tomma rum skellefteå

TOMMA RUMProjektrapport för sommaren 2014, i Skellefteå sida 1

Tomma Rum i SkellefteåSommaren 2014

Projektrapport till Skellefteå Kommun

TOMMA RUM

TOMMA RUM TOMMA RUMProjektrapport för sommaren 2014, i Skellefteå Projektrapport för sommaren 2014, i Skellefteåsida 2 sida 3

Tomma Rum i SkellefteåInledningRedan vid ankomst, helgen före projektstarten den 16 juni, stod det omedelbart klart för mig att vårt samarbete med Riv Huset och dess förening Republiken Norrland skulle bli mycket fruktbart. Ett centralt beläget kulturhus som huserar fritt kulturutövande i en tillåtande atmosfär ligger väldigt nära den miljö Tomma rum äm-nar uppnå med sin ambulerande konstplattform. En sommar förflöt mycket riktigt i det konstnärliga flödets tecken med både ett och annat arbete och scenframträdande för egen del.

Mellan juni och augusti anordnade vi fyra större utställningar i vår arbetslokal på Riv Husets andra våning, ett gemensamt projekt under Trästockfestivalen, tre utställningar i Burträsk, ett flertalandra mer eller mindre tillfälliga arbeten runtom Skellefteå stad samt en avslutande utställning på Stadshuset.

Tomma rum i Skellefteå blev också det mest brittiska projektet vi har haft med en stor invasion av brittiska deltagare under augusti månad. Detta underlättades givetvis av direktflyget mellanLondon och Skellefteå men skedde mest tack vare Verity Birts idoga arbete. Vilket gjorde henne till i det närmaste vår projekt- ambassadör i Europas största stad.

Sammantaget blev sommaren ett varierat projekt med många tillställningar där lokalerna i Burträsk sticker ut som en plats av outnyttjade möjligheter och med ett stort engagemang från innevånarna.

- Daniel Torarp, föreningsordförande 2014

TackStort tack till Riv Huset, Skellefteå Kommun, Burträsks Konst- förening, Burträsks Folkhögskola, Nävarnas hus och alla fina människor runt omkring som skapat eller bidragit med sitt engagemang till Tomma Rum 2014.

Det här dokumentet är en projektrapport från Tomma Rum till Skellefteå Kommun. Rapporten innehåller ett antal reflektioner och en essä från några deltagare och samarbetspartners sommaren 2014. Bilderna i detta dokument tillhör Tomma Rum, Jenny Berger Myhre och Igor Isychenko.

Tomma Rum flyttade in i Riv Huset och hade ateljéplats på ovanvåningen hela sommaren. Riv Huset är ett stort hus vid busstationen i Skellefteå som har varit kontor och Folkets Hus men som idag huserar Republiken Norrland, en förening med kulturverksamheter i form av filmkollektiv, musiker och konstnärer.

TOMMA RUM TOMMA RUMProjektrapport för sommaren 2014, i Skellefteå Projektrapport för sommaren 2014, i Skellefteåsida 4 sida 5Britta Tegby Frisk och Linn Björklund byggde en Vattenspridarcykel som

genom att spruta och duscha ut vatten ger svalka under varma cykelturer.


”I mitten av juni när jag kom till Skellefteå träffade jag mina första vänner på Riv Huset, det kreativa hus som blev Tomma Rums arbetsplats denna sommar.

Den första veckan var vi få deltagare på detta nomadiska möte och vi skapade en avslappnad atmosfär för de nyanlända.Så småningom planerade vi vår första utställning. Vi började ha möten om vårt individuella och gemensamma ansvar gentemot Riv Huset och universitetets kårhus, som vi fick bo i. Vi påbörjade även den mångåriga traditionen att en person lagar mat en kväll i veckan till den gemensamma middagen.

Veckorna går med ett stigande flöde av ankommande och avresande. Musiker, skulptörer, målare, fotografer, författare och tvärvetenskapliga konstnärer, med gemensamma och individuellaprojekt, gör utflykter till närliggande byar, badar i älvar och sjöar och deltar på fester. Tomma Rum presenteras på Trästocksfestiva-len och Burträsks gamla affär gör vi om till ett tillfälligt galleri. Där visar vi olika platsspecifika verk under hela sommaren. I galleri-et skapas samarbeten med bygdens invånare och utöver deras hjälp och intresse deltar de även med egna konstverk såsom fotografieroch målningar.

Det fanns som vanligt skillnader i synsätt och förväntningar bland deltagarna på projektet och på ansvarsfördelningen. Detta blev en bra och nödvändigt erfarenhet när det gäller att samexistera ochdriva kollektiva projekt. För att kort beskriva denna kreativa erfar-enhet under dessa tvåmånader använder jag orden från en Skellefteåinvånare.

“Detta var den bästa sommaren på tjugo år.”

Tack vare Tomma Rum har jag upplevt något som verkligen har påverkat och berört mig och som jag hoppas återkommer nästa år någon annan stans i Sverige.”

- Miguel Angel Rodriguez Fernandez, deltagare i Tomma Rum 2014 i Skellefteå


“And so we arrived in Skellefteå (pronounced shel-ef-te) from the concrete-jungle that is London. Our expectations were those of tundra, ice and polar bears; in reality it was a warm wildernessretreat. The Tomma Rum house was full of great characters from all over Europe; we had a good proportion of Swedes, along side the Dutch, Bulgarians, Spanish, Ukrainians and Brits. With a mood that was very conducive to creativity and discussion at every action-packed (vegetarian) dinner.

On the Friday of our stay we put together and presented an exhibition of recent works by the world famous Tomma Rum artists to the local town.

“Altogether we had an incredible experience in Skellefteå, where we had the chance to get creative, meet so many great people and work together.“

As a team we all contributed towards a stop-motion piece, thanks to the highly intelligent and helpful Michael and Nia. This involved the sacrifice of many tourism brochures and local magazines, generously provided by the tourist office, for our collage. The stop-motion project was a huge success, and brought together many different methods of animation and story-telling, from the Swedish House Mafia, to computer scientists and moose. We took the opportunity to create a rather original mural during the exhibition where lots of local people got involved to create a quite uniquepiece of art.

On our penultimate evening we also presented our work in the nearby town of Bureå (pronounced boorayooh! to any non Scandina-vians). We enjoyed local musicians, presented our stopmotionanimation to an excited audience, and made a phenomenal bonfire together. Altogether we had an incredible experience in Skellefteå, where we had the chance to get creative, meet so many great peo-ple and work together. “

- Camille Johnston och Jane Geiger, deltagare i Tomma Rum 2014 i Skellefteå

“Our expectations were those of tundra, ice and polar bears; in reality it was a warm wilderness retreat.”


Tomma Rum i Skellefteå

Projektperiod: 16 juni – 24 augusti 2014Deltagarantal: 61, K 37 M 24Nationaliteter: Bulgarien, Island,Nederländerna, Norge, Spanien, Storbritannien,Sverige, Ukraina, USAPublika evenemang: 10 stProjektplatser: Riv Huset, Nordanå, Stadshuset,Burträsk, Bureå, Falkträsket

norran.se/noje-kultur/konst/nu-fylls-de-tommarummen-240155

Tomma Rum utanför Burträsks nedlagda Ica vid första utställningen.

http://norran.se/noje-kultur/konst/nu-fylls-de-tommarummen-240155

http://norran.se/noje-kultur/konst/nu-fylls-de-tommarummen-240155


Tomma Rum i Riv Huset. Här hade Tomma Rum ateljéplats hela sommaren, ordnade utställningar, samarbetade med och deltog i Riv Husets olika evenemang.


Tomma Rum i Burträsks nedlagda Ica. Totalt genomförde Tomma Rum tre utställningar här.


Tomma Rums utställningar 2014

Tomma Rum genomförde tre utställningar i Burträsks nedlagda Ica.Fyra utställningar i Riv Huset.Ett gemensamt projekt under Trästocks-festivalen och ytterligare några tillfälliga projekt vid olika evenemang på Riv Huset eller isamarbete med Skellefteå Kommun. Samt en avslutande utställning på Stadshuset.

Tomma Rum i Burträsks nedlagda Ica. Totalt genomförde Tomma Rum tre utställningar här.


“Det var både första gången som jag deltog i Tomma Rum och första gången jag var i Norrland och Västerbotten.

Dagen jag kom till Skellefteå var Tomma Rum i full gång med att ställa ut utanför stan, i Burträsk, i en nedlagd Ica-affär. Utställnin-gen var öppen för allmänheten och konsten som ställdes ut var en blandning av lokal konst av Burträsks lokala konstförening och verk som Tomma Rum skapat på plats.

Under tiden jag deltog i Tomma Rum ordnade vi ytterligare en ut-ställning i Burträsks nedlagda Ica-affär och blandade återigen konst som Tomma Rum gjort under veckan med konst som lokalakonstnärer lämnade in. I Burträsk lärde vi även känna Nävarnas Hus, en hantverksförening med café mitt emot Ica-affären som lånade ut verktyg åt oss, bjöd på fika och var väldigt intresseradeoch glada åt våra projekt på Ica mitt emot.

Följande vecka var det många Tomma Rum-deltagare som lämnade projektet och nya deltagare som kom. Då valde vi att istället hålla oss i Skellefteå och arbeta i Riv Husets lokaler. Det var väldigt spännande att få ta del av det som hände runt Riv Huset och i samband med att Riv Huset ordnade en kväll med spelningar visade vi filmklipp från utställningarna i Burträsk.

“Många kom till Tomma Rum med en öppen inställning, utan färdiga idéer och plockade upp inspiration på plats”

Mitt största projekt på Tomma Rum blev att måla ett rum tillsam-mans med Embla Ardal i den nedlagda Ica-affären. Vi använde bruten färg som vi fick från Burträsks färgaffär och projektet blevväldigt snabbt och spontant. Flera projekt som gjordes i Skellefteå och Burträsk var just sådana spontana projekt. Många kom till Tomma Rum med en väldigt öppen inställning, utan färdiga idéeroch plockade upp inspiration på plats. Och förutom arbetet kring utställningarna var tiden i Burträsk och Skellefteå fylld med ljusa nätter, älvbad, sjöbad, och fantastiska människor som kom ochgick eller fanns på plats”.

- Mimmi Borselius, deltagare i Tomma Rum 2014 i Skellefteå


Empty space, free time, the North of Sweden: some reflections on my Tomma Rum experience last summer

By Igor Isychenko, independent researcher, Tomma Rum participant 2014 from Kiev, Ukraine

The vast emptiness of these infinite spaces

terrifies me.

Pensées (“Thoughts”), Blaise Pascal

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

The song of Wandering Aengus, W.B. Yeats

I visited Sweden in the summer of 2014 for the second time, but it was the first time I travelled to the North. Leaving Stockholm, the only city (alongside with its neighbors Uppsala and the small town of Sigtuna) where I had previously been in Sweden, hours and miles to the South behind me. The very night when I was travelling to the northern city of Umeå I experienced a sudden but all the more wonderful encounter with the white nights. That night in train lit by light appeared to be first in a chain of experienc-es that later allowed me to glance at the other side of Sweden, to get a kind of unconventional knowledge of this country, the knowledge that is not confined to official imagery and thus transgresses bounds of any stereotypes.

Tomma Rum was going to become an interesting artist in residence program. It was a matter of my particular interest not only because it was a residence, but also because of the place – Skellefteå, a city to the North of Umeå but still to the South of Kiruna (this was the only spatio-cultural image of the city that I had had before the start of the Tomma Rum). What was felt by me in this name – although I admit it was largely my imagination – was, of course, the trembling resonance of vast territories of the North, the North of Sweden, itself an iconic northern state, at least from where I am from (Ukrainian history states, that the Slavs once invited the Swedes (then called Varangians by local Slavic tribes) to rule their lands). But I felt no emptiness and no cold in it.

W.G. Sebald has a remarkable passage in his last novel, Austerlitz, which I would like to quote here in this connection:

It was several months after this meeting in Liege that I came upon Austerlitz, again entirely by chance, on the old Gallows Hill in Brussels, on the steps of the Palace of Justice which, as he immediately told me, is the largest accumu-lation of stone blocks anywhere in Europe. The building of this singular architectural monstrosity, on which Austerlitz was planning to write a study at the time, began in the 1880s at the urging of the bourgeoisie of Brussels, over-hastily and before the details of the grandiose scheme submitted by a certain Joseph Poelaert had been prop-erly worked out, as a result of which, said Austerlitz, this huge pile of over seven hundred thousand cubic meters contains corridors and stairways lead-ing nowhere, and doorless rooms and halls where no one would ever set foot, empty spaces surrounded by walls and representing the innermost secret of all sanctioned authority [italics mine].


Palais de justice – Palace of Justice, Brussels. Image source : http://www.attelier.sk/francuzsky-slovnik-mapa-bruselu-a-hor-sa-do-parlamentu/

The emptiness – as well as the authority – from Sebald’s text originates in a specific European mindset that came into being somewhere in XVI – XVII centuries, but which was in this very ‘birth’ fully embedded into the European history of previous twenty centuries, starting from the times of Ancient Greece. As old view – or rather feeling – of the whole world as universe, cosmos, an animate home – something that was diametrically opposed to an elegant yet cold edifice that was yet to be erected by the European science of Modern Age – began to collapse in the later Middle Ages, with the tempo of this collapsing increasing from year to year through all the Renaissance and then Enlightenment, the word ‘empty’ and specifically its collocation with ‘space’ (by then it was merely any space – this or that one, not cosmic animate space as a living whole) for the first time in the history of the West found a precise historically determined meaning. For earlier throughout perhaps all of the human history there was no such thing as ‘empty space’. That was a specifically European invention, both extremely fruitful in terms of its input to scientific and technological development, but also dangerous enough to create the horror vacui feeling that was at a certain time widely spread throughout all European culture, from philosophy to literature. This tendency towards increasing emptiness of the world was physically and geographically represented in a discovery of a globular shape of our planet. The world was not ending where the maps did. Instead it was bending and curving and turning into a globe. But this led precisely to emergence of vast terrains – spaces – of emptiness that first covered the surface of Earth. Contrary to the maps of previous times, conducted by Ptolemy, or on the basis of stories by Herodotus and others, who inhabited unknown lands with giants, barbarians and doghead people, the cartographers of the Modern Age reintro-duced terra incognita (itself an invention by Ptolemy) in such a way, that there was no longer place for lions there (ancient Roman and Medieval cartographers used the phrase Hic sunt leones (Here are lions) - when marking unknown territories on maps). That was precisely an empty space – nothing was known about it. What logically followed was a transformation of a previous mindset – the one of Antiquity and Middle Ages (let me now insist that there were common things between these two ages of human history that far surpass their differences, at least about emptiness they would agree with each other that it is an

enemy that should be opposed at any cost) – into the mindset of ‘conquering the world as an empty space’ (and – which is of equal importance – of ‘conquering any space as empty space’) – the one world among myriads of other worlds, all of them revolving around their suns in the emptiness of space.

To have a closer look at this mindset I’d like to quote now not a writer, but a scholar, Carl Schmitt, one of the most prominent German theoreticians of law and politics in the XX century (The earth and the sea. A story for my daughter; the translation is mine):

This was the first real revolution in the comprehensive spatial sense, which covered the whole earth, the whole world and the whole humanity. It is incomparable to any other. <…> For the first time in history, people could hold earth sphere like a ball. The idea that Earth should have a spherical shape seemed a strange and unfounded fantasy to the man of the Middle Ages and even to Martin Luther. Now the spherical image of the Earth has become a tangible fact, irrefutable experience and undeniable scientific truth. Now Earth, so motionless before, was also rotating around the sun. But even that was not the essence of coming true, fundamental transformation of space. The decisive moment was the breakthrough into space and the idea of infinite empty space.

Copernicus was first to prove scientifically that the Earth revolves around the sun. <…> Although he changed the whole picture of our solar system, but he was still firmly holding the view that universe in general is a limited space. Thus, the world in a global sense of space was not yet changed and with it did not change the idea of space. Several decades later, the boundaries have fallen. In a philosophical sense Giordano Bruno suggested that our solar system (in which planet Earth revolves around the Sun) is the only one of the many solar systems of endless starry sky.

As a result of scientific experiments by Galileo similar philosophical speculations acquired the status of a mathematically proven truth. Kepler calculated trajectories of the planets, though he himself was embraced with horror when thinking about infinity of such spaces where planetary systems are moving without any center. With the advent of the new doctrine of Newton this new view was firmly established throughout freethinking Europe. While the forces of attraction and repulsion mutually balance each other, the accumulation of matter, celestial bodies according to the laws of gravity are moving in an infinite, empty space.

Thus, people could imagine empty space which was previously impossi-ble, though some philosophers talked about the “emptiness.” Previously, peo-ple were afraid of emptiness; they suffered from so-called horror vacui (keno-phobia). From now on, people have forgotten their own fears and do not find anything special in the fact that they and their universe exist in a vacuum.

In this age [XVI – XVII centuries] of an epochal shift European human-ity finds a new understanding of space in all kinds of its creative spirit. <…> People and things are at rest now and are moving now within the space. In comparison with the space of Gothic painting it [the Renaissance linear perspective] really means another world. That artists now see differently, that their vision has changed, for us is full of deepest sense. For great artists do

http://www.attelier.sk/francuzsky-slovnik-mapa-bruselu-a-hor-sa-do-parlamentu/

http://www.attelier.sk/francuzsky-slovnik-mapa-bruselu-a-hor-sa-do-parlamentu/


not just represent for someone something beautiful. Art is a historic step in becoming aware of space, and a true artist is someone who can see objects and people better and more correct than other people, more correct first of all in the sense of the historical truth of his or her own age. <…> Theatre and opera let their characters to move around in the empty depths of the stage space, which is separated by a curtain from the space of the auditorium. Thus, without exception, spiritual currents of these two centuries - the Renaissance, Humanism, Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Baroque - in their own way participated in the totality of this spatial revolution.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that a new understanding of space covered all areas of human life, all forms of life, all types of human creativity, art, science and technology. Huge changes in geographical image of the earth represent only external aspect of profound transformation <…> From now on that so-called rational superiority of Europeans, spirit of Europe-anism and “Occam’s rationalism” inevitably occurs. Its manifestation among the peoples of the West and Central Europe destroys medieval forms of human community and creates new state fleet and the army, and invents new machines and mechanisms <…>

Intercut fragment. Some observations on footage, shot by the Tomma Rum participants, #1

A culminating scene from Camera Buff by Kieslowski (1979). Cinema, that has served a dubious and ambiguous service of alienating the main character from his wife and his child, is reinvented in the end as a powerful tool for /writing/ intimate video diary.

Tomma Rum participant Michael’s footage – a feast of cinematic representation as such and si-multaneously homage to both video-diary of nowadays and gags from the early years of cinema. Michael’s use of my GoPro is, hence, a move that follows from the very nature of film/video mediums in the late XX century, when they have occupied partly the domain previously /controlled/ by writing in its traditional forms of hand-writing and/or typing (classic written diaries vs. youtube-based and other video/mixed media-oriented diaries; in the latter the main principle of every diary - to exhibit our most intimate thoughts and deeds and reveries - the one that had been previously latent, hidden, is arising in astonish-ingly vivid form - every youtube day-by-day video diary, as well as every blog or social networks account is created in order to be viewed). Great scene than crowns Kieslowski’s Camera Buff (1979) is the finest example of this instinctive connection between film and diary-writing.

A frame from The Big Swallow (c. 1901), a film by Williamson Kinematograph Co. Ltd


‘Walking through the woods’ and other scenes shot by another Tomma Rum participant, Thomas Kaniok, reminded me of Schiller’s On naïve and sentimental poetry. Given that ‘poetry’ here is under-stood not merely as a type of literature, but as a mood, opposed to narrative prose (something that was employed by Maya Deren in her sketch of ‘vertical’ poetry as opposed to ‘horizontal’ prose, where both poetry and prose were rather viewpoints, mindsets than a specific kind of writing as such, and thus could be found in film as well as in literature or theater or quotidian life). But in no way I want to say that a purely naïve view on nature is possible today. Nor would I imply that this footage can be called an example of sentimentality of any kind. The core issue here is utterly different – it is the mood of a person who filmed this, combined with free time for flaneuring through various spaces or for fishing and other practices.

The other images from Thomas’ videos (above) also pose a question – how one can perceive na-ture today, after all these images of nature that surround our everyday life in the big city? Why do we find that something is beautiful? Why do we film it? How do the nature and the film medium relate to each other today? Again and again I remember a strange passage from T.W. Adorno’s writings that can be fully understood only from the viewpoint of a person with a smartphone or a GoPro cam:

Irrespective of the technological origins of the cinema, the aesthetics of film will do better to base itself on a subjective mode of experience which film resembles and which constitutes its artistic character. A person who, after a year in the city, spends a few weeks in the mountains abstaining from all work, may unexpectedly experience colourful images of landscapes consoling-ly coming over him or her in dreams or daydreams. These images do not merge into one another in a continuous flow, but are rather set off against each other in the course of their appearance, much like the magic lantern slides of our childhood. (…) As the objectifying recreation of this type of experience, film may become art. (Transparencies on film)

Here I’ve reached a core point of my experience. A person who ‘spends a few weeks’ somewhere out of the big city, closer to nature, is the one who has a vacation after a working year. He/she has free time. Hence, my starting point will be definitely cinematic - a crucial film by Jackues Tati from the year 1953 Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot - in this work we encounter a fundamental problem - yet seldom spoken about - for the whole of capitalist society. That is, the issue of spare time, leisure time. In his brilliant article on the film Andre Bazin claimed that the majority of inhabitants of the resort from the film were acting in a manner not dissimilar to their quotidian style, that is, to their working schedule. The only character who overtly neglected his /duties/ of such a kind was that of Tati, who played Hulot. And of course there were also some untamed children too, not yet educated by society.

Hulot riding a bike. A scene from Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle.

For me, where and when Tomma Rum really starts, is at this point, when you have a lot of spare time to create/practice your art, but the most /art/ thing here is this time itself. It is regulated everywhere else throughout the society except from some minor bays, lagoons, in which free time still exists. From the early XVIII century it has been under serious pressure from the State’s disciplinary apparatus - this


time was the main threat for the emerging economic and political structures because it could have been used for the increase of relative independence of population from the State - in terms of critical thinking through development of alternative systems of informal education and in terms of money through creation of joint funds that might have been used to strengthen workers’ independence during strikes. This was partly the reason why all the culture industries started to develop among urban population - their most important effect among others was that of ‘colonization’ of free time (and pumping out all the financial resources in order them not to be accumulated of course). Cinema, under any circumstances, should be understood as one of such mechanisms. These processes were of course not carried out in a conscious way but mostly served as a driving force behind the development of entertainment techniques (laterna magica, street theaters, later - gambling etc). Needless to say these things had their positive impact on those whom they affected too but we are not talking about this aspect now.

From this perspective the above mentioned ‘spatial revolution’ was simultaneously a revolution in experiencing time. According to the most common perception of space today, it is generally conceived as a void disinterested homogeneous medium that can be first of all measured mathematically and physically. That is, by saying about movement in space we mean physical movement from point A to point B through the void. Pure effectiveness. As it was mentioned, this concept was first introduced into European thinking during the Renaissance and later - the Enlightenment period. It can be fully associated with the dominant role of Newtonian physics. This empty homogeneous space was later combined with empty working time, time structured from equivalent units and aimed at production.


Miguel Angel Rodriguez Fernandez while working with various bikes. In this process, from my observations, two things were of utmost importance. #1 – no machine can be broken – any machine(=bike) can always give birth/parts to another machine. #2 – no hurry. The more relaxed you are and the more free time you have, the more options you will have in bike-restoration process. Results? Just have a look at all these terrific /Frankenbikes/ Miguel is giving birth to. Will our collective future be like this? Some weeks later after Tomma Rum my friend Jens Lindquist told me during my stay in Malmö - /We have no choice left – either total chaos or nomadic socialism/. Under /we/ here he meant all of us, humans. So, will it be like this? Nomads on bikes, wandering all over the surface of Earth?

Hulot breaks this chain by creating his own unpredictable time that allows him to act in a /useless/ way - to fall out of the grasp of capitalist production, I would say. It is free time that allows us to create all sorts of objects and practice all our attitudes during Tomma Rum in a way that can be called a creation of a ‘space of Hulot’, which inevitably follows from his understanding and treatment of time. (Hulot here is a handy but not random character, his image and his way of living are symbolic and symptomatic).

So the core question is how and why is art able to fill that empty space with objects and practices? And an intersecting question is how and why film medium matters in this investigation of activities of the Tomma Rum community? Given that I’ve filmed hours of footage during Tomma Rum and the others did film a lot for me in my attempt to decenter, break my viewpoint into multiple perspectives of various participants, I have part of the answer to the second question as well.

To me all the videos shot last summer were shot not by Thomas, Miguel or anyone else from Tomma Rum but by every of them as a participant of a certain community, partly imagined, partly real - the community formed by Tomma Rum participants. This community can exist only under the condition of free time. And it also replaces earlier critical approaches towards film as a /mass/ medium by shifting the attention from mass – understood, of course, in quite a derogatory way of a /mass society/ - to community.



Typical for self-filming backward camera glance from Jonas Modin, just to be sure that you are being filmed, somehow establishes a connection with the early decades of cinema, when there was no such principle as /cinematic illusionism/ and hence characters’ glances at a camera were not prohibited.

Buster Keaton in The cameraman directed by Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton, 1928.

Various screenshots from videos shot by Lovisa Wallerström and Jonas Modin.

It is while watching their footage that I realized for the first time in a vivid form that mass nature of film medium is not only about the mass as such but also about the community. And the latter is always about collective imagination – a community of dreamers, of those who imagine their common future in this or that way. It is almost 80 years since Walter Benjamin wrote in his famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (1936) that

In western Europe today, the capitalist exploitation of film obstructs the human being’s legitimate claim to being reproduced. The claim is also obstructed, incidentally, by unemployment, which excludes large masses from production-the process in which their primary entitlement to be repro-duced would lie. Under these circumstances, the film industry has an over-riding interest in stimulating the involvement of the masses through illusion-ary displays and ambiguous speculations. To this end it has set in motion an immense publicity machine, in the service of which it has placed the careers and love lives of the stars; it has organized polls; it has held beauty contests. All this in order to distort and corrupt the original and justified interest of the masses in film, an interest in understanding themselves and therefore their class.

And since Benjamin claims that

nowhere more than in the cinema are the reactions of individuals, which together make up the massive reaction of the audience, determined by the imminent concentration of reactions into a mass

I can argue that nowadays this is only partly true. We are witnessing the rise of the ‘community’ as a powerful background and driving force behind any collectively perceived artwork today. It is community that is so special and important about Tomma Rum. And it is community that works within Tomma Rum despite all quarrels, misunderstandings and objective obstacles. Because what Tomma Rum does succeed to create is a fundamentally important common living space – no more empty – and various spaces of quotidian interactions of all the tommarummers. We were cleaning our house together, we were cooking together, eating and drinking together. It is this layer that is the backbone of any crucial artistic interaction and activity – no doubts, important as it is, but coming later in time and rising from this community living, partly determined and influenced by it. If somebody does not believe just let him or her email all the Tomma Rum participants and ask them whether they would do what they did at Tomma Rum if they were to work alone, by themselves? I bet that ‘no’ will be the most popular if not the only answer.


So, finally, we have reached a vantage from which we can argue that Tomma Rum is in fact not ‘already’ tomma, void, but ‘yet’ tomma, the space that is yet to be inhabited by a community and lived through and practiced as a form of art. And to do that we (from this point I can no longer use ‘I’ as a subject of my sentences) need one conditio sine qua non – that of free time. And this is precisely what Tomma Rum has to offer. Plenty of it. We can even dive into it and swim in it as in the sea. Free time gives us a precondition for inhabiting empty space through art as practice, way of living.

But what about ‘the North of Sweden’ from the title of this text? How does it relate to the issues discussed above? From the history books I had learned since my childhood years that there was no such thing as serfdom in Sweden. Peasants were never attached to their lords and if some of them were, this attachment never reached the scale typical for other European countries. Why? Historians still argue, but one reason seems to be recognized and accepted by the majority of them. Free territories to the North were the key instrument in the struggle of peasants with lordship. The exodus to the northern territories was a powerful tool to influence a stubborn ruling class. It granted freedoms that were never or seldom questioned. That is one part of the answer. The other part was realized by me during an interview with Pär Hultgren, one of the founders and strong proponents of the Riv Huset community and a person, whose knowledge of Swedish mentality and history was of significant help to me. As Pär was telling me about vast northern territories – imagery of the North of Sweden, constructed - with an ultimate goal of profit-making from touristic activity - in a rather stereotypical Stockholm-centered perspective – something clicked in my head and I knew from that point on that Skellefteå in the summer of 2014 was the right time and place for Tomma Rum to be a part of. Marginal regions, marginal art practices, the community, refusing to produce or/and earn. Minority, minorities – saami people, tommarummers, skellefteans and a feeling of being a little bit lost and abandoned, common for them/us all. And for sure – an ocean of free time. As deep as the crystal-clear sky of the North, unrivaled by bright city lights and stretching above in its serenity.

Author of this text (in baseball cap) with Thomas Kaniok in Burträsk,

during Tomma Rum 2014 in Skellefteå

Skogsstig på den långsmala ön i Burträsket.


Britta Tegby Frisk på Vattenspridarcykel genom Skellefteå.

“På Riv Husets vägnar har vi varit och är mycket glada över Tomma Rums vistelse i Skellefteå. Vi skapade genom tomma rum nya vänner och kontakter.

För Riv Huset som plats blev sommaren en injektion med många tankar som föddes och utställningar som genomfördes både på busstorget men även i framförallt Burträsk.

“Till sist hoppas vi att Tomma Rum kommer tillbaka inom en inte alltför avlägsen framtid”.

- Pär Hultgren, medlem Republiken Norrland

”Tomma Rum i Skellefteå innehöll många, för Tomma Rum kända element, som visserligen varje gång skiljer sig något från varandra. Det var sommarsverige, kollektivliv, utflykter i ödemarker, få mörka timmar på dygnet, och sömn därefter.

“Sommarens samarbete med både kommun och lokala konstnärer fick mig att reflektera kring Tomma Rum som organisation och se nya möjligheter.”

För mig var den stora skillnaden, och också den viktigaste, på årets Tomma Rum samarbetet med Riv Huset, Skellefteås eget konstnär-skollektiv. Att få dela deras lokaler, lära känna, knyta kontakteroch samverka med dem den största behållningen från sommarens projekt. Att Riv Husets lokaler dessutom är så centralt belägna gör att det blir en fantastisk kontaktyta, inte bara för att möta dem som bor inne i tätorten utan även för dem som använder busstorget som sin knutpunkt för att ta sig längre ut i kommunen.

Sommarens samarbete med både kommun och lokala konstnärer fick mig att reflektera kring Tomma Rum som organisation och se nya möjligheter. 2014s röda tråd verkar nu löpa in i 2015 då vi fortsätter med denna typ av samarbete, denna gång med Söder-hamns kommun och konstnärsföreningen Konstkraft i Ljusne.”

- Inez Edström, medarrangör Tomma Rum 2014, i Skellefteå


Tomma RumTomma Rum är en ideell förening, en plattform för kulturellt och konstnärligt utbyte. Varje sommar arrangerar vi en vistelse på en mindre ort i Sverige. Projektet handlar om att mötas och att skapa nya former av samarbeten mellan konstnärer, kulturutövare och lokalbefolkningen på den ort vi besöker.

Tomma Rum är öppet för alla som är intresserade av konst, kul-tur, människor och den ort som vi besöker. Konstnärer men även arkitekter, poeter, musiker, skribenter, fotografer och skådespelareav olika åldrar och nationaliteter deltar. Vi arrangerar utställningar, performance, filminspelningar, offentliga samtal med mera. Oväntade möten sker och både värdar och besökare stimuleras till nya synvinklar på lokala samarbeten och kulturliv.

Den traditionella uppdelningen mellan produktion och presentation ifrågasätts på Tomma Rum. Ateljén kan bli utställningslokal och arbetslokalen är för det mesta öppen för allmänheten. Många delta-gare blir också inspirerade av den plats som besöks och arbetar platsspecifikt eller med tydliga referenser till orten.

Något som är specifikt för Tomma Rum som residens är att en större grupp konstnärer deltar samtidigt. Redan från starten 2003 fanns en idé om gemensamt boende och arbetslokal. Det tas ettdelat ansvar för allt som sker under sommaren, från matlagning och städning till utställningar och andra tillfälliga konstprojekt. En gång om dagen samlas alla deltagare till en gemensam middag föratt utbyta tankar och idéer. I vissa fall behöver någon hjälp med sitt projekt och ibland uppstår helt nya samarbeten vid matbordet. En speciell dynamik uppstår således både inom gruppen och i detlokala samarbetet . Syftet var, och är, att skapa en mötesplats där konstnärer, kulturarbetare och allmänhet kan utbyta erfarenheter och där alla är välkomna.

Vad händer sedan?I samtal med kommuner uppkommer ofta frågan om vad som blir kvar efter projektets slut. Tomma Rum kan inte utlova några beständiga konstverk men en mångfald av kulturell verksamhetger nya erfarenheter och sätter igång diskussioner. Ibland upp-märksammas politiker, organisationer och företag på de övergivna och bortglömda resurserna och kan inom ramen för tillfälligasamarbeten erbjuda dem till olika utövare. Till exempel beslutade Unnaryd att fortsätta hyra ut lokalerna till olika aktiviteter efterföl-jande somrar. I Tranås började telegrafstationen att hyras ut som replokal till ungdomar och i Kil arrangerade konstutställningar i slakteriet efter Tomma Rums avfärd. Både Tranås och Kil startade dessutom sedan egna konstnärsresidens. Förhoppningen är attTomma Rums besök blir en språngbräda till ännu mer av inkluderande kulturutövning på lokal nivå.

Mer om Tomma Rum:[email protected]

Texten på detta uppslag är ett utdrag ur “Ut-byta idéer och arbeta tillsammans”,Tomma Rums bok om residensverksamhet. Beställ den, utan kostnad här:tommarum.se/utbyta/

TOMMA RUM

http://tommarum.se

mailto:mail%40tommarum.se?subject=mail%40tommarum.se

http://tommarum.se/utbyta/

TOMMA RUM Projektrapport för sommaren 2014, i Skellefteå sida 38

tomma rum skellefteå

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