Image: Still from Elena Mazzi’s The upcoming Polar Silk Road, video HD, color, sound, 9’45’’, 2021.

SESSION 8: Arctic Art Futures

DAY TWO: SATURDAY, JANUARY 28

11:45-12:45 UTC -7 | 20:45-21:45 UTC +2

Moderator: Rita Irwin

ZOOM LINK

The Art of Face Masks/College Life During COVID: A Reflective Future

Herminia Din

Art can promote good health – of the body, mind, and spirit. We need the arts in difficult times, and in large measure. These masks reflect the times we are living with seriousness, humour, and hope. This education project features 102 student artworks from ArtA160 Art Appreciation, ArtA203 Intro to Art Education, and ArtA491 Senior Seminar courses, exploring the face mask as an art form of individual expression in response to the pandemic. Personal stories, frustration, and endurance can be glimpsed in these one-of-a- kind artworks. It is a documentation of college life during COVID. The purpose of this presentation is to share and discuss these creative objects and hope to inspire and reflect the time that we had endured. This presentation will encourage artistic expression especially when we look back these artworks will be a collective memory of where we were and how we personally rose to handle chaos and uncertainty, and most importantly inspirations for the possible future.

Dr. Din is professor of art education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Since 2008, she has been advancing Junk to Funk—a community-based art series focuses on using recycled materials to create beautiful yet finished functional artwork. In 2014, she created the Winter Design Project, a collaborative learning experience connecting faculty and students to take an in-depth look at “ice” and “snow.” Presently, her work focuses on Plastic Pollution in the Arctic and using community art as an action for change. Grounded in educational theory and practice, she engages students in hands-on learning addressing a theme of global significance.

Looking at complex geographies through posthuman visualities - The Polar Silk Road in contemporary art practices

Elena Mazzi

This project brings the territorial and cultural landscapes known as the Polar Silk Road to the forefront of contemporary art practices. How can posthuman visualities bring to light the deep environmental, social, political and economic changes that are currently affecting the Arctic regions? As the Arctic seas become increasingly navigable due to global warming and the consequent melting of the ice sheet, the access to new resources is drastically enhanced, as promoters now get to lay their hands on no less than 20% of the world’s oil, gas, uranium, gold, platinum and zinc reserves. The aim of this research is to develop research-based speculative encounters between geopolitics and visual culture in relation to the Polar Silk Road commercial project, by considering how exploring through art the current political conflict might slow down or drastically transform this plan. Arctic Regions are complex to define from a geological perspective and subjected to rapid changes. Here, intricate relationships between natural resources and humans are interwoven.

Elena Mazzi (Reggio Emilia, 1984) studied at the University of Siena, IUAV in Venice and Royal Institute of Art (Konsthögskolan) in Stockholm. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, including: Lulea Biennalen, der TANK in Basel, MADRE in Naples, ar/ge kunst in Bozen, Sodertalje Konsthall in Stockholm, Whitechapel Gallery in London, BOZAR in Brussels, Museo del Novecento in Florence, MAGA in Gallarate, GAMeC in Bergamo, MAMbo in Bologna, AlbumArte in Rome, Sonje Art Center in Seoul, Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, the Golinelli Foundation in Bologna, 16th Quadriennale in Rome, GAM in Turin, the 14th Istanbul Biennial, the 17th BJCEM Mediterranean Biennial, COP17 in Durban, the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Brussels, Stockholm, Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice. She attended different international residency programs and workshops and she is the recipient of several international prizes.

Gradients-in-Relation: Distance as Continuous Variations in Artographic Practice

Anita Sinner & Rita Irwin

With a lens of living inquiry, and in response to a growing ‘covidpedium’ across disciplines (Denis, 2020), we offer our artographic explorations with distance and distancing as lively openings that initiate conversations about the conceptual and applied dispositions of gradients to articulate our diffractive practices in action. In our inquiries, gradients implicate distance both geographically as an incline or slope informed by more-than-human experiences, and artfully as a gradual transition on a scale from light to dark. With slopes and scales in tandem, we traverse gradients-in-relation to attend to the complexities of distance as “continuous variations” as we ‘go the distance’ during the COVID-19 pandemic with variants now reframing everyday experiences (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987/2005, p. 483). We deliberate on the elasticity of expanding and contracting notions of gradients-in-relation as a process of compressing and elongating space and time virtually and physically. This suggests knowing belongs in the present, within context-sensitive methods contingent on embracing the uncertainty of movement that keeps us lingering in the liminality of not knowing and requires we ‘keep our distance’ during the time of this pandemic. 

Anita Sinner is a Professor of Art Education at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Her research interests include artwork scholarship, international art education, historical perspectives and community education. She works extensively with stories as pedagogic pivots with particular emphasis on creative nonfiction, and diverse forms of arts research in relation to curriculum studies and social and cultural issues in education. Recent books include Provoking the Field: International Perspectives on Visual Arts PhDs in Education (Intellect) and the companion text, Visually Provoking: Dissertations in Art Education (Lapland). Contact: anita.sinner@concordia.ca

Rita L. Irwin is a Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Art Education and Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She has held a number of university leadership positions as well as many leadership positions across the profession including being President ofthe Canadian Society for the Study of Education and the International Society for Education through Art. Her major research interests include practice-based research, participatory and community engaged research, international studies, arts-based research and a/r/tography set within questions related to sociocultural issues, teacher education, inquiry based learning, and contemporary art. rita.irwin@ubc.ca

Outside in or inside out

Lotta Lundstedt

This presentation is about problems and possibilities evident when transforming a long-term arts research project in a natural setting into a short-term presentation within a confined space. A current trend within the arts and artistic research community in Scandinavia focuses on outdoor environments. This is evident through individual projects I´ve come in contact with, as well as academic courses and research environments. Inspired by this trend, my ongoing project Dalsberget excursion – to define a mountain explores the intersection between place, temporality, motion and craft. This is done through a slow-moving crochet performance across the mountain. It will be exhibited in August 2023. 

Slowly moving towards this point in time, I take interest in the transformation that will occur when the completed artwork is presented “inside” a public place such as an exhibition space. Matters of time, place, function and participants will be discussed.

Lotta.lundstedt@umu.se
https://www.umu.se/institutionen-for-estetiska-amnen/