Here are descriptions of a selection of the projects the students completed during Shaping the City:
eric andersson
mariestad is on its way. the city must grow. find a new identity. be placed on a map. be reshaped. like so many other cities. we have seen it before. but in this struggle it sometimes seems like they forget that the city is not just houses and buildings that preferably should be placed close to the water. it is not a brand. it is people. who all share their lives in one small area. people who will be shaped by this city and their community in their own life and struggle. a struggle for something better. something that, like in a hamster wheel, is sometimes hard to see what it is. my mural is based on that issue. i took inspiration from the people in the city and my design was influenced by some magazines i saw in the central station building that showed perfect images of how people should be and look like.
Irina Anufrieva
Matsushima
Video work, 4.24 min. Filming by Katya Sivers
Katya Sivers and I made a video work based on a Japanese poem by Basho devoted to
an archipelago in northern Japan called Matsushima. Different people read the poem thinking of a place that they love; they will as well choose a place where they want to be filmed. I intend to create a portrait of a landscape; this will be a mixture
of landscapes visible and invisible that will create another one which we will see by watching the film. I would like to dedicate this work to Matsushima because it was affected by the earthquake and tsunami that took place in Japan this spring.
Additionally, Irina did three performances in Mariestad:
Wash it out
Performance, ca 20 min.
Tribute to women who were once in pain and were alone at that time
Performance, 4 hours.
Plus, she performed a durational performance during the opening event. She sat on top of Andres Diaz Garcia’s Flooded sculpture in the middle of the river.
Chia Chu Yia
A thread of red between us
People and place, human connection. A mapping project where I meet different people in different places. I thread these meetings. I have a roll of red woolen thread and I intend to using the entire roll by meeting people and making red flowers from place to place. I started this process in Mexico, Italy, France and now in Mariestad. I move around the city, meet people and offer them a handmade flower made from this red thread. For the exhibit on July 21, I completed a durational performance in the gallery, sitting in a corner, making many red flowers and forming a line of narration. It was a form of storytelling. I wrote conversation quotations from my memory of my meetings with people on a slip of paper, and attached these to the red-thread flower, and pined it on the wall based on the route I traveled to collect these conversations. Visitors were invited to add a flower and statement to the wall map. Next to the threaded map, are videos showing the process of weaving the flower. One video is of my hands making the flower with the red thread, the other is without the thread. This represents the trace of presence and memory, the connection with the people who have traveled and lived here.
Andres Diaz Garcia
Flooded
I am interested in expressing the human condition and social circumstances that shape the way our society is adversely constructed. I aim to do this by using elements of our humanity shared by almost all societies. The house is one of them, and the poetic meanings of what a house represents to each of us. It is a place that is built of dreams, a place where we grow and begin to "be." I have done several studies around the symbol of “house/home” that show different facets. I’ve focused on circumstances of abandoned houses due to political issues, houses in ruins due to the location, and houses at risk of collapse for social and environmental reasons. In many cases the images of these houses can symbolize our dreams abandoned or ruined, or our dreams on the verge of collapse. In Columbia, my country, I see thousands of people who are displaced for many reasons including torrential rains and floods that destroyed their already appalling living quarters. It is from these variable representations that I have chosen to make a flooded home in Mariestad.
Elizabeth Eicher
The Foreigner’s Guide to Becoming a Better Swede
I aim to make a series of pseudo-educational short lessons on "How to become Swedish" taught by Swedes and residents of Sweden I've met on my trip to Mariestad. I'm conducting short filming sessions where the individual attempts to teach me, or at least to get me to learn, how to do/act/say/experience/become something they perceive to be quintessentially Swedish. These will be 2-5 minute video shorts. For the exhibition these will be on a single channel loop. Eventually they might live on the internet, probably on Vimeo, possibly on Youtube.
Anna Gvozdareva
Art is the process and result of making your own ideas and visions into something material, that other people can consider in the way you want them to. I am a creator of my own life and life around me. I am not going to change other people but I can show them my own point of view and the way of how I live and understand the world. I came to Mariestad to get new professional and social experiences. I got a strong idea of making a big painting on the wall and so I joined the mural project. My painting shows an image of a girl that is sleeping who is about to wake up. It says below: Wake Up. That means that the most us live the way we are used to not considering about it. People are not used to taking responsibility for everything that is happening in their lives, so they don’t control it and don’t change it. Like as in a dream. This picture is telling them about it and asks the viewer to wake up. All the rest is up to the viewer.
Stephanie Jane Halmos and Kajsa Nylander
X Marks the Spot
In this collaborative piece we have written, produced, recorded, and performed a feminist-based hip-hop song titled “X Marks the Spot”. We then shot [and edited] a music video starring female volunteers from Mariestad. We asked the women who participated to dress and carry themselves exactly as they would wish to be viewed in a hip-hop video, our aim being to use this particularly male-dominated medium as a reclaimed space for a female voice. This medium is particularly interesting in Mariestad, where the primary expression of popular culture lies in muscle cars, skateboarding, and Metal, all of which are relatively depicted and controlled by the men of the small town. The piece will be exhibited at the City Arts Lab in Mariestad, the opening of which will feature a press release style autograph table where visitors can take away copies of the song, signed by the artists. There will also be a one-time performance by SHE Chic and Trofy (Halmos and Nylander, respectively) of the song at the opening of the exhibition.
Johan Jandgren
Fuck definition. Fuck quality. Fuck ontology. Fuck conceptual beauty. Fuck structure. Fuck categorization. Fuck exclusivity. Fuck speaking loud to make yourself heard. Fuck fighting. Fuck wholeness. Fuck coherence.
This is what I want you to know:
It is possible to put on a light blue dress. It is possible to go looking for quiet spaces, public spaces where the noises of the town are blocked out. Spaces with nice acoustics.
It is possible to sit on a very small chair and play your mandolin. It is possible to sing very, very softly. To sing songs you like, songs that move your heart. That make you want to move your lips.
It is possible to be cute. It is possible to be kind. It is possible just to do.
This is what I tell myself.
Alexey Mandych
Dancing Star
My project is part of the mural project for the wall, which was given to us by the city. I have always wanted to work in public space and wanted to create a dialogue with people passing by the wall. My section will look like place for an engineering draft with some words in it about necessary chaos inside oneself. It will also give permission for others to draw over the painting. My intention is to create space free of restrictions, borders and bureaucracy, and to challenge people to dare to draw over, to imply this chaos on the wall. And I want to use permission we have to draw on the wall and to share it with citizens - to create an oasis of chaos and self-expression.
Magda Mortner
Since coming to Mariestad, I have come to believe that it is impossible for me to feel like I am a part of the local community because of difference in language, culture, or perhaps because I am not here long enough. I would like to use my section of wall to physically insert myself into the landscape and in doing so take partial ownership of the city. I am interested in how the space will affect my painting and how in turn my presence will affect the space after I leave Mariestad. I would also like to paint a figure that can interact with the city and the people. The mural is located in a central intersection in the city that sees a lot of traffic - cars, trains, and people. My portrait will look out from the mural and will hopefully become one of the regular faces people pass on their way into town.
Helene Schlumberger
I will be building an observation/hunting/speech pulpit/hiding platform, made to look like a hunting tower I came across somewhere close to Mariestad. It will be located in middle of Mariestad's main square. In conjunction, I'll be presenting a series of photographed objects and structures I've been collecting since arriving in Mariestad. These are objects and structures that can be used as stages, observation platforms, bird watching places, hunting towers, soap boxes, or just places to see better from. These images will be hung on a wall and I will also be making a take-away poster using these images.
I have been working with raised, flat structures for some time now, and I want the climbable structure (the platform that will be placed in the square) to bring up many issues: tourism, hunting, ideas of looking at and being looked at, being seen and seeing, hiding, and places to speak from. I want to work with all these issues as potential: the final structure will not be a tourist observation platform, or a hunting platform, or any one specific thing, but a place that holds all of these potentials, and that can be turned into a specifically functioning object depending on how it is used. The way it is used will depend on its users.
The images will deal more directly with my own position as a tourist in Mariestad. I want to present these images as my collection of sites worth seeing here in town (because of the same potential I see in the platform I'll be making), and I think the poster will take on a promotional tone.
Katya Sivers
Atlas of Dreams
This is my first time in Sweden. To get more personal contact with people in Mariestad I asked them to write down their night dreams that they still remembered.
I've chosen three from fifteen stories I've collected. Being inspired by these dreams I shot three video with people or places they wrote about. Then I made stills from these video and arranged them on three lightboxes together with the texts.
Meghan Urback
My interest in researching textile craft in Västra Götaland led me to visit one of the few remaining wool spinning factories in Sweden, a large regional craft fair, the office of a handcraft consultant, the studio and home of a textile artist, and two historical museums. Along the way I have collected a few craft items and local supplies for making work. I will present a small collection my own craft works, in the form of an altered table set - one table and four chairs. The table will display a map and history detailing my travels and research in the region.
Nathalie Winberg
Mariestad could a city that listens to its youth and shows great respect for their needs. Mariestad has to be that city to change the trend of young people leaving the city never to return. The change started with Graffiti Mariestad 2010, a project which ripple effect created CityArtLab 2011 and a sense of hope and will to change that can now be found in citizens and politicians. The feeling of being able to shape your city, be a real part of it, could lift Mariestad from a slumbering city to one that's wide awake and full of creativity. A place where you want to be. The City Lake Project is a step in the right direction to accomplish this but needs to be supplemented with projects aimed towards youth and the creative field in order to fulfill its potential.
Within the framework of the City Lake Project there are plans to build a boardwalk along the lake with beautiful views, activities and meeting places. I took that idea and re-shaped it into a Longboardwalk. The skateboard culture is relatively large in Mariestad. Speaking to citizens I learned that young girls mainly choose to longboard out of the two activities and that these two groups seldom meet. CityArtLab created a skategroup who's goal is to present a proposal to the city to build a skate park within the City Lake Project. To bring together young people in Mariestad and to emphasize the young girl's needs in this context, paved longboard routes are required to be part of the proposal. Hence my project places a longboard walk close to the considered skate park to create an obvious meeting place for these groups.
Part of the project are a series of pink and blue fluorescent decree signs put up around the city to encourage longboarders to demand space and bring attention to the project, as well as inspirational material in the form of photo montages and mapping of possible routes.
Paint Mariestad! is an interactive sculpture and meeting place that brings forward the image of an allowing city and works as a meeting place between graffiti artist's, skaters and longboarders due to its placement in the centre of the harbor area of City Lake Project where the Longboardwalk meets the skate park. Cast in concrete and approximately 23 feet wide and ten feet tall, the three dimensional brush stroke is a visual command to take creative action since everyone's welcome to paint, spray or in other ways alter the sculpture. It's also an object around which it is possible to create events and it works as the core of the meeting place between the city's youth and all other citizens. Paint is a word that for me as a painter means simply to create and that is also what Paint Mariestad! wants to convey.
Included in the project is a model of the sculpture, events to get the model painted, inspirational material in the form of photo montages as well as a citizen proposal handed over to the city to implement the sculpture as part of the artwork in the City Lake Project.
