Fågelstudier och förslag på platser att bevara, 2022

 

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Dokumentation från utställning på Blånagla Artfest, Husum, sommaren 2022. 
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Tillägg till verken ”Fågelstudier” och ”Förslag på platser som bör bevaras”

Vid sökandet efter fågelarter blir ofta även landskapet föremål för betraktelser. Funktioner i landskapet som var man hittar mat, gömställen och boplatser ses ur fågelns vinkel. Därigenom dämpas betraktarens egen exploateringsreflex och lämnar plats för ett annat tillstånd. Ett vetenskapligt urtillstånd uppenbarar sig här: mötet med en annan levande varelse, studier av detaljer i fågeldräkt, rörelsemönster och den systematiska artbestämningen. En fusion av förundran, estetik och vetenskap ersätter jägar/samlar-instinkten.

Förslag på platser som bör bevaras; en sammanställning av tänkta platser som i sin struktur bär en potential för en annan blick på arkitektur och landskap. Ett stillastående, eller möjligtvis långsamt snurrande, undersökning, fri från nostalgiska tillbakablickar eller optimistiska framtidsplaner. Anarkismens och mystikens sammansmältning i nuet.

Beskrivningar av de bilder som ingår:

Miljonprogramshus sedda ovanifrån, Öppen altandörr med nattligt landskap, Skiss för biotunnel (passage för växter och djur under infrastrukturell barriär), Boplats skapad runt resterna av en skorsten från förfallet torp, Biotunnel, Forskningens dilemma (Talande lejon), Skrivarstuga i tallskog, Zeppelinare vid skräphög i skogen, Varv efter Varv (förslag på byggnader att uppföra i nedlagda industriområden), Mindre skrikörn över depåområde, Äldre hyreshus med solskadad gräsmatta, Grottlägenhet, Drömorten finns överallt och ingenstans- precis som drömtiden förlöper alltid och aldrig, Aprilhimmel sedd genom trasigt tak på loge, Väggmålning i äldre elstation, Växthusbod med LP-spelare, Grottlägenhet, Varv efter Varv (naturreservat i nedlagt industriområde), Byggnad för filmvisning, Äldre hyreshusområde med väggmålning (den plats man kommer till i dödsögonblicket), Övervuxen stationsbyggnad.

Only birds shall fly and the military rust, 2022

 

Only birds shall fly and the miltary rust, 2022, 

Mats Adelman/ Ylva Westerlund. 

Installation view from Triennalen Västernorrland, Apotekshuset, Sollefteå. 11.6 2022- 10.9 2022 http://triennalen.konstframjandet.se/

Dream Wasteland, 2022

Mats Adelman and Ylva Westerlund. Dream Wasteland Moscow Museum of Modern Art Education Center February 10 - March 6, 2022. 

Dream Wasteland by Ylva Westerlund and Mats Adelman is the first exhibition in the Northern Travelogue program. This art project explores the natural environment of the Järva Field in the Stockholm suburbs. Since 2016, the artists have been conducting field excursions, to use their own term, studing birds, biotopes, wetlands and traces of human activity in the area. Their reflections result in works recognising the coexistence of human and non-human actors as an integral factor of today's reality, while the interplay of natural and cultural phenomena gives rise to possible alternatives. The Järva Field is a natural reserve and a unique example of biodiversity. Being in close proximity to a bustling metropolis, the area has been the least affected by the negative processes of urbanization, since from 1919 to 1970 it was given over to the Stockholm garrison for military exercises and was closed to the public. Today, the fate of the area is once again being tested, with its natural environment being very fragile. One of the central objects in the exhibition is Westerlund's wall painting Speak Creek. Using the feminist optics of new materialism, she creates a space of interpenetration informed by the fluidity, vibration, and vacillation of agents, ideas, fantasies, feelings, and time. This approach can also be discerned in other works in the exhibition, such as the series of watercolors Exo migratory movements. The wasteland that appears in the drawings looks abandoned, but only at first glance. Like The Zone by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, to whose works the artist refers, the territory she describes is a bare and overt projection of our reality. Instead of the author's first-person narration, Westerlund gives a voice to the surrounding landscape with its inhabitants. Water currents, migratory birds, toxins, mud, footprints become heard in a ringing emptiness. The departure from a direct statement is a common feature in the artists’ works. The Järva field — located in the periphery — is perceived by them as a place sensitive to changes, fractures and the possibilities presented there. Adelman's and Westerlund's graphic work, The Last Machine, narrating walks and observations, breaks off with somnambulistic reveries about a perpetual motion machine in a world without humans... Unlike science, which tries to verify or falsify the hypothesis put forward, art, like science fiction, unwinds and transforms ideas. As Umberto Eco wrote, “...science fiction is the prose of the hypothesis”. That is how we can characterize Westerlund's graphic novel The New Hird, a comic book story set in a futuristic world telling us about the ecological catastrophe of the near future. The artists do not pursue an encyclopedic project with their creative method. In the sculptures and watercolors that make up the series Bird Studies in Watercolor and Bird Studies in Wood, Adelman does not attempt to catalog and present dominant knowledge of the observed species. His approach is driven by a desire to encounter the unexplored and to capture that experience. The problems of describing and interpreting such an encounter are addressed in Suspended animation, filmed by Adelman with a Super 8 camera. In the joint exhibition project, Ylva Westerlund and Mats Adelman create a space of specific visibility. They manage to reduce the distance between various agents in a shared ecology. 

Exhibition curator: Anastasia Nefedova

Den sista maskinen, 2021.

 The last mill/ Den sista maskinen, 2021.

"The northwest part of Southern Järva field, Stockholm, 12th of May 2016.

We noticed that the water level in the stream was unusually high, and still. After following the stream a couple of hundred meters further down east we discovered the reason for the altered biotope. A damming made by beavers where a number of trees from the brink had been felled to create a compound. The water levels on the west side of the dam was about to overflow the nearby meadows, but eastwards the creek was running on smoothly…

This scenario made us think of the Austrian forest caretaker and inventor Viktor Schauberger who elaborated with new biomimetic techniques in the early 20th century, based on the whirling movements of water in mountain rivers. Schauberger developed plans for a fully functional non-combustion motor, with implosion as its energy source. A motor that he perceived could save the natural world from the devastating effects of the rapidly expanding use of the explosion motor.

We could still hear the sound of the E18 highway from where we were standing. And although the stream was running through a ditch, our thoughts started to meander… From the time of Schaubergers experiments and onwards, the water running through Swedish landscapes has been cut into the ground, straightened and redirected. To lay bare productive lands for the harvesting of resources. Everywhere to be seen in woodlands and fields are systems of ditches and canals, which up until now has drained an amount of wetlands in the size of a quarter of Sweden.

In our minds we are now following a small woodland creek, leading into a concrete pipe that runs across an arable land, and in the end of the tunnel it lets us see a vision of the last machine. The last mill...
A man-made machine, but self-propelled when put into motion. Build to repair the nutrient runoff, drought damage and pollution made by the ditching and the culverting of water systems. A machine that continues to be active after hundreds of years, creating more and more wetlands and marshes..." 

An installation made by Atelier for Implosive Design- Mats Adelman/ Ylva Westerlund. Exhibition view from Phantoms of the Commons at Tensta Konsthall, 2021.

Photo: Jean-Baptiste Beranger, Ylva Westerlund.

https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/i-tensta-konsthall-stralar-det-lokala-samman-med-varlden/repujA!0iJ6hjE1XHQyVOwLKUvnaw/

Artbilder, Naturskolan Stockholm, 2020

 

70 st akvareller av artspecifika blad, insekter, småkryp, fåglar. Material för naturstudier utomhus för barn och ungdomar, Naturskolan i Stockholm. 

Drömtid, 2021

Verket "Drömtid” undersöker skoltidens potential för upptäckter av det nya, men också natt- och dagdrömmandet som en förutsättning för inlärning. Verken uppmuntrar till att studera enkla material som trä och vattenfärg och ta utgångspunkt ur deras inneboende funktioner och egenskaper. Att få en vision av något annat, det okända. En idémässig resa från bänklockets fyrkantiga form via det organiska drömlandskapet och mönstren till den naturalistiska avbildningen i kattugglan. Som ett naturvetenskapligt lärande som inte utesluter fantasin... 

Konstnärlig gestaltning på Svensgårdsskolan i Helsingborg, beställare Helsingborg stad.