09:30-10:30
The Settlers - Towards new Territories in Design
Siren Elise Wilhelmsen
University of Bergen (3rd year presentation)
Moderator: Hilde Kramer
10:45-11:45
Grounding with (blue)clay
Sigrid Espelien
Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2nd year presentation)
Moderator: Hilde Kramer
12:00-13:00
Note: Moved to track 4 (Black Box)
Human Object
Siv Lier
University of Bergen (3rd year presentation)
Moderator: Hilde Kramer
Siren Elise Wilhelmsen: The Settlers - Towards new Territories in Design
University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design - Department of Design
A growing human population, biological mass extinction, climate crisis, the global pandemic and the unstable political landscape all indicate an urgent need to re-think the systems within which we operate. Design is a field that bridges industry, arts, crafts and science. Through its functionality, creativity, and storytelling, design has the potential – and responsibility – to be an engine for transformation towards new regenerative concepts for production and consumption.
As a take on this overwhelmingly complex task, the artistic research project “The Settlers – Towards new Territories in Design” seek tangible examples and speculative visions based on one particular issue: attitudes and regulations concerning so-called “Invasive Alien Plant Species” (IAPS). While the term “weed” can be used to describe any plant growing in a place where it is not wanted, IAPS is commonly used to label non-native plants that become overpopulated and adversely impact their new environments, causing economic or ecological damage. From this perspective, removal and eradication might seem like an obvious solution. Yet is this effort and intervention simply causing further economic or environmental damage? And what do we lose when we ignore, weaken, or destroy these plants?
Approaching a new kind of relationship with the IAPS from the living local environment, “The Settlers” seek multiple perspectives and ways of engaging with these plants. The project has developed into an ambiguous structure of paths stretching in different directions. The plants own strategy of thriving, and their ability to survive by spreading seeds and rhizomes, has become the logic of the project. With the rhizome as totem and methodological concept, a variety of discussions, visions, explorations, and hands-on activity have been woven together through the project.
An issue to discuss and get feedback on at the ARF is ways of “gathering the threads” in a documentation that supports the conceptual framework of the project, and at the same time succeeds in presenting the collection of various layers and aspects of (ongoing) processes, writings, discussions, and results as one body of work.
Siren Elise Wilhelmsen is a designer and artistic researcher based in Bergen. Siren graduated from Universität der Künste Berlin in 2010 and founded her own design studio the same year. Through her work, Siren attempts to stimulate and propose new visions, perspectives and possibilities concerning the complex reality of production and consumption of products and goods. She creates multidisciplinary concepts both for clients as well as self-initiated projects. Currently she is a research fellow at the University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design – Department of Design.
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Sigrid Espelien: Grounding with (blue)clay
Oslo National Academy of Art, Art and Craft department
In the artistic research project Grounding with (blue)clay I explore connecting to clay as more than a material for art production, but also as soil, landscape, and land. I practice this through different methods of “reading” clay through the body, through the place the clay was found and through technology. With technology I mean traditional clay-to-ceramics technology, but also digital technology like 3D scanning and 3D printing with clay. I want to both use and challenge the inherent pedagogy of the ceramic art field, like embodied knowledge, control and oral or physical transfer of knowledge. The ceramic artist learns how to control the material and be able to reproduce the same piece time after time, but what happens when the complex history, geology and the day-to-day problematics of the clay-landscape is part of the context and affects the artistic process? What can clay in the landscape teach us?
In this presentation we will do a distant grounding exercise with clay and go deeper into the different ways the project explore grounding through documented examples. At this point my main problem in the project is of how collective processes can fill a bigger part in the artistic outcome and how I can activate clay or ceramic objects through storytelling. I am also looking at different ways of contextualizing and connecting the process and participatory work with the ceramic storytelling-objects though literature, theory, and interviews.
Sigrid Espelien graduated from The Glass and Ceramics School in Bornholm, Denmark in 2008 and received my MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA in 2012. It was first in 2013 when I moved to Oslo after ten years of ceramic art education and practice that I started working with blueclay from construction sites, landfills, and riverbeds in the rapidly growing city. Through working with clay and the place it is found, mainly in Oslo, but also elsewhere in Norway and clays from other countries, it changed my art practice and my urgency for working with clay.
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Siv Lier: Human Object - Where Do I end, and you begin?
University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design - Department of Design
Human Object is an artistic research project exploring the close and entangled relationship between humans and disobedient design objects. We design our surroundings; but design also designs us, turning us into human objects. As design can be used to tame and shape nature, human thoughts, bodies and behaviors, I find it important to be part of a critical discussion about how design affects humanity and our environment and what roles designers can play. I explore ways of unveiling the complexity and entanglement of life and design without trying to tame, simplify or solve it. The project belongs within a Discursive Design tradition that ‘asks its audience to take an anthropological gaze and seek understanding of its artifacts beyond basic form and utility’ (Tharp and Tharp, 2018: 5).
Entanglement and disobedience are key concepts in the project, both as themes and as artistic methods. I engage with my material on a personal level, sometimes with my body, thereby blurring the lines between myself, my surroundings and objects. The objects I create and interact with (often made from waste and broken parts) are disobedient; they have their own agency and do not meet expectations of functionality and comfort. They disrupt the traditional hierarchy between humans and things and refuse to be categorized. I have explored the hammer-human interaction as a sub-study.
Through my background from furniture design, and from art, language and social sciences, my design process includes making, thinking, writing, collage, reading, drawing, performance, collections and participation by others.
In my presentation I will talk about changes and choices I've made in the process and how they have affected the project. Based on my outcomes and findings so far, I would like the audience to reflect on and discuss with me the different possibilities for the final stage of my process.
Siv Lier (born 1978) is a Norwegian designer, researcher and artist. She is currently, since 2018, a PhD candidate at the Department of Design, University of Bergen. In her Artistic research project, The Human Object she explores the close and entangled relationship between humans and disobedient design objects.
After graduating with an MA in Furniture and Spatial Design / Interior Architecturefrom the Academy of Art and Design in Bergen (2011), Siv worked as a freelance designer on projects including exhibition design, furniture and products, as well as arranging workshops and teaching design students. In addition to her design education, Siv studied at Bergen Art school (Kunstskolen i Bergen, 2003) and holds a BA in Cultural and Social Sciences, specializing in Spanish language and Latin American studies (University of Bergen, 2003). Her diverse background is evident in the way artistic expressions such as collage, performance, drawing and woodwork are interwoven with her interest in language, social science, anthropology, archaeology and activism, and her practice has gradually changed from product centered towards process centered. This move towards a more inquisitive and imaginative process places her research withing a Discursive Design tradition.
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Mari Sanden: From commission to mission-oriented research: How can artistic research contribute to mission-oriented research projects that address societal challenges?
NTNU, Trondheim Academy of Fine Art
In this project, I propose to investigate how the next framework program for research and innovation of the European Commission Horizon Europe, with initiatives such as the European Green Deal, mission-oriented research, and the New European Bauhaus, can challenge and change the conditions for cross-disciplinary research in Europe in ways which also include artistic forms of knowledge production. Emphasized as a shift from a focus on academic excellence to societal impact, it could open up new potential roles for artistic research in the new frame of mission-oriented research. It raises the question of what a shift from excellence to societal impact would mean in the context of art. It will look at the potential to experiment with alternative forms of assessing impact, legitimizing knowledge, and production of value. For the presentation in Stavanger, I will present the current developments in the project and discuss the exploration into an Aesthetic of Impact and the Impact Attribution LAB.
I would like to invite everyone to the workshop I'm organizing in Stavanger, on October 26th at 18.00:
https://www.rogalandkunstsenter.no/?p=5457
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Sveinung Rudjord Unneland: Urgent Affairs, Strange Empathy
University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, Department of Contemporary Art
Please note that this presentation will be held in Norwegian
Urgent Affairs, Strange Empathy er et sammensatt doktorgradsprosjekt som insisterer på å foregå i spennet mellom abstrakt maleri og ulike former for intervensjonistiske samarbeidsprosjekt på innsiden av Fakultet for kunst musikk og design i Bergen (KMD). I prosjektet undersøkes kunstnerisk autonomi og selvorganisering innenfor de (nye) institusjonelle rammene til KMD. Undersøkelsen foregår med utgangspunkt i samarbeidsprosjektet Joy Forum, men inkluderer også samarbeidsprosjektene Kjøkkenskulpturen, Utendørsatelieret og STUDIO(studio). Samtlige prosjekt utforsker kunstneriske strategier knyttet til intervensjon, og ser på muligheten for å etablere dele- og samarbeidskulturer i selvorganiserte lommer på innsiden av den institusjonelle «kroppen». Arbeidet har i stor grad handlet om å utvikle fysiske rom, strukturer og plattformer, og la disse danne ramme for ulike selvorganiserte aktiviteter. Parallelt med dette inneholder doktorgradsprosjektet en malerisk undersøkelse med oppmerksomheten rettet mot sprekker, mellomrom og avgrunner.
Presentasjonen på Research Forum er den tredje og siste presentasjonen. Den vil handle om hvordan doktorgradsprosjektet har utviklet seg, og hvordan dette kommer til uttrykk i måten jeg arbeider med og forbereder sluttutstillingen(e) og den kunstneriske refleksjonen. En problemstilling som har opptatt meg mye den siste tiden er hvordan jeg skal møte og forstå PhD-programmets krav til kunstnerisk resultat og refleksjon. Da særlig spørsmålet om hvordan beholde egen stemme, tilhørighet og tilnærmingsmåte kunstnerisk så vel som faglig i møte med retningslinjer og krav i programmet.
Sveinung Rudjord Unneland fullførte sin utdannelse ved Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen avd. Kunstakademiet og Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissense i 2007 og har siden utdanning bodd og arbeidet i Bergen. Arbeid med maleri står sentralt i Unneland sin kunstneriske praksis. Fra dette utgangpunktet utgår en rekke undersøkelser hva gjelder strategi, tema, form og materiale. Ut over dette kjennetegnes Unneland sitt arbeid av mange ulike samarbeidsprosjekt. Både i billedkunstfeltet og i utvikling av scenografi innen teater eller film. I tillegg har nan har arrangert og tilrettelagt for en rekke utstillinger og samarbeidsprosjekt. De seneste årene i hovedsak knyttet til det kunstneriske kollektiv og visningsrom Joy Forum som han tok initiativ til å etablere i 2018.
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