July 21st Exhibition

July 21st, Thursday, is coming up soon!

This is the poster

July 15 & 16

JULY, 16

All students (along with Mason Nye and Stewart Wilson) were developing their projects during the day until the beginning of Perspektiv at 18:00. That evening we had presentations of 7 students: Magda, Meghan, Erik, Elizabeth, Helene, Irina and Ben. 

Magda showed her painting works with the focus on her self portraits. Meghan showed the pictures of her craft projects together with pictures from Swedish craft centers around Mariestad. Erik showed his video art project from Jonkopping and his social art projects in Goteborg. Elizabeth and Helene showed their collaborative works together with their own projects. Irina told us about her practice and inspiration in butoh dance. And the lucky last – Ben – gave us a quick look at his background as photographer's assistant. 

Katya

July 15

Everyone worked hard on their project during the day then….

NICE 2 C U AGAIN POTTER

Almost everyone in the course stood in the line, almost everyone in this town stood in the line, waiting to enter Saga movie theater to watch HP 2.0, to see Voldemort triumph over Harry Potter once and for all(?). But guess what, even if Potter has 99 problems - the bitch ain't one. Love will conquer evil. There is so much love, tell it to the heart.

Kajsa

July 14

On Thursday we had a meeting regarding the opening of the exhibition on the 21^st. We looked at the poster ideas and the name for the exhibition. In the afternoon people who are working with floating sculptures had a meeting with Stewart Wilson discussing ideas for their works. At 6pm we had a perspektiv lecture with Johanna McTaggart. She spoke about her work on the regional biosphere reserve and what it really means for the municipality in the long-run. It was a compelling perspective.

Many of the students continued their work with Mason Nye on mural.

July 11 & 12

July 11 & 12

Project Development & Individual Meeting Days. Students worked independently on their projects and met with Amanda to discuss their project concepts and plan.

July 10

10 July 2011 

I had a nice rest and picked up some items that I needed for my project from Gothenburg. Anders, Johan and I, took a ride from Amanda. We picked up Mason Nye who had just arrived from NewYork.
We had a pleasant journey with a good chat in the rented car.
Back in Mariestad, Irina was making her performance in front of City Art Lab, a few of the fellow students were there to help guard. She was powdered in white, laying on the ground under the hot sun. Her face was covered with black fabric with a big black rose. She looked beautiful yet fragile and vulnerable to me. I was was worried by seeing such an image, a body on the ground, non protected.
At 18:00, Mason Nye started his perspective lecture and shared with us his commercial mural projects, from thematic to decorative, from public space to private property that he had done in the States. Mason's work was very impressive. Following Mason's talk, we had five student presentations. We started with Vita, Stephanie, Anders, Simone and Alex.
It was very nice and interesting to see the different types of presentations and the different focus of everyone's work.

July 9

Project Development Day. Students worked independently on their projects.

July 8

Today we heard a lecture from Nils Jornling, a PHD student in architecture who is working part time for the city on the “City Lake Project”. He spoke to us about how it has become common for residents to build fences separating different neighborhoods and public spaces and how this affects the character of the city. In the evening Carolina Falkholt spoke to us about the graffiti project she spearheaded last year and the silo. She also showed us some of her other work, including pieces from her show in that is currently up in Gothenburg.
For my project I am working on the mural. Despite the rain, it is coming along well!

Magda Mortner

July 7

7 July 2011

After several days of long hours spent sitting in conference rooms and the dim light necessary for projected presentations, it was a welcome break to see some blue sky for a few hours. The day was spent piling on and off a gigantic tour bus, which the driver expertly maneuvered down one-lane forest roads. Here are a few historical tidbits from our visits in the area south of Mariestad:

We were given a tour around the still active Forshem church by one of its caretakers, a woman proud to announce that it was one of the only churches in Northern Europe that was dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre of Christ in Jerusalem. Four twelfth-century stone carvings adorn each outer wall of the church, and wooden beams with eleventh-century Nordic carvings can be found on the inside.

Kinnekulle is a UNESCO biosphere area on Lake Vanern, one of approximately 500 biospheres worldwide. The geological landscape is composed of layers of limestone, sandstone, shale, clay and a hard volcanic top. Limestone was mined in a nearby quarry and carved in a stone masonry that was active from the 1880s to the mid 1900s. The masonry has been left largely untouched since it was in active operation, and handmade iron tools still hang next to the forge. A small railway was built to dump stone scraps into the lake, and at lunch we clambered about on the stone pilings and found a patch of wild strawberries on the path to the bus.

Our guide pointed out shoots of wild garlic and the site of an old hotel, the deck of which is still visible, in the Meadow of the Monks, which has been a nature reserve since 1923.

The day ended with two presentations detailing the local perspective on living in Mariestad.

Meghan Urback

July 6

JULY 6, 2011

The day began with a reading discussion of Part One of our reader. We divided into groups and prepared presentations for three main readings by Doreen Massey, Trevor Paglen and Miwon Kwon. I had eagerly awaited the visit from the Mariestad skateboarding club, who were to hold a presentation at the City Art Lab this evening. It turned out, though – to my mild disappointment – that the lecture was to be given not by the young skaters themselves, but by Gunnar (an ex-skater) from the Mariestad branch of Gothenburg University. The thing is, since I came to Mariestad I've been almost obsessed by skate culture. All of a sudden I feel like a twelve-year-old, watching the older kids practice ollies and boardslides at the local skate hangout. "They're so cool!"

Is this only due to my general obsession with teenage culture? I absolutely loved the whole emo wave (and not just because of its androgynous ideals of beauty), and the more the distance grows between myself and my teen years, the more I seem to admire those young people, their extroverted behavior and style of dress, their pure emotions, their energy. Anyway, I was glad to see Jimi, 18, and his skater friends in the audience at the Art Lab, and the little Q&A with them at the end was pure gold: this is a type of voice that is rarely heard in the context of publicly sponsored art projects.

Johan Landgren

July 5

Leslie Johnson Presentation

July 5, 2011

This morning we went to city hall to meet with several municipal leaders at Mariestad’s City Hall. Before we entered the building we were all surprised to see our faces on the front page of the Mariestad newspaper. After a few cups of coffee, we heard a presentation from a number of city representatives, including members from the Majority and Opposition parties, the chief city architect, and Maria Hendriksonn. At around 12, we made our way back to city artlab where we all picked out our bicycles that were kindly provided to us by the city. After a lunch break, we returned to city artlab to discuss an article written by Martha Rosler, facilitated wonderfully by visiting lecturer, Matthew Rana. Our conversation centered around the inevitability of neighborhood gentrification, whether or not it is a problem that the artist is internalized in our corporate capitalist structure, and whether or not the graffiti project was successful. The conversation lasted until roughly four o’clock, at which point those artists involved in the mural project met to discuss the logistics of prepping the 150-foot wall. At six, we all gathered at the city artlab and heard Leslie Johnson deliver a very fascinating presentation on her artwork and works that she thought would inspire us. After Leslie, we heard from members of the Y Gallery in Minsk about their young history, Belarusian contemporary art, and the political situation in Belarus.

Ben Gottesman

July 5, 2011

The day began at 10am with a two-hour session discussing Martha Rosler’s critical piece, Culture Class: Art, Creativity, Urbanism, Part II. The beginning part of this discussion was led by Matt Rana, a former graduate of the California College of the Arts department of Visual and Critical Studies. His lecture presented us with an analysis of Rosler’s theories (and observations) about “the culture class”, among other urban conundrums in the midst of re-evaluating the artist’s role in the city. We then broke into discussion groups and debated both the text and Rana’s interpretation, as well as how the ideals discussed in the piece might apply to our role as visiting artists in Mariestad. Later in the evening we attended a lecture by Leslie Johnson, the president of the Valand School of Art in Gothenberg, as well as the directors of the Y Gallery in Minsk. The most striking aspect of this day—in my personal observation—was the tremendous presence of the [international] female voice and how wonderfully it was both expressed and interpreted. 

Stephanie Jane Halmos.

July 4

July 4, 2011

We met at the Mariestad Library and had a brief introduction to the history of the building and the library’s current activities. We were shown the city’s impressive image archive and map collection. Some students got library cards and began their research. Students who were interested in the mural project met with artist Sophy Naess. They visited the wall, met with Carolina Falkholt and had a skype call with Mason Nye, the project leader, at his home in NYC. That evening, CityArtLab had its opening exhibition. A huge crowd of people came for the event, which focused on last summer’s successful Graffiti Project led by artist Carolina Falkholt. Irina Anufrieva, a Shaping the City participant, did an arresting performance in the exhibition space. Linda Svensson, the culture secretary of Mariestad, donated her car to be covered in graffiti by exhibition visitors. Students and residents young and old contributed to the spray-fest, transforming her car. The event, and her car, were featured prominently in the newspaper the next day!

The Wall

July 3

July 3, 2011

After spending almost 48 consecutive hours together, it was enlightening to sit down and learn about the work everyone was making and why they came to Mariestad. We sat in a circular shape in the upstairs kitchen of the building most of us are living in and listened to each others interests, which felt like an official start to our stay. People come from a variety of backgrounds, so it will be interesting to see what is produced.

Simone Bailey

Map Project

These are the students submissions to the map-project they were assigned.

July 1 & July 2

July 1, 2011

The students arrive!

From the train station, we walk to Gothenburg University for a delicious lunch hosted by the city. Maria Henriksson gives us an official welcome, explaining how excited the city officials are to have the students here and how they are looking forward to the projects they make during their stay. The group gets their calendar for the month and Amanda walks them through the expectations and requirements for the next week. Students are assigned a room and we walk up to their lodging in Johannesburg. The students head to ICA (the nearest grocery store) and settle into their temporary home.

July 2, 2011

This was the second day in Mariestad and the first day of classes. At 10 am we met at the Vadsbo Museum where we had a tour and got basic information about the city and its history. We found out that Mariestad had several really important industries: a fabric factory in the 19th century and then the paper factory, Electrolux and Unico production in the middle of the 20th century. We visited an art exhibition in the museum showing a collection of regional crafts. After lunch we had a discussion about Lucy Lippard’ s article “ On and Off the Map,” about mapping and geography. We were given an assignment to make our own maps charting something that couldn’ t be found on a map. There was also a short introduction to the upcoming mural project by Sophy Naess. In the evening we had our first picnic at the lake. Everyone brought delicious food, and Johan played the mandolin. That was really exiting!