By Steen Bruun Jensen, The visual artist #2 2023
A good two-year corona-interrupted artist-in-residence artist-in-residence in Guldborgsund Municipality is coming to an end for the two visual artists Thomas Seest and Søren Lose. A stay they entered with a desire to test artistic ideas, visions and forms of expression in a new and unfamiliar context, as they wrote in advance in their application to the Statens Kunstfond.
Row light. Photo Thomas Seest
The fact that it just became Guldborgsund municipality – which consists of all of Falster and approximately the eastern third of Lolland – is probably due to the fact that Søren Lose was born on Lolland, but actually it was Thomas Seest's idea based on a notion that Lolland-Falster risked one's project not to drown in an already large artistic offer, and that at the same time there was plenty of space and perhaps even empty houses in which one could unfold one's artistic visions.
The two visual artists had three headings for their artist-in-residence, namely Sustainability, Utopia and Collaboration, and an ambition to experiment with the usual divisions between art, culture and everyday life. Their incentive was to go from being 'ego-artists to eco-artists', as they put it, and to implement art on a different level in a positive interaction between art, people and nature in collaboration with local actors such as businesses, museums, agriculture, associations, schools, colleges and vocational schools. All together with the humble ambition to make the world a slightly better place to be. And it fed very well into Guldborgsund's own agendas:
"They have had artists other than us down to work with them, and have brought contemporary art into the municipality on various levels, so in that way, it was just the right place to come. They understood our visions of sustainability, utopia and collaboration," says Søren Lose.
Got a park as a gift
In advance, Thomas Seest and Søren Lose had imagined that the ample space on which they had looked forward to unfolding could be in the form of a field made available by a local landowner or the like. However, such an agreement never materialized. Instead, it turned out that the town hall, from which they worked, was surrounded by a two-hectare park area, which was actually called Rådhusparken, but which the two artists chose to name Vild Park in line with Guldborgsund's ambition to become Denmark's wildest municipality. When they became aware of the park, however, large machines were clearing a small forest and turning it into wood chips, which is in no way conducive to biodiversity:
"When we asked about it, those responsible got red ears, and therefore they suddenly saw an opportunity in us two artists getting the right to control the razed park," says Thomas Seest. And so it happened that Vild Park became the center for most of the activities that the artist couple have initiated during their artist stay.
Vild Park Healing Festival, Slime & Crystal ASMR Ground Healing. Photo: Søren Lose
"As soon as we got the right to council, we started working with Technology & Environment, which makes up a very large part of the town hall. In this way, we not only got machines available, but also a completely different form of support and an opportunity to work across the town hall, at the same time as we could apply to the Statens Kunstfond and other pools, so that we could invite other artists to activities in the park," says Thomas Seest, who together with Søren Lose was one of the first to set up a healing festival that could make up for the destruction the park had suffered.
"When we started as house artists, we were told that we had to be aware that we were representing the municipality and that we therefore had a responsibility. It also had the effect that when we said we were healing the town hall park, we brought something into the town hall and into the town hall's language that was not there before, but which the citizens are now listening to; 'god, the municipality is doing a healing'. It makes us feel that we have started an energy that would very much like to last," he says.
Ritual tree planting
Another new word was PermaBlitz, which became the name of an event for the town hall employees, who, together with Seest and Lose, planted trees and bushes and made kvass fences while singing songs written for the occasion:
"Instead of Technology & Environment just coming and dumping ten trees, we tried to ritualize the tree planting, make it a slow process and in this way give ownership to the employees who have to sit and look out at the trees every day - there are both some culture and technology and environment and HR team building in it," says Thomas Seest.
"We have cultivated the possibilities. Sometimes it was almost as if the art disappeared, but maybe it is in between the other areas like the glue that binds things together. That is also what it has to, in one way or another. We have wormed our way into the cracks of the municipality," says Søren Lose.
A third event has been Vild Park Balance, which last year celebrated the vernal equinox, which started with yoga, followed by gardening followed by song, rhythm, movement and play, and finally sunset accompanied by sound art.
Tree planting with town hall employees. Photo: Thomas Seest and Søren Lose
“We decided from the start that our stay would be an experiment; there have been things that worked out and other things that didn't quite work out. There are a lot of actors and some things that cannot be done at all in a municipality, but we have had some rather naive Klodshans types who have just knocked on the door and said 'we want to be here'. And there we have found that this is also the way it works best," says Søren Lose.
"We haven't really left behind many works of ours, but we have fertilized and created a spirit that will be present for many hundreds of years to come," says Thomas Seest with a smile.
"In permaculture you talk about land stewardship; you are on a piece of land for a time, you look after it, you fertilize it, and then you leave it at least in the same condition as you received it for the next generation. And in that light, we must also think about our exit from Vild Park this autumn," says Søren Lose.
Aesthetic education
The two artists have succeeded in implementing new and more sustainable habits among the town hall employees by, among other things, setting up compost piles that contain food waste from the canteen and leaves from the town hall officers' leaf blowers, and which are used in the cultivation of newly planted perma gardens with perennial vegetables, which all in the principle can come and go. Lose and Seest of course hope that it will continue after they have gone home, but they cannot be sure:
Talking Landscapes. Photo: Søren Lose
"It may well be that someone is breathing a sigh of relief. Someone has already said: 'Just wait, when you're gone, we'll take back our park'. They have been used to things looking a certain way. But we hope that we have started an aesthetic discussion; sustainability and biodiversity just look messier, and I believe that we as visual artists have a duty to do away with this aesthetic. The visual arts, especially the Golden Age, have helped to create our expectations of what nature looks like. Now we have a responsibility to create a counter-image and show how nature can also cope," says Thomas Seest.
"We still have to believe that we have made some kind of difference. It is the role of art to make people stop for a moment and think about things. And maybe it can change a little bit the way we see the world," says Søren Lose.
Pilehegn, workshop with Østerbroskolen. Photo: Søren Lose
Vild Park is currently making room for Performing Landscapes, where six artists – including Thomas Seest and Søren Lose – will take turns and for a month at a time be responsible for staged walks, sensuous installations, performances, dance and soundscapes that relate to the piece of urban nature that Vild Park is. And after that, the house artist stay is basically over. They have no clear answer to whether they would do it again. They both agree that meetings have filled a lot and that they probably need a break from 'the municipality'. But they also agree that they got a lot out of their stay as artists:
"I think that this is the first time that I, as an artist, have been taken seriously as a resource and have been listened to. When you make exhibitions, you get a certain amount of attention and a voice, but taking a voice under municipal auspices is something completely different. The Vild Park project has become bigger than we had expected in advance. It is so close to the town hall that everything we do in one way or another becomes a comment to those there," says Thomas Seest.
"It has been incredibly privileged to do this, and we have gained a lot of experience. I can feel that I'm passionate about having an impact on the reality we live in. It's about making a difference, and I do that more by working close to nature than by making an exhibition in a white room. And then it is very healthy to walk around in the municipality's discarded green suits and be corporate. It is very close to reality," says Søren Lose.
Also read: Artists have a natural place in the municipality's development. The visual artist #2 2023
Photo at top: Vild Park. Photo: Tage Jensen