Björkö Konstnod

Interventions weaves across different registers of time/site and draws from fieldwork on the island and embodied relations with nature. Fieldworks and seminars are jointly done to locate and entangle structures, narrative and forces. Towards forming an experience to continue to build individual projects up on.

Key words: asymmetry, entanglement, beyond violence, not-knowing, desire, nature, responsibility, deep listening, close seeing.

Artists arrived August 1-2 and program started on Aug 3rd 2022.

For MAGNITUDE the working group remains the same for the 6 weeks, in late summer of 2022. It is a residency focusing on with, share, linger and generosity, the artists use the program to get empowered by each other and the site. They develop individual work as well as collaborations. Much of the impact of the residency will take part as they continue their practices. At the public dissemination artists and general public are invited to discover the outcome of the process(es).

Public dissemination September 10 th, 1-6 pm at Björkö Konstnod. >>>

Coming together MAGNITUDE

"We arrive at different times,

we come from different places,

five, we have different ages, weights, heights, we are different bodies

Here at Björkö - in the place where the forest meets the sea - we do not aim to achieve any answer; instead, we propose to develop an artistic practice primarily based on questions (questioning). Thus, in order to reach out to others from a/this place of curiosity, we embrace a work process shaped by an ethic of listening that is built on the possibility of trust, respect, sharing, and caring for one another.

(As foreigners) We equally meet with our differences and discuss art, love, politics.

Drawn from the specific (natural/social/cultural) conditions at BKN, our collective practice/body incorporates vocal and movement exercises, walking, listening, writing, and improvisation.

Different manifestations that are then translated into written, video, and audio forms/formats.

Our method is, therefore, dynamic and transformative. We follow no pre-established program or fixed rules to expand further on the potentiality of being, thinking and learning together to activate new artist explorations/interventions."

Magnitude Artists

Magnitude artists project blog >>>

Joana Maria Pereira (portugal)

Drawing, moving-image, writing, prints

Joana Maria Pereira is a Portuguese artist and researcher. Pereira studied Sculpture at the University of Porto, where she also completed an MA in Drawing and Printmaking in 2009. In 2021, she obtained a PhD in Fine Art Print from Royal College of Art; where she has developed a project that examines the potentiality of silence to transform and to operate as a form of resilience through art, shedding new light on the discussion about voice and privilege, marginality and vulnerability. Pereira’s practice often produces minor interventions, and is characterised by a special attention to detail and duration. She has become increasingly interested in the political dimension of private life, looking in particular at the notion of legacy as an invisible burden that is carried both individually and collectively.

My practice is primarily research-led and manifests in multiple formats. Often privileging the form of installation I combine drawings, prints, objects and/or moving image to explore the sense of the provisional, by this means prompting questions about dominance and value. Over more than two decades ago, while I was still a sculpture student, I began to use ephemeral materials in my artistic process. My enthusiasm for ‘poor’ and ephemera methods reflects my interest in the overlooked, the minor and the precarious. I am particularly interested in the interdisciplinary and democratic nature of writing and drawing practices. I address drawing as a hybrid practice that is historically associated with the crossing of territories, contributing to original inquiries on how modes of making and thinking interconnect. Ongoing research focuses on the role of autobiography in contesting oppressive and dominant narratives, and on the relationship between poverty and authoritarian political regimes. My research interests include: heritage; class differences and inequality; politics of mediums and materials; and feminism.

The MAGNITUDE residency program will be an incredible opportunity as well to produce work entirely focused on nature, while facilitating new ways of entering into dialogue with other participants (artist and non-artists)and with myself. Immersed in nature, by learning (listening) a new place, I hope to develop hidden skills that only the exploration of nature can offer in order to reinvigorate unpopular words like mystery and magic. During my time at Bjork I plan to: - produce new artwork and rigorous research that continues to investigate the potentiality of contemporary art practice to meaningfully contest authoritarian and dominant narratives.

Edka Jarząb (poland)

sound/installation/performance/participation/voice

Sound artist, practicing deep listening as a starting point for sound activism. Using voice, radio waves, field recording and electronics, she creates an audisphere in, among other places, the Dance Theatre in Warsaw. She co-creates the Warsaw-based community Radio Kapitał and is the author of poetic radio plays and interventions, such as the phantom protest Wielogłos [Polyphony] created in collaboration with Diana Lelonek. From 2020 to 2021 she was a resident of the experimental studio WORM in Rotterdam; permanent collaborator of the interdisciplinary platform Q-O2 based in Brussels.

The artist explores sonospheres, the voice bridges between the private and the public, the inside and the outside, the self and others.

"I'm inspired by radical mycology, a social philosophy that describes cultural phenomena using a framework modelled on the unique features of the biology and ecology of fungi. Quoting another work - "Entangled life" - myceliu is an embodied polyphony. I want to work with the sound that will refer to the unique field of correlations, that is a forest. I think now is the time to ground, for observation of the ancient mycorrhiza ritual, reading the signs of eternal transformation and changes around us. For restoring, regaining space in everyday life together with our dreams."

Second Archive >>>

Space is the Safe Place >>>

One World (deep listening) >>>

Fool & Edka present: Mother Earth´s Doom Vibes (live at Unsound 2019) >>>

Roula Samiotaki (greece/sweden)

Dance/Performance/Interventions

During the last months, I work with a practice that I call ‘treeing practice’. The practice involves imagination, a sensorial approach in movement, and poetics. Treeing practice tries to create a link between humans’ life and trees' life. By embodying principles of trees' inner life (how they live, behave, and adapt to their environment), the practice is dealing with the question ‘what does it do to try to embody a tree?’ I am curious about what impossible tasks offer in relation to the way I move – I act- I perform- I live. Deep listening, the way that I related to it, is connected with other senses more than the hearing. Embodying imaginative tasks open up other senses and ways of relating to the task rather than the domain of visual and sonic, or rather than the mind commanding the body. This kinetic exploration attempts to create an understanding on nature rhythms and life (especially forest) through sensing, feeling. I am interested in collaboration and sharing and I would like to have conversations with other artists and the local community, and to explore how this practice can offer a sense of nurture to others, as it has already offered to me. During my practice the question of the community appeared to me. The forest is a solid community and it is as strong as its weakest member. I feel that the next step for my practice is to open it up for discussion, reflection and possible collaboration, to share it in a group format. The description of the residency sounds as a nurturing environment for this practice to expand. Extending beyond the importance of collectivity, another reason I want to join this program is that I would like to have the time to explore this work further and the area of Björkö seems the right combination of nature and facilities, of water and wood, for me to expand the site-sensitive exploration in that location.

Mark Rautenbach (south africa)

knitting/weaving/collage/sculptures

Mark Rautenbach’s trans-disciplinary practice asks: Can we change the world by changing ourselves? If this is the case, what interior practices are required in order to inhabit healthy, thriving, balanced, evolving outer worlds? His art practices become traces of, souvenirs from, embodiments of the transformative and alchemical art-technologies he performs.

I am super blessed to be selected for this wonderful opportunity. It comes as quite a challenge for me to live and work with other artists. My wish is to rise to this challenge by collaboratively engaging with Bjorko-Arholma and the four other selected artists. I am curious and eager to participate with the practises others bring; introducing me to new practices, stretching and sharing approaches I already work with. I wholeheartedly wish to perform collectively; responding artistically appropriately and with salience to the place, time and people.

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Kakhidze was born in Zhdanovka, Ukraine, in 1973. Artist, performer, curator, designer, gardener. She graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Kyiv and Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, Netherlands). Starting from 2018, she acts as the UN Tolerance Ambassador in Ukraine; awarded the Kazimir Malevich Artist Prize in 2008 by the Polish Institute in Ukraine. Participant of international and Ukrainian artistic exhibition projects, including the European Biennial of Contemporary Art Manifesta 10 during the time of annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Federation, 7th Berlin Biennale which was focused on politics, Moroccan Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale “Working for Change”.

Since 2009, lives and works in Muzychi village, Ukraine. Starting from 2018, she acts as the UN Tolerance Ambassador in Ukraine; awarded the Kazimir Malevich Artist Prize in 2008 by the Polish Institute in Ukraine.

"I am a Ukrainian artist, Alevtina Kakhidze, invited to BKN this spring when I was in Kyiv oblast surrounded by Russian tanks. So, this august, I am here, on Bjorko, reflecting my recent war experience and learn myself to dream for peaceful life in nearest future of Ukraine. My every day’s life here is a work commonly with other residents from different spheres of art and contexts which help me to dream more wide. Thank you, Alevtina Kakhidze"

Summer issue of Swedish Art Magazine "Konstnären"
Run a feature on Alevtina Kakhidze. An auction of artworks will be presented in Stockholm during summer of 2022.

During the war Alevtina Kakhidze maintained a daily producton of drawings from her home in Ukraine. They for a curated and personal view of life during the Russian invasion.

Jointly we form a transformative, dynamic space for art that engages with life and nature towards critical and poetic explorations, influenced by the immediate surrounding, the forest, lakes, sea and people living in the rural area. BKN fosters a peer based environment "thinking together, learning together" this takes part during infrormal sessions and public outreach. Its a resource and public forum to explore and experiment.

The exploration is set to re-synthethise the contested expression "nature nurture”, through artistic discourses. Embarking up on a quest to dissolve nature vs nurture and looking at the two words as a way of forming a sharing and caring environment where the artistic works illuminates deep listening and close seeing with a point of departure of the specific area in the Northern Archipelago of Stockholm, Sweden. BKN fosters a peer based environment "thinking together, learning together" this takes part during infrormal sessions and public outreach. Its a resource and public forum to explore and experiment.

About the call >>>.

Magnitude Program made possible with collaboration from Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Region Stockholm.

WHERE THE FOREST MEETS THE SEA

MAGNITUDE ARTISTS

MAGNITUDE PROGRAM