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You have two cows

You have two cows

02/12 – 28/01 2018
Kalmar konstmuseum

We all know what a cow is.
She functions as a bridge.

There is a similarity between agricultural farms and museums. Both can at times create a feeling of insecurity for those who have not visited a similar place before. Why are the rooms so big? Why does the site feel so coded? What knowledge do I need to understand what I am about to see?

You have two cows traces and points to a number of strategies regarding the role of art in cultural production as it relates to the countryside. In You have two cows, the cow serves as a symbol of complete submission. The cow is both a fantasy and a part of you, as it becomes the food that you eat.

People eat meat and drink milk without ever having met a cow. We must all reconnect with our food production in the global challenges ahead.

When people from different cultures, religions, sexual preferences or whatever stand next to a group of cows their similarity of being a human next to this other animal, outweighs our differences and creates a common ground to walk on.

Would we be more receptive to the story of women’s rights in India as men, or the history of colonialism as white Europeans, when the common factor cattle is added?

So let’s take it from the beginning and build a corral, cover it with art and invite people in, to share a space with cows once more.

Joanna Sandell and Mathieu Vrijman

Curators

Participating artist
BUNTU FIHLA, EYAYU GENET, SUJATRO GHOSH, TEMPLE GRANDIN, ANNE HAMRIN SIMONSSON
 MY HELLSTEN, JANSEN, JANSEN, BACHRACH & LANDSHOFF (JJBL), MARLENE LINDMARK
 AHMED MATER, NICK MAY, NANDIPHA MNTAMBO, ESTHER POLAK, BREEZE YOKO

 
Unknown planet/Okänd planet

Unknown planet/Okänd planet

Commissioned by Eskilstuna municipality, coordinator Erik Roren.
In collaboration with Skjulstaskolans 4:th and 5:th grade.

Public assignment from municipality of Eskilstuna, as part of a programme to activate recreation area of Vilsta,
and to engage with children from nearby housing areas.

Kultivators idea for an artistic collaboration with children and that area, was to play a game, where they together with the children could explore new ways to look at and engage with the surrounding.

The game is to imagine that Vilsta is an unknown planet. “What if we were aliens that came to Vilsta. What would we see?  What would we think about it?”  And, of course, “What would our spaceship look like?”

Through the municipality contact was made with nearby school Skjulstaskolan, that opened up for a collaboration by adjusting their schedules, and giving important feedback into which age groups that would fit best to work with. The most important factor, though, was the great engagement and understanding from the teachers, both of the artistic idea, and the abilities of the children to work with it.

During the spring semester of 2017, Kultivator worked in close collaboration with the children around the story that an alien ship with extraterrestrials came to the Vilsta area. The children created clay models of spaceships, wrote stories and made drawings, that all contributed to the final design of the spaceship that was to be made for permanent installation in the area. The school also spend one whole day out in the area, where small groups of children imagined to be aliens, and made investigations of the new planet they had encountered. The investigations were collected by Kultivator, and processed to 6 different “information boards”, that were to be put inside the spaceship.

With inspiration from ancient times shipbuilding, and future´s need for renewable materials, Kultivator choose for oak as material for the spaceship. The area of Eskilstuna has many oak trees growing, and was historically exporting oak for shipbuilding industry. Oak being the most resilient wood that does not need coating or treatment to survive outdoors, was also an important reason to use it.

The blueprint for the spaceship was based on the drawings and models from the children, further developed by Kultivator, and finally made into technical drawings that could be used for constructing a safe, beautiful and durable building, lasting at least 15 years, with minimal maintenance.

Inside the building is a bench to sit on, and in the middle a piece of a tree trunk with a magnifying glass mounted in it, for having a closer look at found objects. In this room the game can be played again and again.. “we just landed, let´s see what we can find on this planet…” A “game recipe” is made, based on the assignment the children of Skjulstaskolan had when they were exploring the surrounding of the ship together with Kultivator. The recipe can be found on Eskilstuna municipality website, and is to be used by teachers, parents, or others who would like to play..

So the surrounding of Vilsta can become an unknown planet, to be discovered again and again. Both of those who grow up right now, the ones who has travelled here, and us that walked here for so long that we stopped seeing the miracles and mysteries right in front of us.

 

 

UPDATING

 


Popup Folkhögskola

Popup Folkhögskola

On invitation from Kalmar artmuseum, Kultivator opened a pop-up folk high school as an interactive sculpture/happening at the “Ljus på Kultur” Festival.

 
 

Background

The purpose was to activate the Berga-Norrliden area. Kalmar municipality invited Kalmar Art Museum to work with artists around activating the area between two residential areas in Kalmar municipality, Berga and Norrliden. Kalmar Art Museum has previously worked with Kultivator, an experimental collaboration between organic farming and art found in Dyestad, Öland. Kultivator’s work has since the start in 2005 been imbued with ideas on participatory and joint artistic processes, where spectators are invited as co-creators, both in art and in public places. The artistic coordinators Mathieu Vrijman and Malin Lindmark Vrijman both teach at Öland Folk High School on a general line and see folk education and folk high schools as a sovereign force for democracy, culture and social change. They have therefore chosen to, as a sculpture / performance / happening, open a folk high school at a designated place between Norrliden and Berga, and also award a scholarship at a summer course at Öland Folk High School.

The exterior shape of the work will is built up of interconnected joists, which suggest a building and room layout, but with open walls and ceilings, as a full-scale three-dimensional drawing. The actual construction is be done together with participants from Öland Folk High School, several residents in or near the Berga – Norrliden area during Saturday. During Sunday and Monday, the Folk High School is manned by Kultivator, as well as participants and staff from Öland Folk High School. Visitors and passers-by are then invited to taste, try, listen and see at the folk high school; in practical work with artistic techniques, simple cooking over open fire, choir singing, Swedish, poetry reading and more. You can also meet the school’s principal in his office and if you are interested, fill out an application for the scholarship that gives a week’s summer course at Öland Folk High School in the summer of 2017. The scholarship will be awarded during festive forms when the school closes on Monday.

The project is announced through posters and flyers in the area, press releases, social media, and last but not least through the network of new arrivals, both from asylum residents and residents in the establishment phase, which Kultivator and the folk high school built up over several years of work with the target group.

Purpose and goal

To create, in a living, unexpected and direct way, meetings between people in the Berga – Norrliden area and the department of folk education. Folk education has historically been a success factor for integration in Sweden, when the rural population was to be formed both for political assignments and jobs outside the agricultural sector, and has still enrolled in its aims to reduce the gaps in society. The aim of the project is to start a relationship, where people with different backgrounds can meet and new networks be established. The idea is that the visitors will open their eyes of the folk high school’s many qualities as a form of learning with social commitment, and the folk high school will be enriched by yet more participants from areas where this form of schooling is less well-known.