The State of Things, 2020-2022
Experimental Publication and Exhibition at Landskrona Foto, Skåne, Sweden
Winner or Landskrona Foto Open Call 2020
The State of Things is a collective collaborative project within the framework of Landskrona Fotofestival that aims to interpret the ambiguity of the word state – as “territory”, but also as “status, condition”, regarding objects, people and places at a particular point in time. The artists in the project are interested in a world of objects. Each artist’s individual expression is rooted in sculpture and conceptual art, primarily through the use of lens-based media, from flat scanners to photography and video. We want to create a memory of Landskrona as a “territory of things”. Throughout its long history, the town has had many functions: from fishing village to garrison town to industrial hub. The city has been replanned and reshaped.
1. The State of Things Publication 2020: A two-year project in the framework of Landskrona Foto Festival. It was a collective and collaborative project planned in a series of stages, interpreting the ambiguity of the word ‘state’ as territory, but also as the temporary condition of things -objects, people, and places- at a certain moment in time. Due to the unusual circumstances the world faced in 2020 due to the Corona Virus Pandemic- we started this project online and by post, with the view of retaking our original plan in 2022: to be based in Landskrona and create a workshop/installation responding to the immediate surroundings and events of the festival.
The publication is available as an online PDF for download and print at home. Working as part of Landskrona Festival’s 2020 Event Programme, we launched this publication, along with the project’s microsite during an on-line event, featuring presentations by the artists and conversation with the curator.
2. The State of Things Exhibition 2022: The group of artists in this project are interested in the world of objects -their individual practices rooted in sculpture and performance- all coming together in the use of lens based media; from flat scanners, through to photography and video, as a main element of their work:
Bärbel Praun, Container, 2020
This idea started with the fact that both cities, -Hamburg where I live, and Landskrona- have a harbour, different in magnitude and economic status of course, but having one thing in common: both harbours used to have shipyards. They experienced economic growth after WW2, rapid decrease in the seventies during the energy and oil crises, and lost their importance as shipyards along with their steel industry in the eighties.
My seed idea of the ‘territory’ will have the exact size of a standard container used for global commercial shipping. To create this area, both imagined and physical, I walked a 20-foot space in a performative act in an industrial area of the harbour in Hamburg (20 foot = one of the most used standard sizes of a container), and work with video and still images. The act of walking helps me to imagine and visualize the space. A second chapter will be to ‘fill’ this space with sculptures made of material found in the harbour area, first in Hamburg, and then in Landskrona in 2022.
Hannah Hughes, Outer Movements, 2020
Outer Movements, the series of photographs presented in this publication, uses discarded paper pulp packing materials to create precarious temporary structures, focusing on discreet languages formed in the spaces surrounding objects. Working with fragments, recycled materials and leftovers, my approach to The State of Things involves a response to the condition of ‘not knowing,’ both in relation to the unknown spaces of the city, and through the speculative processes of collage and sculpture-based photographs. Sequences of collaged images and cast objects placed in and around the exhibition sites in Landskrona will work in response to their environment, occupying in-between states of solidity and impermanence, creating both physical and imagined spaces that remain provisional and subject to further transformation.
Joshua Bilton, 67 laments, 2020 // Objects for meditation to be held in the palm of the hand, clay casts and found stones wrapped in thread, 2020.
I would like to use this publication space as the beginning of an exchange where I share three fragments of text and a sound meditation that discuss states of transformation. I want to invite people to respond with written fragments, personal stories, mythologies, dreams of animal forms and encounters with birds. Within this exchange there is a preoccupation with lament, what we are lamenting for and how this can be carried through gesture and impression.
Mythologically, bird forms have absorbed the weight of our loss, crisis and grief in their nature as both creatures of the earth and the sky. In poetry and literature they are often seen as spiritual animals directly connected to the threshold state between living, dying, beginning and ending.
Throughout history hybrid creatures have been used to convey complex states of time. The most well known of these is Ovid’s metamorphoses where humans, nymphs and other beings in moments of crisis give over all or part of their form to trees, vegetables, animals, invertebrates and minerals. Through this transformation into another state there is the opportunity to meditate on something that is being processed deep within the body.
Tom Lovelace, Malleable Matter, 2020
The idea and ambition of this work is to send abstract artworks into the world as an invitation for the recipients to respond and react to these spaces of minimalism, in what I hope will be revealing, insightful and unexpected ways. At the centre of my practice is an inquiry into the relationship between the body (physical and psychological) and the connected languages of abstraction and minimalism. What role does minimalism play within contemporary visual culture? And what are the possibilities of images, surfaces and spaces that are rooted in a fabric and form of nothingness?
Malleable Matter initially takes form as monochrome pages. The reader is invited to remove these abstract spaces from the publication and respond in any way they like. This space could be cut, folded, twisted, turned or stained. The image is contradictory; seemingly full, whilst simultaneously empty with anticipation.
Eugenia Ivanissevich, Migrare 2020
I am looking at the geometric net often taught in schools to visualise an unfolded 3D shape. It is a journey from one state to another: from being three dimensional, tangible and holdable, to being a technical drawing or cutout, a flat outline that when folded can become voluminous again. I paused on the words re-shaping and re-imagining in relation to place, which brought me to find connections between surface areas, geometric net, shapes and maps. Historical and contemporary maps of Landskrona have nurtured this curiosity, highlighting the moat surrounding the Landskrona citadel. The changing map and its relation to place lived, walked, built, shared, abandoned, loved, known and unknown also, arrived at and left.
This shape is dynamic and elastic in its interpretations. Sometimes I see in it a boat, alluding to my great-grandfather’s one-way voyage from Malmö to Argentina at the end of the 19th century. Sometimes I see in it the blueprint of urban districts, neighbourhoods, communities; other times a bird. And other days the cutout speaks to me of a latent displacement. I invite you to take-part of a shape in flux: transforming it, manipulating it, re-inventing it. Draw it, colour it, fold it, glue it and turn it into an object, position it in the landscape, re-photograph it, sing it or sing to it! Describe it, gift it to a friend. Make it yours through play.
The State of Things
Experimental Publication and Exhibition at Landskrona Foto, Skåne, Sweden
Winner or Landskrona Foto Open Call 2020
Artists:
Bärbel Praun
Hannah Hughes
Joshua Bilton
Tom Lovelace
Eugenia Ivanisevich