One of 2020’s projects for us at Intercult is Connecting Georgia. Due to the current situation with COVID-19 pandemic, all abroad travel has been put on hold until things have calmed down.
But we love the project so much we thought we’d share the talented artist’s who are participating! These artist’s are partnering with Intercult and they are going on a residency to our partners in Batumi, Georgia. There, the Swedish artists and a Ukrainian artist will work together with local Georgian artists to explore the themes of the project: the post industrial heritage of the Batumi waterfront. Later we will welcome the Georgian artists to Stockholm and explore a waterfront here – there certainly are good times ahead!
SIMKA is the project name for the visual artists Simon Häggblom’s and Karin Lind’s shared artistic activities. Through SIMKA they combine their knowledge and skill from visual art, set design and landscape architecture.
The core of SIMKA’s work is the investigation and formation of different spaces and sites for human interaction. Informed by the tensions between urbanity and nature, as well as the fictional and the habitual world. The pieces are more or less permanent, located in the gaps, the solitary or disintegrated spaces of the public or private sphere.
SIMKA was formed 17 years ago and has produced a number of large public commissions and exhibitions (in Sweden and internationally, in the last years. Their current work includes 10 films under the title True Colors, based on documented performances in nature. They also have an ongoing 3D textile project with local participants on Björkö, Åland (in Finland).
This talented duo have previously teamed up with Intercult for the project Corners of Europe.
Karin Lind has also a career as set designer for theater and dance with over 100 productions the past 20 years.
Simon Häggblom also as landscape and garden designer in 40 years.
Read more about SIMKA on their webpage.
Felice Hapetzeder is an artist with MFA degree from the Fine Arts department at Konstfack College of Art, Crafts and Design in 2002. Hapetzeder is interested in cultural heritage production, and manipulation of collective memory and oblivion. His methods span across video art, installation, sculpture, workshop-performance and photography. Much of his work can be read as expressing a marginal voice, an independent channel outside the dominant narratives.
He works both independently and in collaboration with others, and is interested in the line between documentary storytelling and dramatization or learning as artistic expression.
Hapetzeder also works as an independent manager of art projects, often by way of international exchanges and as an art educator. He is the founder of Samtidskonst i Bro (Contemporary art in Bro community) 2017 to current, part of the video art exchange and development project Carousell 2013-2018, a part of the artist duo Local A. 2008-2017, and one of the initiators of ak28 independent art space in Stockholm 2003-2008.
You can find our more about Felice here or on his Facebook page.
Astrid Eriksson and Adam Gustafsson have been working together since 2017. Their work has its point of departure in places outside the art institutions, emphasizing the impact of space on the reading of works of art. Using play and the element of chance as a method for investigating social structures and behaviours, they’re trying to emphasize norms and conventions in order to question them.
Astrid Eriksson (b. 1993) has an interest in how value is manifested and performed through objects and situations. She investigates the cultures we create around these objects and situations through sculptures, installations and performative events.
Eriksson is a part of the collaborative research project Maps on the Politics of Space that began in 2016. MoPS works with visualization of hidden aspects of the city, like ownership of space and its implications. She has a BA of fine art from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
Adam Gustafsson (b.1987) is graduating from the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm later this spring. In his practice he explores game theory, which expresses itself in collaborations, role-play and site-specific scenography. Through the years the artist has, in different ways, constructed social situations that aims to investigate relational patterns, hierarchies and habits. Play and game is often a catalyst when the exhibition becomes part of the oeuvre. His background as a craftsman makes his project materialize in different ways such as weaving, carpentry and casting.
Adam Gustafsson is also part of the curatorial artist group COYOTE who has grown to be an important factor in the young art scene of Stockholm. Using in-between spaces in the town have been there signature in order to change the perspective on how art can be perceived.
Being born and raised in Eastern Ukraine, the industrial heart of the country, Burning Woman was exposed to gloomy atmosphere of large-scale manufacturing plants and noisy environment of ever-growing construction sites since early childhood. At some point, she learned to love the decadent sight, and especially the sound of her hometown, developing a taste to experimental electronic, noise, dark ambient, drone, and techno, and unusual forms and methods of creative self-expression.
As a DJ and musician, Burning Woman draws inspiration from various sources and constantly develops her own sounding, trying different methods of digital audio processing and synthesis. She frequently uses field recordings to express her individual experience of interaction with the world and her perception of it through music. This is how she connects her ideas, states, and feelings with the existing reality, making them conceivable for the audience.
Apart from making her own music and djing, Burning Woman actively participates in the development of Ukrainian electronic and experimental scene, working as a curator with cultural organizations and platforms, such as “Women’s sound” project , “Platform Tiu” in Mariupol, and Institute of Sound in Kyiv. She also collaborates with other artists, musicians, and performers on various multidisciplinary art-projects.
You can find Burning Woman on Soundcloud and Facebook, and a performance from her is available here.