Experience/Equipment

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

Experience/Equipment builds on concepts, methods, and networks that I have developed during over ten years of working with wood and tools. Working entirely by hand enables me to work independently of electricity, take my tools anywhere, and to connect with people and different forms of knowledge. Through sculpture I contemplate craft and tool-use as universal activities that go beyond borders of nation states, languages, or professional disciplines, and stretch from pre-human pasts into unknown futures. During the working period I will create sculptures and public artwork, hold exhibitions, and host workshops in which participants and I use hands and tools to produce knowledge and to take part in our material and immaterial environment. My artistic work brings together the intensive material and conceptual work as a sculptor and the communicative, social, and participatory practice as an educator. The sculptures and workshops start from fundamental and accessible cultural techniques like using a knife, sewing needle, or hammer. I work primarily with reclaimed wood, used textiles, and salvaged steel. To manually work with these materials, I use pre-industrial tools and obsolete technology, and embrace the challenges and possibilities that come with these self-chosen limitations. My work takes a wider view on the things we do, think and feel over the long spans of generations and distances, and the short spans of our individual biographies. I am looking for sculptural objects and practices that have a low technological footprint, a potential for soft growth, and togetherness. To do this I keep moving between sculpture, craft and research, between art and education, and between different languages and places.