive psychological process that has inspired us throughout the project. How could unconventional and apolitical participation in the public debate be expressed in other formats than through more conventional ones, such as demonstrating or signing petitions? And how could this be represented visually? Could creating, or participation in, an art project – that takes young voices into account in the discussion on the future of our society – be a possible way to go? How could it be expressed within an aesthetic framework? What basic human needs must primarily be met in an uninhabited place? Food. Then what? To build a hideout, a shelter?
We decided to follow this thought and developed Hideout as a theme in a workshop with the fifth graders from Mosstorpskolan in Skärblacka. The children were asked to build individual sculptures resembling hideouts, to collectively agree on the design and the construction of common hideouts, and to shoot footage. In the video, one can see the children independently place their hideouts on the Island. In a sense, the children's distribution of the miniature sculptures in the video is a symbol for how seeds of creativity are planted on the Island, seeds that has grown to become the final artworks and thus the inauguration of Art Island.

To address the wider world and reverse the perspective, we turned our eye to Riga, Norrköping's twin town. Together with Anna, Love, Moa, Moa, Henrik and Josefin, who are all connected to Norrköping, we set out on a field trip researching the politics of exhibitions and modes of historiography. The experience from Latvia, a country occupied by two totalitarian regimes during the past century, brought questions on the definitions of centre and periphery to new light. The participants in the video are only visible when the camera revolves and completes a full circle, a symbolic revolution against the evil legible in the numbers murdered during the Nazi pogroms. But it is the audio track that reveals the tangible voice of the artwork, where you hear the analysis of the young adults. Consequently, Art Island is the world of exhibitions; the place where all these questions can and should be discussed. With the past hundred years in mind, our focus also naturally became the century yet to come. The artwork should be a reminder for the institutions to remain a place for critical reflection, in relation to the past, the present, and the future.

Art Island is Local A.'s first attempt to integrate sculpture, video, and photographic elements into an inter-woven artwork. It is also our first work that more permanently claims public space, something we have aimed for since we began working together in 2009. It has been an exciting process to bring together the different pieces and locations and see how they emerge as a relational artwork. Art Island's sculptural parts have formed the material and conceptual basis for the footage, while reversely the footage is fed back into the sculptures. The objective of Art Island was to aim towards an aesthetic whole – working conceptually with workshops and exhibitions – where sculpture, photo and video, and not least the dynamics of human collaboration and public space, are included.

Translation: Irmelin Joelsson

 

PDF Konstön katalog / PDF Art Island printed matter: