M A S U

[masu-projects]

Vague places - Termoral spaces // Workshop at HDK-Valand Steneby

Three days outside work with Design BA students from all three departments. The week started with collaborative work in small scale, with mixing materials and for the students to find a method to work together. Wednesday - Friday we worked outside, still in the groups, with full scale spatial work in various materials. The students had collected material in the beginning of the week som there was plenty of wood and fabric to work with. Intense days in the rain. Lots of laughter and hard work.  Truly great days.

Workshop setup:

You will need clothes for outdoor work, we'll be outside regardless of weather.

Monday morning

● 09.00-10.00 Zoom

● Short presentation of MASU, the work for the week and presentation

of the workplace.

● Division into groups 6 (5) if from different departments

Monday afternoon and Tuesday

● Groups gather to build 10 joint sculptures with materials from their

respective department and area of interest.

● Relate to the theme Vague places and temporal spaces.

● The sculptures shall be max. 20 cm high.

● In addition to this, the group needs to gather lots of materials plus

assembly items and tools to build spatially on a 1:1 scale during

Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, and Friday. You can either gather

the material down at the site by the water or in connection in your

workshops.

Wednesday morning

● 09.00

● MASU is invited to your exhibition of all sculptures, all groups

together.

● All groups present the intention with their sculptures.

● The works are grouped in any way in relation to other people's

sculptures, in any place down by the water.

● After the exhibition, each group selects three sculptures from the

entire exhibition.

● The three works are photographed or drawn in different spatial

conditions.

Wednesday afternoon, a process-oriented work on spatial understanding starts.

● The groups will build on a 1:1 scale down on the parking lot with the

materials you have collected.

● Bring materials for documentation.

● We will be outside, so you need to dress for the weather.

Thursday

● 09.00

● Continuous work on site

Friday

● 09.00

● Finishing work in the morning. Presentation, discussion, disassembly

and clearing site

[masu-projects]

Sculptural prototyping in Varberga, Örebro. / 2023

In Örebro, Örebrobostäder (Öbo) are renovating a large part of the area Varberga. A new center with housing and public facilities is being built as well as renovations of many of the apartment buildings and the public and semi-public spaces around them.

In June 2022 we were invited by Öbo to participate in the process of developing a new green space that opens from the center towards the Varberga forest and recreational area. The green space is a form of park with spaces for activation as well as resting.

The park, the green path, is designed by landscape architecture firm DCL.13 and our role has been artistic project lead.

Over the year we have worked together with the developing team to find new ways of planning the space for informal meetings among residents of the area, activation for people of all ages as well as line of sight from the new center to the forest.

As part of the development, we have proposed a built somewhat un-programmed space, a floor with a sculptural roof, that can function as meeting place, stage, dancefloor etc

Over three days in March 2023 we have been in Varberga to prototype the structure together with participants from Örebro Skateförening, Örebro Konstskola, management and others.

We started on Friday morning with piles of wood (both used and new) and some tools and together we built a structure that functions as a spatial drawing where we, the participants and the residents in the area could think together and talk about size, height and material as well as how it can be used in the future.

Saturday, we finished the construction and on Sunday we disassembled it again leaving the site as we found it.

Three intense days that gave us lots of good thoughts and conversations on how to make this into a permanent piece next year.

[masu-projects]

MASU_Forest // December 2022

New typeface made on site in the forest in Skene for the project (Material) Site Recordings. Our ForestLab is slowly expanding and new material layers are adding to the overall narrative. 

[masu-projects]

Students from Bild och Rumsgestaltning (2022) at KV Konstskola in the Forest Lab. 2022-10-03

As part of their courses we all went to the forest by Hedgärdessjön in Skene and we aske the group to work independently from us but also follow the form and the material language that is already on the site. They worked hard all day, some in pairs or groups and others by themselves. 1400 laths was used during the day and the site in the forest really changed. Now there are new forms, new structures that connects to the ones from before, but also some of the existing work is now different. Very exciting. We are also learning new things and it is very helpful to see the work thru somebody else’s eyes and hands.

There was of course cooking, and the stools from last season came to good use.

We also uncovered the last paper that was hidden between the laths (since November 2021) and we encountered some beautiful new mycelium in the lower layers of the stack of wood (it has been here for more than a year now). 

We look forward to continue with the paper and the fungi for the indoor season of the work.

[masu-projects]

Materiella teckningar / Material drawings at Arvika konsthall

31/7 – 10/9 2022 with an open work process a week before opening where visitors could see the work grow, a music piece written and performed by Emanuel Blom at the opening and a finissage of the exhibition with a moderated talk with local politicians, the day before the Swedish election, about culture politics in Arvika.

The exhibition occupies two separate spaces and consists of three works, all part of our drawing practice:

Parasit / Parasite – A site specific installation out of wooden planks salvaged from the recycling depot (Mossebergs återvinning) painted black for a greater contrast to the space. The structure inhabits the larger of the two rooms of the exhibition space and reaches towards the ceiling and the second floor.

Mycel / Mycelium – A large collaborative drawing (9 x 1,5 meters) in black ink of a mycelium structure that grows over the paper with alterations in shapes, structure and density.

Månader / Months – Seven collages of paper pieces mounted directly on the wall. The pieces of paper comes from our Forest Lab in Skene, where it has been resting in layers of wood for nine months, allowing the forest to make marks.

From the presentation of the exhibition:

This exhibition is mainly about drawing; about traces on paper and in space.

It could perhaps be possible to imagine a landscape, one that is simultaneously internal and external, one that moves between and thru, holds together and dissolves.

This landscape is both vast and open where everyone has a place, as well as very very small as it grows in a slow movement underground, and however one approaches it is not possible to grasp it all at the same time. This landscape is a rhizome that has no real beginning and no real ending. There is no center nor a given periphery. Everything exists at the same time.

Ofcourse one can move thru it here, sometimes only in the mind and sometimes with one’s body. Each experience is unique.

We have chosen to explore this landscape thru drawing.

We explore drawing as material, trace and method. There is searching in the drawing practice, a way of slowly testing relations between lines, surfaces, densities and connections. In the explorative drawing we find a presence that liquifies time and the place, opening up for possibilities to co-exist, wait, participate or just watch.

The three separate works in the exhibition Materiella teckningar / Material drawings are all part of the same narrative, they stem from the same questions about the things that grow, co-exist and relate, as well as leaving traces, transform and decompose.

[masu-projects]

Materiella teckningar / Material drawings at Arvika konsthall

Parasit / Parasite – A site specific installation out of wooden planks salvaged from the recycling depot (Mossebergs återvinning) painted black for a greater contrast to the space. The structure inhabits the larger of the two rooms of the exhibition space and reaches towards the ceiling and the second floor.

We had a slow process of drawing with wood in the space where each line is drawn in an ongoing conversation about sequence, rhythm and the spatial. The installation occupies the main floor and reaches up on to the balcony that offers visitors another view of the space. The structure is self-supported from the floor and up and sits as its own entity in the old baroque room careful not to touch the delicate walls and stucco details. Parasit / Parasite was a temporary site-specific structure that lived only at Arvika konsthall and returned to Mossebergs depot after the exhibition.

[masu-projects]

Materiella teckningar / Material drawings at Arvika konsthall

Mycel / Mycelium – A large collaborative drawing (9 x 1,5 meters) in black ink of a mycelium structure that grows over the paper with alterations in shapes, structure and density.

In the collaborative work with MASU we often find our process to be rhizomatic like a fungi mycelium and in the last couple of years we have also worked a lot in forests with our sprawling, spreading wooden structures. The material we build with and move around between sites in the ongoing project (Material) Site Recordings have also hosted several different fungi as they reside in places where things grow. The drawing Mycel / Mycelium comes out of a wish to work and move across the paper over time like mycelium, in an attempt to be the mycelium rather than to illustrate it.  

In the process of this work, we cut a 10 meter roll of drawing paper in half and worked on each half simultaneously. We decided on black ink in bottles and calligraphy tips as the tools. We have shared the rolls of paper and continued wherever there was space, connecting the different tracks, traces and patterns. The drawing exists within, but is not limited to, the limits of the paper, and could continue to grow in any direction.

The drawing is both a dialogue with our ongoing practice as well as its own work.

[masu-projects]

Materiella teckningar / Material drawings at Arvika konsthall

Månader / Months – Seven site-specific collages of paper pieces mounted directly on the wall.

The pieces of paper comes from our ongoing project (Material) Site Recordings that is a nomadic sculpture / installation project. It has been moving between sites since 2018 and in September 2021 it moved to a forest by Hedgärdessjön in Skene where MASU now runs a Forest Lab, a collaborative studio. On the site is a stack of wooden laths that are the primary sculpture material of the project. In November 2021 we placed 7 large drawing / watercolor papers in the layers of wood, letting it rest over nine months to open for a collaborative drawing process together with weather, water, the forest and its various inhabitants. In July 2022 we had used material enough to reach the layers of paper that had been hidden. We harvested the papers, both smaller pieces and larger sheets.

Månader / Months are collages where we built new drawings from pieces that are marked, bruised and partly dissolved with marks from weather, fungi, pine needles and insects. The collages held a temporary constellation at the exhibition and will continue to be a part of the (Material) Site Recordings project.

In October, as we dismantle a sculpture at Rydals museum and return the laths to the forest, we will place new papers in the stack and start this part of the project over again.

[masu-projects]

Materiella teckningar / Material drawings at Arvika konsthall

Mycelium prints / A3 / two-color risograph / edition: 50

A folder holding three A3 prints with details from the large drawing Mycel / Mycelium. The prints are risograph printed in three different color combinations: Black / Blue, Black / Green, Yellow / Neon orange.

Printed at Beast studio in Malmö.

[masu-projects]

ODLA 2

June 11-12. Second phase of the ODLA workshops following ODLA 1 on march 2022, organized by (X)-sites in Strömsfors at our site of (X)-Sites 2021. We worked with participants to re-build parts of our sculpture project To draw water.

Two days of collaboration where we dismantled parts of the structure built with 200 latches (45x45mm, 480cm long). We cut the wood latches in half to create a new, tighter expression of the new structure which made its way up from the greens and onto the bike bridge over Assman.

During the days there was also time for interesting conversations, fika and some drawing.

The installation, with the new development will stay on the site until September 2022.

[masu-projects]

Drawing and artists book-workshop 220522 // Hedgärdessjön, Skene

A One-day workshop at MASUs forest lab by Hedgärdessjön, Skene in connection with the exhibition Ingen Å ä ren Ö / No river is an island at Rydals museum.

The 22nd of May we invited people to explore what populates and grows with us on our site, using ink on paper. Participants could make their own drawing tools with materials from the forest, we brought paper, ink, brushes, pens and tools for binding. The workshop was open for anyone interested.  

Together, we examined, among other things, details, structures and shapes around in the forest. The work produced this day, and in future workshops will to be included in the documentation of the site within our project (Material) site recordings.

Visitors came and participated, many interesting thoughts, drawings and foldings were made during the day.

[masu-projects]

Ingen Å är en Ö / No river is an island at Rydals museum 

220520 - 221009     

Process exhibition at Rydals museum Ingen Å är en Ö (No river is an island), within the project Skimmer och härvor, an exploratory work situation about the river Viskan under a post-humanistic umbrella. We participated in the group consisting of artists and researchers, members of a graphic workshop, an art school, writers and more.

Initiators and curators Theo Ågren and Thomas Laurin

MASUs contribution to the exhibition started in the ongoing work within the project (Material)Site Recordings and the moving laths. From 2021 we have a forest lab in Skene next to Hedgärdessjön. A site we borrow from Ann och Anders Broberg for approx. 3 years.

This is the home to our laths when they not on the move recording. The site is a place where the water starts to run to the river Viskan passing Hedgärdessjön.

The name of our work is Malström (Maelstrom) and has a shape of a vortex and consists of 1300 laths connected with 3000 cable ties.

The dark wooden laths in the exhibition bring recorded traces from their travels and the site at Hedgärdessjön as well as ants and other insects, fungi, animals, and exercisers. 400 laths are new; white with yet no history.

The installation is built in an investigative process, next to (almost in front of) the entrance of the art space. Visitors have to come really close to it when moving in to  enter the exhibition.

The installation marks a division between the variety of the two laths by dark laths underneath and lighter above creating a movement towards the large window.

[masu-projects]

BYGGET // The building work

Katrineholms konsthall 2/4 – 21/5 2022

A large-scale sculpture installation project. A collaborative exhibition between MASU and artists Tova Fransson and Olle Halvars.

The overall theme, collaboration and programming was designed by curator Gustav Persson and art pedagogue Synnöve Pohjola .

We started our construction work two days before the opening and from April 2nd to April 27th we were on site 12 days working with the sculpture and running workshops, participating in talks, lectures, gatherings and readings. We worked both parallel to, and in collaboration with Tova and Olle and the exhibition formed and developed, changed and was programmed as we all worked in the space.

Our installation work consists of 150 wooden latches (45x45mm, 420 cm long) joined together with screws, and 1500 wooden laths (22x22mm, 180cm long) joined with black cable ties, black Posca markers for pattern. We worked with a drawing method with the material in the space; starting somewhere / anywhere and adding lines of wood over, and in the space. The process is open-ended and we work slow in constant dialogue letting the structure move, meander, expand and reach in a dynamic movement in the space.

It was very rewarding for us to work indoors in a large space which made it possible for us to reach higher to really be able to create vertical layers of spatiality where visitors could enter and be within the structure and look up through it and there was still space above.

Our project also contained a collaboration with the exhibition visitors who were given black Posca markers to draw patterns on the wood, both the stacked material waiting as well as directly on to the installation. This added a layer of graphic information that grew over time.

In contrast to our wood structure installation, Tova and Olle continuously added printed fabric, from their workshops and graphic sewing work to the space which created a vibrant exhibition space that changed every day giving both us and the visitors new experiences of participating in the exhibition. Olle and Tova’s workshop drew a lot of people into the exhibition hall thru printing workshops, which in combination with the programming of lectures, performances, music, poetry, film screening and yoga (to name a few) created a truly dynamic and attended exhibition (rumors say 500+ visitors on opening day alone).

Photos: 1-3 Felicia Sjöblom, 4-10 MASU

[masu-projects]

MASUworkshop #01 + #02

When we do workshops with groups, outside of / in connection to our art practice we have decided that we will also publish a zine, in a series, that is part documentation, part archive and part sharing with the participants of the situation.

The first two issues are from our ODLA / (X)Sites workshop in Strömsfors, connected to the sculpture To draw water from June 2021 (#01) and from a day at out (Material) Site Recordings project site in Skene where we worked with HDK-Valand Design BA1 students for one day making stools for future workshops, conversations and lectures out in the forest.

We like the format.

Color cover + bw pages 24 pages digital print open edition

[masu-projects]

Workshop with students @HDK-Valand Steneby // 220323-25

What a great group, thanx everyone that participated! We started with some small scale model work in groups, with a vernissage on Wednesday morning. This work then informed the larger structures and building work at the parking lot site between the school and the lake. Intense outdoor work for three days in the same small groups formed by one participant from each department; textile, wood and metal.

Over the days, in the spring sun, the students developed structures, shelters, drawings in wood and sculptural work that then got more and more connected and some fell down and new work emerged and there were new materials and old and paint.

There was also some drawing and writing carved in, and lots of play.

Thanx Magnus A for inviting us to this workshop, It was a wonderful week. 

[masu-projects]

HDK-Valand Design students // (Material) Site Recordings // March 10 2022

For one intense day, students from HDK-Valand Design BA1 joined us in the forest by Hedgärdessjön, Skene. We designed and prototyped the stool and the students built them as part of a course. A power factory line was created in the forest and over the day 13 stools were made. Such amazing energy!

The stools will be used in workshops and gatherings in the forest as part of Skimmer och Härvor when we invite guests and participants to the site of the (Material) Site Recordings. 

[masu-projects]

ODLA // Strömsfors // (X)-Sites // March 5-6 2022

As part of the (X)-Sites 2021 program for an expanded idea of both LandArt as well as the artistic process, a series of workshops are planned and run in the spring of 2022. All participant artist and projects from the exhibition in 2021 are represented in this project where the public / audience is invited to participate in different workshops on or in relation to the sites of work.

We did our first out of two workshop weekend with a focus on a collaborative process of sculpting and drawing together, with no specific goal or sketch but rather an open mind and material at hand. We started the day with a guided tour of Strömsfors (outside Svenljunga) and then we walked to our sculpture To draw water which is still in place by the stream Assman.  Back at Tallerödshemmet, the space we got to borrow for the meet, he participants started working with thin wooden sticks and glue, shifting places at the table every 10 minutes making the sculptural work become one collective piece. We moved on to the floor and day 2 we worked with ink and graphite drawing on and from the sculpture.

During the days the organisers from (X)-Sites joined and supported the group with lunch, coffee and conversations.

This was the start of a collective process which we will extend outside in June and then together re-work the sculpture To draw water.

It was a really good start of the spring for us and we look forward to the second phase of the workshop in June 2022