The polycrisis of modernity has resulted in divergent possibilities for makers and artists whose practice is based in rural localities. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in material-based practices that contribute to caring for the land and communities outside of urban centers. However, dominant epistemologies within art education and practice continue to privilege the urban gaze, which means that there is a need to continue to develop place-based practices that can probe the complex intersections of rural histories, cultures, ecologies and futures.
In this symposium, we invite speakers whose artistic and educational practices are extending our understanding of how to engage with questions of community, land-use and meaning making in the rural. There will be an opportunity to join a conversation with one of the speakers later during the afternoon.
Taking place during the year of the 90th anniversary of Stenebyskolan, this symposium seeks to reconnect to the spirit of the school’s founding in 1934. In providing training for young artisans, Erland Borglund’s aim was to see craft as cultural force in enabling a coherent and economically resilient Dalsland. How can today’s practices enable us to renew that mission as an international community in a rural setting?
AGENDA
13.00 – Tom Cubbin and Karin Peterson: Welcome and Introduction
13.10- Kjetil Fallan - Groundwork: Materials and Landscapes in Design History
13.50 – Saragh Hughes– Fantasy is a place where it rains
14.10 - Fika
14.30 – Onkar Kular – Luelå Biennial 2022 – Craft and Art
15.00 – Dougald Hine - I Make Where I Am (or, At Work in the Ruins of the World’s Most Modern Country
15.50 – Short Break and coffee refill
16.00 – Dialogues (student led)
16.50 – Reconvene
17.00 – Panel Discussion and feedback on dialogues with student reps
17.30 - End
The event is kindly supported by the research platform PLACE (Public Life, Arts and Critical Engagement) at the Artistic Faculty, University of Gothenburg.
Register
To register for the seminar, please email tom.cubbin@gmail.com by 20th November 2024 with REIMAGINING RURAL in the title.
It is possible to participate digitally via zoom. Please indicate when registering if you wish to participate digitally. Zoom link will be sent to you after registration.
Speakers and abstracts
Dougald Hine - I Make Where I Am (or, At Work in the Ruins of the World’s Most Modern Country)
In The Darker Side of Western Modernity, Walter Mignolo proposes an alternative to Descartes’ famous formulation: instead of “I think therefore I am”, Mignolo says, “I think where I am.” Thinking is always actually done from somewhere, and shaped by what can and can’t be seen from a particular vantage point; but within the logic of modernity, those doing their thinking from certain locations could imagine themselves as thinking from everywhere and nowhere. Drawing on a twelve year journey into thinking and writing from Sweden, still haunted by its 20th-century image as "the world's most modern country", I want to wonder aloud about what it means to take Mignolo's proposal seriously – and especially what might be possible for those of us thinking and making in rural Sweden, how this vantage point might allow us to see and say things that are harder to recognise in Stockholm, Malmö or Uppsala.
Dougald Hine is a British-Swedish author and co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME. He has served as leader of artistic development at Riksteatern and an associate of the Centre for Environment & Development Studies, Uppsala University. His latest book is At Work in the Ruins.
Sarah Hughes – Fantay is a Place where it rains
This presentation will draw upon aspects of my artistic practice in which site and place are key concerns. Expanding on my interest in forms of composition – from sculptural installation to experimental music – I will discuss how a similar creative approach can be applied to the rural landscape, specifically the West Dean Estate. I will consider how different interpretations of landscape – from idealised vistas to utopian communities – enable us to explore the material, social and political possibilities of place. I will also look at how place-based research and rural pedagogy have informed creative activity at West Dean College, ranging from taught programmes to residencies.
Sarah Hughes is an artist and composer interested in how changes to our socio-spatial environment can be read through materials, landscapes, archives, and collections. Her work moves between sculpture, drawing, installation, composition and music. She is the Programme Leader of the BA in Art and Contemporary Craft at West Dean College.
Kjetil Fallan - Groundwork: Materials and Landscapes in Design History
To the extent materials have been a matter of concern in design history, it has largely been in the shape of finished goods. But this image of design history as a history of objects is getting challenged by an increasing interest in material ecologies of design. After all, an artifact is just a particular, solidified state of the material flows making up design culture. Such a shift in perspective not only brings materials to the foreground, but also lays bare the landscapes from which they are extracted. By following material flows, then, landscapes can be seen as shaped by design, but also as shaping design.
Kjetil Fallan is Professor of Design History at the University of Oslo and the author of Ecological by Design: A History from Scandinavia, Designing Modern Norway: A History of Design Discourse and the editor of The Culture of Nature in the History of Design. His current project Designing with/out extractive materials is funded by the research council of Norway.
Onkar Kular: Luleå Biennial 2022—Craft & Art
Luleå Biennial 2022—Craft & Art, was hosted by Konstfrämjandet (The Peoples Movement for Art Promotion) Norrbotten, Sweden and took place throughout the region from October 15, 2022–January 15, 2023. Artistic directors, Onkar Kular and Christina Zetterlund expanded the biennials contemporary art remit to include crafts of many types. Shaped through listening and learning with Norrbotten’s history and creativity, the exhibitions wove together local perspectives with global questions emerging from ice and its relationship to the politics of the cold, craft as a socially sustainable activity and the circular histories of resource extraction. The presentation will outline how the biennial took place through the three interconnecting formats of exhibitions, festival and Learning Room.
Onkar Kular is Professor of Design and Programme coordinator for PLACE (Public Life, Arts, Critical Engagement), Artistic Faculty, University of Gothenburg. His research is disseminated internationally through exhibitions, education and publications. He has guest-curated exhibitions for The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, Karachi and Crafts Council, UK. He was Stanley Picker Fellow 2016, Artistic Director of Gothenburg Design Festival 2017 and Co-Director of Luleå Art Biennial 2022.
