A COLLABORATIVE ART & SCIENCE PROJEKT
BY TOVE KJELLMARK
In line with Donna Haraway’s essay “A Cyborg Manifesto,” where the concept of the cyborg rejects rigid boundaries, especially those separating “human” from “animal” and “human” from “machine.” The project is a transdisciplinary collaboration aimed at challenging the limits of measurability, corporeality, and the relationship between humans, animals, and machines. At the same time, it is an artistic practice-based exploration of potential new values and sedimentary expressions arising from translations between materiality and immateriality through digital, analog, and performative techniques. In the project, the term translation will be used in its dual sense of converting a language or medium into another and moving a body from one point in space to another. The project group consists of a horse, a robot, a philosopher, an artist, a professor of practical knowledge, a composer, a programmer, an art theorist, a feminist posthumanist, and an artistic researcher specializing in video art and occult traditions.
The investigation begins with the first challenge: “Translating the horse’s corporeality with a 3D scanner.” These large, sensual, energy-filled creatures with soulful eyes capture humans on a deeper level. This unpredictable and highly alive being, in its natural state, cannot stand still for long. 3D scanning a body in motion or using the scanner as a film camera is, for example, “incorrect.” When the scanner is confronted with a moving body, it receives conflicting spatial coordinates, and instead of a homogeneous form, it creates three-dimensional “motion blur.” By pushing the tool’s limits, we can generate fragmented digital 3D material—a method that also reflects the necessity of loss and dissolution for something new to emerge. The next step is to explore the intimate relationship between the horse and its human, how their bodies merge through their different approaches to building trust and closeness.
The transdisciplinary team and writers in Tove’s publication for the exhibtion, a beautiful book: //Jonatan Habib Engqvist/Joanna Sandell/Jonna Bornemark/Elin Hernlund/Sinziana Ravini/Karin Victorin//
My horse Setare plays the main character in Tove’s art exhibition
Setare, a 9-year Akhal teke mare that was born into my arms plays a significant role as the transparent horse cracking open in-between spaces for human spectators to break on through to the other side. On October 8th, Setare was set free in the art space as part of the pre-opening of the art show. One week before the grand opening. Färgfabriken invited 50 VIP guests, and Tove and I planned Setare’s performance. This was an experiment of human loss of control and letting the horse subjectively choreograph the agency of the human/horse chimeric herd. People had to leave their cell phones at the door. What happened after that is in a way a secret, a sacred moment of intra-action shared by the living beings present in the moment. Maybe I write about it in a future text but for now, you can read art critic Birgitta Rubin’s experience in the link below. Setare came back boosted with self-confidence, and I am pretty sure she enjoyed showing humans the social wisdom of the horse.
Link to review of Setare’s performance at the pre-opening of Tove Kjellmark’s art exhibition: https://www.dn.se/kultur/tva-storslagna-och-saregna-installationer-aktuella-i-stockholm/
Tidningen Ridsport: Hästkroppen i fokus i stort konstprojekt
The largest horse magazine in Sweden also writes about Tove Kjellmarks exhibition and the projekt.
Link to article: https://www.tidningenridsport.se/hur-vi-forhaller-oss-till-vara-hastar-speglar-aven-resten-av-varlden/
The Exhibition travels to Finland
Opens at Kunsthalle Seinäjoki 2024
