Författararkiv: N Sverdrup

THE NEST (2017)
In collaboration with Daniel Segerberg for the project (X)sites Kattegattleden

 

Welcome to the Nest! Here you can contemplate nature from a new perspective.

Up in a pine tree on a hill slope near by Prosten Cullberg’s road, Särö, Sweden,
we have built a spherical treehouse.

The geometrical sphere that forms the framework of the nest is constructed out of found
material from the city (slats of wooden bed frames, chair legs, curtain rods, etc). The
construction is hanging in the branches of the tree and has been camouflaged with found
twigs from the forest.

Together with residents in the immediate area, Färjås Yogaretreats and Släp´s choir,
the nest took shape in a joint action collecting twigs and interlacing them into the nest.

Inside the nest you find platforms to sit down on or you can use the natural branches of
the tree to sit on. Here is the opportunity for the visitor to have a picnic, contemplate and
enjoy the view.

Perhaps your thoughts drift away…. and the nest can serve as a model for alternative
housing, a utopian vision of living in symbiosis with nature among the trees, like
the Baron in the Trees in Italo Calvinos classic novel.

More info about (x)Sites at www.landart.se

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Wiederaufbau

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WIEDERAUFBAU (RE-CONSTRUCTING) (2015)

Collaboration with Verena Resch and Daniel Segerberg for the exhibition Displaced,
SCHLACHTEN Contemporary Art Festival in Luckenwalde, Germany

 

At the World Refugee Day (that was during the exhibition period) the refugees and the inhabitants
in Luckenwalde were invited to participate in the workshop that took place in the building
of the exhibition Displaced (the old Hat Factory Mendelsohn).

We used the discarded objects that were thrown away at a rubbish dumb just outside of
the Hat Factory to build a joint sculpture/installation under the open theme „Where do I come
from? Where do I go?“

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Falling into a hangover

Falling into a hangover. Don’t show images fast
by Michelle Mantsio

 

So I’m wondering …
I was in Greece recently talking to two brothers about the situation there, and they presented Sweden as a utopia. Social democracy. It worked. Did it work? Could it work over a sustained period of time? How might you get some?
One month later I was in Klaipėda, Lithuania, at Falling from grace, a contemporary Swedish art group show based on the hangover of post-social democracy. An exhibition expressing the fall towards a lower economic standard of living in Sweden. A fall from grace for whom? For the rest of us who wish we were there, symbolically if not in reality?
Magnus Petersson’s series Sealed comprises photographs of scaled views of the Swedish family countryside home, a disappearing tradition. As models they present an ideal to aspire to. The rooms reflect a warm, soft, all-enveloping glow, which Petersson has referred to as ‘a soft Hammershoi or Tarkovsky-like afternoon glow’. Coming from the other side of the world, it felt like Vermeer—a glow from inside a house, warm and suggestive of a robust life unburdened by a harsh sun or thongs. Like all models, the images have a stillness to them, and this renders their time fixed, dead, historical. While I was drawn in by the glow and symmetry, I couldn’t help but feel like I missed the party. That I had come too late.
Ninia Sverdrup’s videos Urban scene XII: petrol station and Urban scene XIV: corner store, felt like an antidote to being too late. The work was slow. A fixed camera captured the happenings at a petrol station at night, a corner store during the day. The videos were based around ‘to have time for’, a luxury. The images had the slow plod of a moving Philip-Lorca diCorcia urban/suburban environment: nice light, easy life, boring possibly. So, while beautifully rendered, without the sound they seemed common and easy to pass by and dismiss, but once I put on the ear-phones, the sounds of these scenes began unfolding. I felt the push-pull of the tension of nothing but life happening. Certain sounds were heightened, not of conversations, but of the space, the creaks and moans of these urban environments. These scenes began to suggest that to have time (which is always a luxury), is to enable better hearing, better light and easier daily rituals.
Kalle Brolin’s Images of debt, in contrast, was fast. So fast that the microfiche whirled in a blurred Citizen Kane-like flurry. Brolin presented a video-portrait of a child (Mattias Abrahamsson) who had been portrayed in a Swedish newspaper throughout his life up to adulthood as a metaphor for changing levels of national debt in Swedish society. In the style of Seven Up!, the video showed how each year the newspaper would show an image of Abrahamsson growing and a note showing the corresponding size of the national debt. Brolin contacted Abrahamsson and his video was interspersed with a running commentary of Abrahamsson’s experiences and present life. As each year rolled through, the microfiche whirled forward and you felt analogue time passing, a historical medium showing a lost time. Images of debt managed to capture the discomforting way in which economic circumstances can make us feel we are more statistical data than human beings. Seeing a young man discuss how at times he didn’t really want to have his photo taken, and how ‘they’ came into his home, I began to feel that I was seeing the crevices in a symbolic ideal. The fall.
So, coming from Australia and knowing how I/we like things slow, I couldn’t help but wonder who we are. Are we Sweden, with a good social-democratic life and economic fortitude, or will we always aspire towards contemporary Europe and its diminishing middle class? In 2013, will we be the party or the hangover? And at what speed and in what light will we show our images?
Falling from grace, Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre (KCCC), Lithuania, 18 January – 21 February 2013.

 

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METHODS TO RE-EVALUATE EVERYDAY ACTIONS (2013)

Workshop in co-operation with Daniel Segerberg and artists related to New Zero Art Space in Yangon, Burma/Myanmar

 

I wanted my participants to reflect upon our social norms. What do we do everyday without reflecting? Are we satisfied with that, or is it just a norm? Can we/do we want to do it in another way? Every day we practiced one or two of these ”protests”, all together or one by one.

Some of the actions during the workshop:

Cleaning Act
Myanmar people finding the streets of Yangon dirty. Myanmar people just waiting for  something to happen. Instead of waiting, six Myanmar people and one Swede thought, “Let´s do it ourselves. WE start to clean streets and make them into ours”. But as a relay race, since a group of people cleaning the streets can be seen as a demonstration, and that is illegal.

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Excerpt from video documentation Cleaning act

 

Walking backwards at Bogyoke Market

Six Myanmar people and one Swede want to go backwards through the traditional Bogyoke Market. The Myanmar government do not do any  difference between art performance and demonstration. More than five people are not allowed to be gathered.

Six Myanmar people and one Swede change the performance into a repetition act. Planning: one at a time walks backwards through the market and then disappears.

At the Bogyoke Market: Six Myanmar people and one Swede waiting to start. Six Myanmar people told not to do it. Too dangerous. Swede saying, ok, then just I do it.

Swede going backwards through tailor corridor, all the way up to main passage. Still backwards turning around the corner, continuing through next corridor. People looking, starring, pointing, smiling, some angry faces, some confused faces.

Swede continuing back to starting point. Six Myanmar people gone. Swede confused. Waiting. Two of the six Myanmar people coming, picking her up. ”Come quickly: Police was here! Police telling not allowed going backwards through Bogyote Market”.

 

Individual initiatives

One Myanmar person does not like to eat in restaurants facing other unknown people. This evening Myanmar person turned around while eating.

One Myanmar person stayed in line waiting for the bus. Bus came. All people went on, except this Myanmar person, just standing still. Waited and took the next buss.

One Myanmar person went to the bakery buying bread (Myanmar people usually do not eat bread). This day he went even twice. This Myanmar person never speaks to shopkeeper. Today shopkeeper asking, why do you buy bread instead of rice? A conversation was started.

Parents of one Myanmar person always telling her to hurry up, “you are too slow”. This day Myanmar person changed position with her parents, commanded them to hurry up, “you must be quicker”.

kungsbacka

ON THE SITE FOUND, FOR THE MOMENT GIVEN (2013)

Collaboration with Daniel Segerberg and students from Hedeskolan in Kungsbacka
Cardboard boxes and three flat screens with flash mob 1-3

 

 

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Flash mob 1: Café Trubaduren, 26 Aug 2013 ”Follow-the-Leader”

HD 4:03 min
Format: 16:9
Audio: steroe

 

 

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Flash mob 2: Kungsmässan, 27 Aug 2013, ”To Tie my Shoe”

HD 2:58 min
Format: 16:9
Audio: stereo

 

 

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Flash mob 3: Kungsbacka Square, 28 Aug 2013, ”My Hometown”

HD 5 min
Format: 16:9
Audio: stereo

 

Video excerpt
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Kungsbacka is a small town in Sweden next to the countryside where we spend our summers. We wanted to get to know the town and its people better and for them to get to know us. Therefore, we thought it would be a good idea to make an exhibition at the Kungsbacka Art Center. We wanted to find our materials in Kungsbacka. We arrived on the Monday before the opening (on Saturday of the same week) without anything.

Two school classes (15 year old students) from Hedeskolan in Kungsbacka were invited for three days to join us in the process of making this exhibition.

Across the street from the art center is a shopping mall. Daniel was interested in the flow of goods and garbage that passed through this shopping mall each day.

He collected a lot of various old cardboard boxes with his students from the shopping mall. The cardboard became the material for their creative process.

 

My themes were the present, social norms and the urban space. Each day we did exercises: we played follow-the-leader through the city; we discussed norms: why to break or stretch them, and went out in the town and tried to break a social norm; we went down to the main square and discussed ”how can we use this square in another way than it is thought to be used; how can we stretch this norm?”

Each afternoon we did a kind of an everyday-flash mob.

Flash mob 1: Follow-the-Leader. I bought a cup of coffee and a cookie at a café. The other 12 students entered the café one after the other to buy exactly the same and sat down at other tables around in the café. I drank from my cup and ate from my cookie and the other 12 did exactly the same movements just after me.

Flash mob 2: To Tie my Shoe. I entered the shopping mall and placed myself at an ice-cream bar. The other students entered the mall one by one and found a place from where they could see me. Two were looking in a display window, one was waiting for somebody, three were on the escalator etc. At one point I started to tie my shoe, over and over again. The other 12 modeled after me. For 15 minutes. Then we left.

Flash mob 3: My Hometown. We occupied the main square in Kungsbacka and re-made or used it in our own style. We put up old cans with flowers in them on the lampposts, some used the benches as a starting point for their dance-parkour, some made graffiti and messages with calk, one fixed a broken tree with colourful scotch tape, two washed their clothes in the fountain and put a laundry rope between two lampposts to hang the clothes to dry on, some had a picnic at a bench, etc.

The flash mobs were filmed and shown at the art center together with the installation created out of cardboard by Daniel.

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