About

Dear Elisa, Haevan, Rosa, Serene and Victoria

With some of you I have already talked about the micro-residency (on+off)line that I’m curating in the Blekinge archipelago in Sweden. I write to you because I wonder if you would be interested in realising this together with me. We should explore the archipelago of Blekinge artistically and experimentally with each other. We can make excursions, write texts, talk and make art etc. We can walk around the islands, we can go to the museum, we can read books, we can make a dinner on the shores of the sea etc. We can experiment how much we want and do as we wish.

So finally, after this email, would you be interested in doing this together with me?

Xenia

Artist in Retreat is an artist-run residency outside Torhamn in Blekinge [SE].

Artist in retreat develops new theories and methods around the artistic practice of running artist in residences. We seek to understand how artist in residences through hospitality can foster innovative and contemporary artistic practices.

Artist in Retreat is produced by the artist Xenia Klein, and is curated by her together with all the invited artists. It is supported by the Region of Blekinge, the municipality of Karlskrona and the foundation Art in Blekinge.

During [2021] the project "Birds do not take the train, but we do" is developed during the residency. The project explores relocation both as artistic method and as generative aspects of artist in residences. The project starts during late summer 2021 and is planed to end of spring 2022. During the project we will meditate on the different phases of migration amongst migratory birds.

Artist [ES / Asturias]

Artist [SE / Blekinge]

Artist [NL / Tilburg]

Artist [ES / Madrid]

Artist [HK / Hong Kong]

We are an artist based in The Hague (NL), Torhamn (Blekinge) and Stockholm (SE). We work with the materials and mediums of words, graphic prints, alternative photography, book binding, writing, conversating and reading. It can become artworks in the shapes of installation, exhibitions, books, performances, essays and plays; as well as curatorial projects. A visual artist: we try to make artworks and exhibitions flowering fantasies about the flight from trauma (childhoods are a pain in the ass). A writer and researcher: we try to make understandings around the Evil, since evil is unconditionally existing in every life. A freelancing journalist, producer and editor: we try to create innovative, creative and subversive content through podcasting and journalistic writing.

I spend long times observing the seams between technology, society and nature, often trying to make sense of embedded logics I find troubling. I navigate themes such as the value of data, information infrastructures, systems of control, or the figure of the diagram as a tool for speculation and knowledge generation. I use for the purpose plenty of browser research, crafted objects, data artifacts, algorithms, satellite imagery, and other devices that may come handy.

During my time at Blekinge, I’ll infiltrate myself in a new territory. I’ll focus on producing a few sound experiments for my current research about contemporary art dynamics in the peripheral, post-industrial region of Asturias (Spain), and, who knows, maybe plant a seed for a sisterhood between the two regions.

Haevan Lee (b.Republic of Korea) is a contemporary artist who expresses the regional context of specific places through various forms including painting, installation, video. DMZ Landscape Series turns restricted or photography-prohibited areas into paintings. The artist has created painting-sculptures by superimposing the layers of landscapes that she experienced while staying at Peace Culture Bunker, an anti-tank defense shelter built after armed North Korean guerillas invaded Seoul, South Korea in January 1968, and presented the works in the exhibition Goliaths, Tanks (Seoul, 2018). She is planning and producing Dopa+Project, a collaborative project which explores the sustainability of collectives across borders by collaborating with multinational artists, researchers and experts in various fields. And she currently contributes to various exhibitions including Bangkok Art Biennale (2020) and Venice Architect Biennale Korean Pavilion(2021).

My research is focussed on human powered movement, living outside and the encounters with people, landscapes, animals, plants and the weather these activities bring.
I plan on engaging with Blekinge very physically, I want to encounter the area with all my senses and will document this auditory and visually. The experiences and documentation will serve as material to work with. I’m especially interested in the night and sleeping outside in Blekinge. I’m curious what the darkness does to my senses and how to relax into sleeping outside.
Where one discipline ends and the other begins is the sphere in which I work.

www.rosavanwalbeek.nl

I’m working on the intersection between art and design, and I’m particularly interested in finding bridges between communities, individuals and disciplines. In my work I facilitate, mediate, connect, and communicate.
I’ll start the residency from the distance of the online realm, researching and getting to know the area a bit better in a real... or maybe fictional way. Later, when I join offline, I plan to continue documenting the experience in different ways as part of the process, and help shaping the whole project as a one.

Serene’s research-led practices reframe and rethink conditions of the contemporary through politically driven art-making and inquiry. At the intersection of art, theory, and politics, she addresses obscure issues often by creating an ontological shift of displacement in her works. Through juxtaposing and converging dissimilar situations, sometimes dilemmas, in the same space-time, the works raise questions such as how do one respond to, or what could one possibly get out of, the moment of conflict, estrangement or resistance. Her works reconsider the typologies of the material and established systems of knowledge. Deliberately selected quotidian objects, images and texts in her installations often evoke unexpected affect, that liberate the concealed tension between objects and their socially preconditioned relations.