Reimagining Rural | HDK-Valand Steneby

I’m looking forward to visiting HDK Steneby, the rural, craft-oriented campus of the University of Gothenburg’s School of Design & Crafts, where I’ll be giving the keynote at Reimagining Rural, a public symposium. I’ve promised them a talk under the title, “I Make Where I Am (or, At Work in the Ruins of the World’s Most Modern Country)”.

To register for the seminar, please email tom.cubbin@hdk.gu.se with REIMAGINING RURAL in the title. Please write if you plan to attend in person or via ZOOM. A link will be sent a day prior to the event for Zoom participants.

Full details

The polycrisis of modernity has resulted in divergent possibilities for makers and artists whose practice is based in rural localities. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in material-based practices that contribute to caring for the land and communities outside of urban centers. However, dominant epistemologies within art education and practice continue to privilege the urban gaze, which means that there is a need to continue to develop place-based practices that can probe the complex intersections of rural histories, cultures, ecologies and futures.

 

In this symposium, we invite speakers whose artistic and educational practices are extending our understanding of how to engage with questions of community, land-use and meaning making in the rural. There will be an opportunity to join a conversation with one of the speakers later during the afternoon.

 

Taking place during the year of the 90th anniversary of Stenebyskolan, this symposium seeks to reconnect to the spirit of the school’s founding in 1934. In providing training for young artisans, Erland Borglund’s aim was to see craft as cultural force in enabling a coherent and economically resilient Dalsland. How can today’s practices enable us to renew that mission as an international community in a rural setting? 

 

Dougald Hine – I Make Where I Am (or, At Work in the Ruins of the World’s Most Modern Country) 

 

Sarah Hughes – Fantasy is a Place where it rains 

 

Kjetil Fallan – Groundwork: Materials and Landscapes in Design History 

 

Onkar Kular: Luleå Biennial 2022—Craft & Art