Everything you want was already here is a two-week intensive, site-responsive course that takes place in the small glass factory town of Rejmyre, Sweden. Hosted by the artist-run organization Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies, this edition is the fourth in a series of annual KUNO intensive courses exploring rural contextual art practice. The course brings together MA students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design in Stockholm and the Vilnius Academy of Arts along with a selection of MA students from other schools in the KUNO network.
This transdisciplinary course explores contextually responsive art practice with a specific focus on “the rural”. The dominance of the urban in artistic discourses, and the marginalization of the rural, as an often invisible space of industrial production and resource extraction, combine to form a strong argument for focusing our attention, within the space of master-level art and craft education, on developing our conceptions of the rural and rural publics and our capacity to make complex works within and about rural contexts.
Our chosen theme, Everything you want was already here, is an opportunity to explore conceptions of abundance and lack in our respective approaches to art, craft and making. Rural spaces have historically attracted artists seeking a respite, or a near total escape, from the implicitly urban art worlds. All of the participants in this space are currently enrolled in art academies in different large cities of Europe. These urban areas, and the academies themselves, are places of abundance in many ways, in terms of the resources and opportunities they present. Those of us who inhabit these urban institutional art spaces also come to recognize that, in all this seeming abundance, there is also a great deal of lack (over regulated time and space, disconnection from the natural world/the source of the materials we consume and the people who produce them). Rural areas in turn present different forms of abundance and lack, real and imagined (‘open’ space, decreased regulation, different conceptions of time, social disconnection etc.).
The course is an opportunity for students pursuing master’s degrees in fine and craft art to meet and engage in a site-responsive exploration around these issues through their existing art practices. Group exercises, collective meals, shared and individual work time as well as presentations of participants' past work are core components of the course.
More information about the course and its components can be found on the KUNO website.
COURSE STRUCTURE
Most days will have a structure that is divided between individual work time, site exploration and group exercises. The first few days will be focused on site exploration and collective exercises led by the facilitators, while the middle section will give more time for practice and project development. There is also one day off. Towards the end of the period, each participant will lead a collective exercise that engages a smaller part of the group in an exploration of their own interest. The period will culminate with two days of sharing the outcomes of the work.
Host institution: Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Sweden
Project partners: Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland & Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
The selected group of 11 participants are from: The Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki; Vilnius Academy of Arts; and Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm. Represented departments include: Fine Art; Craft! Textile; Site & Situation/Time and Space; Arts Photography & Media Art; and Animation. Nationalities represented include: Swedish, Greece, Singaporean, Russian, Finnish, and Lithuanian.
FACILITATORS
Daniel Peltz
Professor of Site and Situation Specific Practice, Department of Time and Space Arts
Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland
Dr. assoc. prof. Vytautas Michelkevičius
Head of Photography, Animation and Media Art Department and Head of Doctoral Programme in Fine Art
Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
Sissi Westerberg
Senior Lecturer, Department of Craft, Smycke & Corpus: Ädellab
Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden
David Larsson
Senior Lecturer, Department of Fine Arts
Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden
PART OF
MFA-course KUNO