Project Me

Post New York post: My trip to New York surpassed and exceeded any expectations – I had an amazing time and return feeling energised and encouraged. There is so much that I want to get on with in the studio … so many things that I want to (re-)interpret in my own ways and materials.

There was something very freeing for me to be in a big city that wasn’t London – where I didn’t have to dash about meeting friends and colleagues. Don’t get me wrong I love do that, it’s just that the planning and logistics are quite demanding and then I never feel that I can give the people that care about and love enough time and attention. In New York I did not have to deal with any of that, save from one every nice evening with my second cousin. If an exhibition took almost five hours to go through (which one did!) it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to be late, or exhausted, for anyone.

I really ’lucked out’ staying with Doug. He’s not only an excellent Air BnB host but a fascinating artist – Doug Beuebe – who was kind enough to give me a studio tour for an hour early on Sunday morning.

All in all the trip was exactly the kind of energy boost that I didn’t really know that I needed. It was a really good lesson … or rather it taught me a very great deal across a broad curriculum. Something of the American Dream rubbed on off me – the idea that opportunities are out there and I have as much right as anyone else to achieve them. I am suitably mature and intelligent to know that the dream if flawed and that America has never been the meritocracy that is claims, however sometimes it’s important to allow oneself to dream, to believe that dreams came come true. An interesting sub-clause is that each individual has to work to make their dream come true, the state isn’t going to simply give it to you. The American work ethic is quite phenomenal and probably far from healthy … especially against the history of evident favouritism and privilege experienced by the often already entitled. Perhaps it is that very naivety that is so alluring. To misquote Tennyson ’better to have dreamed and lost than never to have dreamt at all’.

Notes from the residency at Köttinspektionen, Uppsala

Residency day 1

Tour of venue by AKB. Light and sound boards did not work, AKB to investigate and return.

Felt very lost and unproductive. Set myself too high expectations. Arrived with just A4 paper, a pen and some chalk – and expected to make … do … something incredible.

Need to be kind to myself.

Collected things from around the building that appealed to me: large bean-bags, a rug, seat cushions, one large cushion, mirrors, three large multi-purpose blocks, two small multi-purpose blocks. Napped on the bean-bags.

Wrote on the A4 paper.

Climbed the scaffolding frame, climbed the wall-mounted ladder.

Ate lunch in the lounge, napped in the lounge.
Wrote on more A4 paper.

Ran around the space.

Tried drawing with the chalk on the floor – didn’t know what to draw.
Turned the lights off and drew in the dark – figure inspired by Knut in the doorway, grafitti cocks. Mopped them away.

Jumped in the space
Clapped in the space

The space still feels dead and intimidating.

How to own / claim the space?

Unsatisfactory day. Hard to focus, Didn’t know what to do.
Thought that I would be inspired but wasn’t.

Residency day 2

Walkshop with LN.

Also technical support from AKB – sound and light system in the large room now work should I want to use them … don’t know if I want to but it’s nice to have the option and to feel that I can use something that I don’t usually use or have access to.

Morning: worked with LN to mark known points of interest on a map: Köttinspection, Central Station, the City Archive, the Artists’ Club, Kalmar Nation, Uppsala’s Student Kår, Carolina Rediviva, Östgöta Nation, Actic.
Identified things to look for:

What Three Words – location app that assigns three words to each and every two meter square of the planet – different words in different languages for the same place. Used by UK emergency services

Project lunch

Walk: hot and sunny. Walked on Kungsgatan – not a nice road to walk along – noisy, dirty, things that could be interesting are hard to focus / concentrate on. Central Station – old building. Bror Hjorts’ sculpture – male figure facing station has large penis – racial stereotype? – and ’knob ruff’, sculpture created 1967, sixty years after EJ’s visit to town. Noticed some but not all other public artworks. Facade of City Theatre. Started mark-making on the pavement with blue chalk – viewpoints, places of significance.
City Archive with detour to Lustgården (sex-shop) Tom of Finland merchandise in window along with other things. Identifying queer things. I need to return to archive and find dates for 1907 exhibition – old UNT.
Artists’ Club – site of own process, research … not had time to go over material from week long ’residency’ there – material at studio.
Detour to Upplands Nation – Gannemede(?) sculpture in garden – Carl Milles ’Wingar’ donated to nation, Milles was honorary member. Rainbow flag in window and flying over nation house.
Kalmar Nation – place of Verdandi’s 2024 Spring Exhibition – in which I participated and had a discussion with Katarina about the project. Road outside is impassable due to roadworks. LN noticed a young man smile at me at the nearby crossing I did not notice this.
Walk passed University House – imposing statue of man.
Uppsala Student Kår – new building 1950s … 60s? Do they have an archive?
Carolina Rediviva – Verdandi archive. Need to get back in touch and arrange to see archive material – box of unsorted photos and more. Statue outside of dandy looking man – Prins Gustaf.
Statue of Gunnar Wennerberg
Place where I think Stina Flink said that there was a café run by a man who dressed as a woman in the late 1800s? Double check with Uppsala Darling map.
Regina Theatre – drag shows, Queer Regina. Grand on opposite side of road Café Colourful.
Östgöta Nation – student kår 1907? Site of Verdandi’s Spring Exhibition 1907?
(Fika – fågelsången)
Actic – former student gynmsium – young men working out 1907.
Return to Köttinspektionen over bridge over Fyrisån.

Found it hard to focus on the walk – tried to pay attention to things but often forgot. Focus on one thing on multiple walks? What role do walks play in the project?

Walk was circular – looped the city. What about joining the points in different ways?
Good to do something active … collect data … experience(s).
I still feel distant from city – do I ’live’ the city?

Feels better to have done something … am still anxious about the outcome of the residency – trying to push these thoughts and concerns aside and just do … allow the process to be.
Not easy!

’Queer’ grafitti on electrical / phone box outside of my apartment block.

Residency day 3

1907 – I can’t go back to 1907 … 19/07 – 19th July, this year I was at Svanrevet, Skanör – a coastal nature reserve, the name translates as The Swan Reef (think about the swans I saw in Latvia [2022] and the ones on the gates on Kungsgatan yesterday) … 19:07 yesterday I was making dinner together with L, it was the last night of her visit. I can do things at 19:07 … evening things. The time just after 7pm seems an appropriate time … about the time when the day becomes the evening. There is a 19:07 everyday … perhaps take the city walk at 19:07. I am aware that over the coming weeks 19:07 will shift from daylight through dusk and on to darkness … and so the experience of the city will shift. Proposal: once a week on a specific evening begin the city walk at 19:07. Pay attention to different attitudes on the different occasions. !9:07 is seven past seven

A lot of writing and note making yesterday – What Three Word poetry from the points of interest – in Swedish. Also the sites that I most associate with: home, studio, gym.

Listened to other peoples’ recording of other city-scapes. Found them awkward … irritating?

Re-read my project application (written in Swedish) and realise that there is an emphasis on engaging with contemporary LGBTQI+ people. Looked at the Pride Uppsala website and wondered about doing ’something’ at Pride. The organisers are accepting proposals for performances, workshops, and talks. Wondered if I could … should … do something as a way of identifying people interested in participating in the project. After consideration neither performance, workshop, nor talk felt right … and having a booth requires too much (marketing) material. I will however be an active visitor and use the opportunity of to speak with others – both individuals and representatives of organisations – about the project and my wish to involve other LGBTQI+ people. Others’ involvement can be different depending on the individual it might be an interview, it might be them giving me one word or lending me an object, or it could taking part in a creative workshop, or going on a walk. It can be anything that has to do with the queer experience of Uppsala city.
I think that Pride is an ideal opportunity to meet and talk with people who might be interested in the project. The project also gives me a reason to be at Pride. It is a two-way street.
Uppsala Pride: Saturday 7 September.

Convergence: AKB created a Facebook event for the open weekend and asked me to share it on my page. I noticed several Fb messages (I rarely use Fb but still have an account), one an event shared by MR – Uppsala Darling LGBTQI+ guided walk will take place 6 September 16:00, the day before Pride. I will sign up for it, the walk leader is on my list of people to contact regarding this project.

LN sent me photos of Tuesday’s walk that were on her phone.
After the residency I want to re-activate the Following Eugène blog. That is where project specific material will be collated.

Finished with writing a list of additional materials to collect from the studio – tomorrow is materials day.

Residency day 4

Collected various Following Eugène (and other) materials from the studio after leaving LN at the airport.
Decided to play music in the room … the room still feels very lifeless and dead, perhaps music would help.

Constructed the ’hot housing’ green-house frame – used only once in a still unconcluded work … sketch … idea – after having made blue prints of my own body at homeI invited people (one to one) to join me in the green-house, draped in vintage bedsheets, where we would take a print of the same part of each other’s body. (Live work at Supermarket 2019). Draped the greenhouse with the same vintage sheets and others to make a roof/ceiling. Lit the interior with a single theatre light on the floor. Switched off the other lighting in the room. The structure glowed but reminded me of the huts that are sometimes erected over roadworks. There was nothing elegant about it, nothing particularly pleasing.
After lunch I removed and refolded the white sheets. Took the blue camouflage net from M: meeting place and draped the green-house frame with that. It creates interesting shadows but continues to look clumpy and inelegant. Re-read the text that I wrote for the Walk on with Wild Side publication (2015)

Moved the table where I have been working away from the centre of the room and brought in additional multipurpose blocks, set them out in a three by three grid and layed out other material on them. I like how this looks – very orderly. Spent time with various materials including the Uppsala Darling map and booklet. How do I do something other than replicate that project?

Finished the day with writing on the floor with the blue chalk that I had marked various sites with on Tuesday’s walk. I enjoyed doing this and like how it looks. Had an idea: write stories on a dance floor, have a disco, erase the stories … dance the history away.

Residency day 5

De-constructed the green-house frame and packed it away. The half removed draped camouflage net is much more interesting … draping it reveals the skeleton of the structure and shifts the weight of the material. However it still didn’t feel right in the space nor in the project. I am trusting my gut feeling. Fold the camouflage nets and set out additional multipurpose blocks that I lay the the net on. I am tired and unfocused – the intensity of the past three weeks has caught up with me. I put Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side on – the sound track for the course at Mejan ten years ago … I let Spotify dictate the sound track that follows … it feels good to have music in the room … more alive.

Continued writing on the floor – the chalk is uncomfortable in my hand. I try to write my thoughts and reflections rather giving an account. I realise that it would take me longer to write about the walk than it took to take the walk – such is the work or writing I guess. Why do I write? What am I writing? After an hour or so I put the chalk down and take a break.

I look at the Following Eugène blog online. I can’t remember how to log in and post!

Tomorrow the public are welcome … what are they welcome to? Preparation – another row of multipurpose blocks.

I am restless and feeling stifled. The room has no windows, It is a summer’s day outside and am suddenly struck by need to be out. I decide to make the simple walk from the train station to the ÖstGöta Nation. I take just some paper and a pencil. Again I am hyper alert and sensitive the first few minutes/metres of the walk – the walk to the train station that it not actually a part of the walk! At the station I remember to switch-on the walk tracking app. I make a few notes simultaneously wondering why I am doing it … and what is relevant … pertinent … to note: the man sitting at one of the restaurant’s outside tables? The taxi drivers standing around their cars smoking? The woman crossing the road? The restaurant man holds up his phone to take a picture, his view is straight upp Bangårdsgatan towards the castle (art museum). I am sure that his view also takes in the Bror Hjort fountain – the figure with the large penis will be in shot. There are few people around this part of the station area, it becomes busier once I have crossed the road and am standing at the first bank of bus-stops. I have stopped making detailed notes … is this just how it is? Are those early pedantic notes are some kind of warm-up for the rest of the walk? A few minutes later I am approaching the Grand Hotell The Corner (the name loses a lot in translation). Opposite the hotel is Fadimes plats – with its memorial for Fadime Sahindal (1975 – 2002) who was killed by father in Uppsala in a so called ’honour killing’. Fadime want to study and to be with her Swedish boyfriend both of which he father forbid. Eventually Fadime got help from the Swedish authorities but was shot by her father while secretly visiting her mother and sister in Uppsala.
From the hotel I cross the river, go passed an obviously recently renovated building from 1666, continue up a narrow street, turn the corner and see the ÖstGöta Nation. The app tells me that the entire walk took just 15 minutes and 49 seconds, was 1.0 kilometers, and 1,260 steps. I walk back to Köttis through the city park, though I read on the information notice, that it actually called the city garden as it was initially a place for growing vegetables and teaching Uppsala residents about gardening. There are small groups and families sitting on the grassy areas. I consider stopping but it feels wrong to do it alone.

Residency day 6 & 7

Thankfully I woke on Saturday feeling far more awake and perkier than I had been on Thursday and Friday. I had seven visitors on Saturday and six on Sunday all of whom I had interesting, and lengthy, discussions with – some of whom I already knew, some of whom I did not.

I pack away and clear out. I note that I leave the building at 19:07!

Reflections

The week has been challenging – I have not found it easy but it has been important in terms of gaining a better understanding of the project and myself … and how to move forward. In that way it has been successful. I do not always enjoy confronting who I am rather than who I would like to be.

It was unfortunate that the residency overlapped with LN’s visit. I felt very divided: I wanted to spend time with my friend and I wanted to spend time with the residency. It was also probably not the best timing to have the residency directly after my holiday – it probably would have been better to have got back in to the swing of more regular life before the residency.

I imagine that it would have been a very different experience if I had been working free in the space rather than in connection with a very specific project.

On a definitely more positive note(!) I am very pleased to have worked through some of the difficulties of getting the project started. I have some definite threads to follow and to weave together! It was good, if sometimes difficult, to have time to think through and around the project – from very fundamental questions to practical concerns. I am starting to see some kind of shape for the whole thing … even it is a very fluid form!

Being on the residency alone was challenging – perhaps especially so after time with LN, and coming relatively shortly after the micro-residency with Elena. Sometimes it felt as though I was in solitary confinement – and that was not as inspiring not as exciting as I had thought that it might be.

Having a temporary space that was away from the studio, away from home, away from the familiar though not completely unknown, was good. The vastness of the room was advantageous in sorting through ’what has been’ in order to re-acquaint myself with it and to see what still sparkles and sparks new ideas.

I took photos and made notes – both of which I shall review in a couple of weeks – give them time ’to prove’.

I need to remember that I am discovering the process as I go (is this what used to be called action research?) and that has its own rhythm and tempo.

The last couple of weeks in particular at work, that is my paid work / employment, have led me think a lot about the artwork that I make and just how difficult it would be for anyone – individual, company, authority, or institution – to own a piece. Currently my artworks demand the kind of commitment that is very off putting. They are things that are carefully balanced … I mean literally rather than metaphorically, things that are prone to collect dust and or fade, things require my (or a technician’s) presence for installation / hanging. Not things that are easy to move from place to place, nor things that perhaps will endure exhibition for more than a few months, nor handling by a public or employees, nor a simple wiping down with a lint-free cloth to keep them looking fresh.

This raises some really interesting questions for me … many are not new but they have acquired a certain poignancy and urgency as I note the discussions regarding the maintenance (or lack of it) of artworks’ material qualities. I have mentioned before my long-standing ambition of being an artist with works stored in proper crates … what I thought was a bit of daydream might be something deeper. How do I care for my work? If something is going to be packed away for a year or more between exhibitions what needs to done to make sure that it is doesn’t get at best damaged and at worst destroyed while it is back at the studio?

The very least that I want to investigate are some ’entry level’ archival cartons for the textile works. Not just investigate but actually invest in them too! I have a feeling that this will then require deeper shelves to accommodate the broader flatter boxes. Rearranging the various archives at work is inspiring me to rearrange things at the studio … to take stock of what I have – both finished pieces and raw materials, as well as tools and equipment, and to see if I can make things better here too.

The question of what I actually make and how it is presented needs also to be addressed if I want to be more widely exhibited and or bought – both of which I have absolutely no objection to.

Returning from my mini residency / open studio / days at the artists’ club, and in preparation for the mini residency at Köttinspektionen I have tidied away the ties that were hanging on the studio wall as well as two artworks that were hanging above them. It makes such a difference having clear walls … it feels as though there is space to breath and to make. I must remember to give time to putting things away and to restoring order after exhibitions, events, and projects. This is certainly where more order in the storage portion of the studio would be an advantage – and one that I can make happen. I also need to remember to label the boxes so that I can easily identify where things are when I need them again … and / or periodically check that it’s still relevant to have a box full of whatever it is that I haven’t touched in six months or a year.

I used the mini residency at the artist club to begin unfolding the contemporary context of Verdandi’s 1907 Spring Exhibition – who were the committee members at that time, what was happening in society, what was happening in Uppsala, and what were the connections between these things. There were / are connections … some strong … some tangential … some of my own creating(?), some maybe not recognised at the time. Now I want to concentrate on materiality for the Köttinspektionen residency. So was a go around the studio I start to identify things to take with me. These include as yet unused materials – I can’t say new materials because the pile of pillowcases that I have in mind are not new in themselves though they are relatively new to me, and have not yet been a part of an installation or project, I think that I want ot take some ’used’ materials too – things that have been used in other installations and projects, for example Mr Dandy Blue’s suit, hat and shoes, the blue camouflage net from M: meeting place, and the plastic green-house from Hot Housing.

There is both a comfort and a concern in taking used materials. The comfort is that they are already a part of my vocabulary. The concern is that belong to already executed projects. There feels to be an equal measure of comfort and concern in the material’s familiarity. That familiarity might be a meaningful starting point … a point of departure for a new journey …I don’t have to start from noll … if I know where I am leaving from then it be easier to know when I moving on – even if I don’t know when of where I will arrive … departures and arrivals!

I do enjoy being at the studio over the summer. There are very few of us here and it makes it feel somehow even more special. Those of us who are here get on well and enjoy each other’s company over lunch or chatting in each others’ doorways. There is definitely something intimate about being just three or four in this sprawling building. There is also an uncommon calmness to it all.

At work yesterday I had just been speaking with a doctor about re-hanging and complementing the artworks in the eye department of the city hospital when my manager AB called me. He was also at the hospital and invited me to join him looking for shelves in a clinic that was empty and awaiting refurbishment.

I was leaving a room when a small box caught my eye – it was on a shelf that wasn’t the kind that we were looking for. I took the box down – it was obviously old … a very particular shade of green … it was small and sat comfortably on the palm of my hand. Walking to the next room I flipped the two metal clasps open and lifted the lid. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking at – a pair of ’jewel’ decorated things … hair decorations?

AB took a photo and did an image search … it turns out that they are a pair of (potentially) 18th century shoe buckles. We had been told that we could take anything we wanted from the rooms so, along with some shelves that we subsequently found, the shoe buckles came with us.

Back at the office I typed ’shoe buckle’ into google and the first thing that came up was the children’s rhyme One two buckle my shoe …. I got a cold shiver – Elena’s most recent work is called Five six pick up sticks … a continuation of the same rhyme. What a very odd coincidence … what a correspondence!

I finished work and immediately called Elena. It was the second odd coincidence that she had heard that day. An artist friend and collaborator of hers has just found out that a rare and expensive medicine that she has been prescribed for years (after much toing and froing with the NHS) is derived from a particular sub-set of the same marine species that she was been researching – her PhD project. She has had no idea about this but her subject has literally been in her blood for year! A far greater coincidence than my shoe buckles … really makes me wonder about why we are drawn to particular themes and subjects … and how we should follow our instincts even when we can’t explain or rationalise why we are doing something. Sometimes there are other things at work … things that we, as artists, need to embrace without recourse to logic or reason. This seems a truly timely reminder for me as I continue to turn over the material that I am gathering inspired by Eugène Jansson’s 1907 appearance in Uppsala.

In the meantime my mind is full of questions about shoe buckles …

I am fascinated by connections … and by gaps – my short research-based residency at Uppsala Artists’ Club is revealing plenty of both. The residency is giving me time to focus on the new chapter of my Following Eugène project. I find it easy to lose myself in history. This week is about the history … I hadn’t realised quite how much I would be focused on looking at what was going on, who was involved, who knew each other – or who were at least in the same place at the same time.

A morning at the city’s public archive revealed that artist Richard Bergh was a member of Verdandi … so was art critic and collector Klas Fårhaeus … as was Frey Svens(s)on a doctor who after Nils Santesson’s high profile court case (1907) advocated for homosexuality (or perhaps more accurately homosexual acts) to be redefined as a sickness rather than a crime. Nils Santesson photographed both Eugène Jansson and his naked models at Eugènes studio and Stockholm’s naval bath house.

Bergh was also a member of the Opponents, later the Artists’ Union, several of whom exhibited in Verdandi’s exhibitions … Eugène Jansson was also a member of the Opponents and the Artists’ Union. Unfortunately the minutes from unions meetings 1905 – 1909 are missing, so there’s nothing relating to the 1907 Uppsala exhibition.

Why do I find it so interesting when names pop up in various different contexts? I think it has to do with the Venn diagram-ness of life – the overlaps … the possible meetings and exchanges that might have happened between people who happened to be in the same place at the same time … that I begin to appreciate the complexities and randomness of things that with hind-sight seem important … significant … pivotal.

I am allowing myself to enjoy this research and these reflections. At the same time I wonder what do to with this information … this stuff … how does it become a contemporary project that has worth and meaning?