| art.description.project | We have designed, presented and realized a sculptural project in wood in a grass slope in the town Bua. The sculpture is a mountain that is 14 x 4 meters at the base and 2,4 meters at its highest peak. It has an inner structure in pressure impregnated pine and an outer hell in larch wood. The mountain has 48 facets and every piece, plank and joint is sawn and put in place on site. The base ground is gravel and it is attached to the ground by ground screws. The plan is for the mountain to stay on the site for 10 years.
In October 2019 the municipality of Varberg presented an open call for artistic work, as part of the project Konst på landsbygd (Art in the countryside), which was also going to work in relation to a Youth hang-out space that was being built in Bua, north of Varberg. The process included a first idea entry, a parallell sketch commission and implementation of the project.
There was a distinct wish for a pedagogical approach to the project In the announcement, and the artistic work should have a clear plan for collaboration with youth in Bua during the project. There had been workshops with teenagers in the fall of 2019 where they could express wishes and needs. The outcome of the workshops served a the entry point for planning the area for the work.
We related our project entry to earlier work we had done where the dialogue with visitors on site and the place we worked in had been important part of the sculptural or exhibited work. Early in our process we decided that our sculptural work should be big enough to present a spatial experience, large enough to be climbed, but not be a designated playground.
We built a model scale 1:10, consulted carpenters, and planned for a wooden mountain with a text based approach to collaborating with the youth of Bua where they would write thoughts on Longing with markers on the the planks that we later would use for construction creating a mountain that could be both climbed and read.
This happened:
We got the commission to realize the project during 2020 with the dead-line October 31st
The project was published in a newspaper which started a bit of e-mail and Facebook anger from inhabitants of Bua since we had placed the sculpture in a snow-sled-slope, so the first thing we did together with our carpenter collaborators Lars Isestig and Kalle Ekeroth was to go to Bua and find a new way to place the structure. End of June ground work and construction site fence was in place.
Early August we started construction with carpenters doing the building work and we focused on meeting kids, youth, neighbors and people passing on the bike path. We had larch planks laid out, black markers and Festis for thirsty writers. There was also some coffee for older visitors.
We had some 20 visitors daily filling the wood with thoughts of longing, for ice cream, new teachers, a win for a football team, a spring board and a cat, but also longing for other places and a missed father.
One morning radio P4 Halland came by and we talked about process while the carpenters made on-demand carpeting sound.
Late August we ran an organized workshop with 6th graders from Bua school.
Since each piece of wood and every meeting is individually cut and placed the construction was intense, time and strength consuming which forced us to work a bit longer than planned during September and October.
October 21st we packed up the fence and the digger came to put back the soil.
The last details of the construction got finished and within minutes children materialized and started climbing, running, sliding and sitting. It was getting dark and after a while we could barely see them but still hear them. This was a beautiful moment.
The project was officially opened on October 30th, but due to Covid there was short film produced instead of an opening ceremony
For MASU this project offered lots of new situations for our practice. It was the first time for a lot of things. First time doing permanent work outside and first time hiring people to do the work. It was also the first time we won a competition for a commission.
Through this project we gained an articulation for the importance for us to be on site for a longer time, to really have the time to talk to the people that pass by the work as well as the baker, the food store owner, the pizza maker and the florist. Also looking back at the works we have been doing in recent years there is an important part which involves the meetings, conversations and dialogues of the people living around our site of work. They form a context that is important to us.
In this project we also engaged in Facebook-forums for the first time. We keep an online presence thru Instagram and website, but this time there was a bit of anger in the beginning of the project in the Bua-Forum and we decided to enter it to have a voice but also open for a more direct dialogue. This turned out well and opened for some good conversations both on- and off-line.
The scale of the project and the notion that it will be there for 10 years was a bit intimidating at first, but it rather adds a contrasting value to the other work we do which is often temporal and and has less density.
And we will definitely try to work more together with others, both in collaboration, for skills or to add hands in order to increase scale to our work. | sv |
