LOCATION: Rejmyre, Sweden
LEVEL: MFA
ECTS: 6
Number of participants: 15
Eligible students:
- 4 MFA students at each of the following institutions:
Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland
Konstfack University College of Art, Craft and Design, Sweden
Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
- additionally, 3 slots will be open to students across the KUNO network
Everything you want was already here is a two-week intensive, site-responsive course that takes place in the rural, glass factory town of Rejmyre, Sweden and is hosted by the artist-run organization Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies. Participants will explore issues central to making site-responsive art in rural contexts and create an artwork in response to the site of the course.
The course will bring together MA students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design in Stockholm and the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts along with select MA students from other KUNO schools.
This transdisciplinary course explores contextually responsive art practice with a specific focus on the rural. The dominance of the urban in artistic discourses and the marginalization of the rural, as an often invisible space of industrial production and resource extraction, combine to form a strong argument for focusing our attention, within the space of master-level art and craft education, on developing our conceptions of the rural and rural publics and our capacity to make complex works within and about rural contexts.
Our chosen theme, Everything you want was already here, is an opportunity to explore conceptions of abundance and lack in our respective approaches to art, craft and making. Rural spaces have historically attracted artists seeking a respite, or a near total escape, from the implicitly urban art worlds. All of the participants in this space are currently enrolled in art academies in different large cities of Europe. These urban areas, and the academies themselves, are places of abundance in many ways, in terms of the resources and opportunities they present. Those of us who inhabit these urban institutional art spaces also come to recognize that, in all this seeming abundance, there is also a great deal of lack (over regulated time and space, disconnection from the natural world/the source of the materials we consume and the people who produce them). Rural areas in turn present different forms of abundance and lack, real and imagined (‘open’ space, decreased regulation, different conceptions of time, social disconnection etc.).
The course is an opportunity for students pursuing master’s degrees in fine and craft arts as well as media art, to meet and engage in a site-responsive exploration around these issues, through their own existing practices.
COURSE COMPONENTS
The activities and methods of the course include:
- guided tours and independent exploration of the site, introduction to industrial forestry, glass and iron industries, local crafts and various constituencies in the community
- a series of collective exercises initiated by each of the facilitating artist teachers
- collective meals
- previous work presentations by each participant
- time for project development
- a final temporary public project accompanied by a work-in-progress presentation.
Among the methods explored, some that are specific to the rural will be highlighted including: walking, orientation, foraging, forest bathing (shinrin-yoku), sited research, "indigineous" knowledges, daily rituals and working together (talka).
NOTE: While participants are encouraged to respond to the context of the active glass factory town of Rejmyre, the course does not have facilities for making in glass.
PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS
For students from the host and partner academies, international travel and local travel to and from the site are covered through the KUNO intensive course support. Accepted students from other academies can apply for travel support from KUNO. Housing and some meals during the workshop are covered for all participants and there is no course fee. Housing will be in double and triple rooms with shared kitchens and bathrooms in Rejmyre’s renovated, historic school building. Studio and meeting spaces will be in historic buildings formerly used by the glass factory.
APPLICATION
You are welcome to submit an online application by 06/03/2022. Apply with a brief statement of interest, explaining why you would like to take part of the course and how it relates to your existing practice or new possible directions that you would like to explore. Include link to online portfolio or website.
NOTE: Please ensure you can attend the entire course dates prior to applying. In order to maintain a strong group within this intensive study period, it is not possible to attend only part of the course, to arrive late or to depart early.
FACILITATORS
Daniel Peltz
Professor of Site and Situation Specific Practice, Department of Time and Space Arts
Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland
https://www.uniarts.fi/en/units/academy-of-fine-arts/
Dr. assoc. prof. Vytautas Michelkevičius
Head of Photography, Animation and Media Art Department and Head of Doctoral Programme in Fine Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
https://www.vda.lt/en/
Vitalij Cerviakov, Doctoral Candidate, artist
Doctoral Programme in Fine Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
Sissi Westerberg
Senior Lecturer, Smycke & Corpus: Ädellab, Department of Craft
Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden
https://www.konstfack.se/en/
David Larsson, visual artist
Stockholm, Sweden
HOST INSTITUTION
Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki
PARTNER INSTITUTIONS:
Vilnius Academy of Arts
Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design
