We take a photograph, we shoot a video and we know that what takes place is that we have captured something. In a similar manner, we record a voice or birds chirping. We can capture a moment in time, a pose, a movement, an essence, and that's possible not only with time-based media but also when we paint a landscape, when we choreograph, and in general when we transpose matter, words, and ideas in any domain.

Our goal, this year, besides providing space, time and resources for artists to develop their individual projects, was to contextualise art-making through collectivity and the process of living and working together. Self-organisation was at the forefront and collaborations, like workshops, seminars and dinners branched out of it. The location itself informed and bled through the resulting creative process and artworks; the forest and the lakes, the abandoned buildings, the hikes, the sediments and minerals, the local flora and fauna, the grills and the sauna, the big yellow machines changing the landscape around us, the melodic airwaves of the Swedish language, and of course the traditional fika.

In parallel to the residency program, we have organised the second iteration of Hybrida Festival, including a lineup of workshops, performances, readings, and DJ/VJ sets, weaving new threads of participation and communality to the ever-expanding creative web of Hybrida and Älvsbacka. (read more) (less)

A score for three bodies in planetary dancehall
metamorphic granite, butterfly orchid, soil, and an original soundscape by Smári Rúnar Róbertsson

A speculative choreography for a very slow dance in deep time tempo between metamorphic granite, human, and butterfly orchid. We are all, including rocks and plants, already in constant motion and intra-action. An already ongoing dance that extends beyond one's lifetime, a stretching exercise for the imagination, and a hard reality. This work is inviting one to move in a rhythm, that even the stone - maybe only the stone - understands. —The granite's mineral composition is strikingly similar to the composition of the human body.

The orchid was found during the summer solstice, together with local plant woman Gunilla. A magical and serendipitous encounter. The plant, which is protected by law, was rescued from what was to become a building site and was re-planted elsewhere after the exhibition.

Drawing from the rich geological features of the residency environment, local knowledge, and researching the former mining sites as well as meeting with mineralogist Urban Strand, Linda Boļšakova explores the possibility of engaging with embodied processes that take place at very different timescales.

Linda is a multidisciplinary, research-based artist working in the fields of installation and performance. The works grow out of the time-space where they are situated. Her practice explores the human relationship to the environment and draws parallels between human embodiment and other material embodiments, especially those of plants. It aims to expose these connections and participate in developing a stronger sense of belonging to ecosystems and to the larger community of beings that mutually inhabit our planet. (read more)          (less)

Conveyance
Audio, installation

A series of one-to-one raft trips I took on lake Gräsmången with every resident of hybrida AiR 2. Each time, half of the ride was recorded, and the other half was not. None of the conversations had a prefixed subject and they were mainly shaped by chance, mood, and weather patterns.          

The audio recordings were then fed to a granular synth app that reshuffled them algorithmically. This process has broken any sense of linearity, making phrases and sounds come and go randomly (like waves), thereby rendering the sound material in a new erratic reference to itself. The result can be described as a custom audio portrait of the experience of every trip, and an attempt to mirror and play with the dynamic, alchemical nature of memory.

The installation also includes a fishing boat installed in space, a different one from the one originally used, reinforcing the fluid validity of the experience, and allowing it to take on another shape altogether.

The work is exhibited in the attic of one of the buildings on the site, alongside the audio installation of artist duo Holly Childs and Gediminas Žygus. The two works are placed at the two far ends of the open space and were activated in turns, allowing an entirely new dialogue to emerge.

Giorgos Tsiongas is a poet and performance artist. He lives and works in Athens. He studied Geology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Fine Arts at Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem. He has published books of poetry in Greek and English, curated and exhibited in Athens, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and other cities in Europe. His work trades in crypto self-actualization as a tool for confronting a mirrored external self. Currently, he works with the idea of poetic language functioning as a chance operator or an oracle. Giorgos' poems work on the page or as future blueprints for other infrastructures, prompting the reader to explore an augmented reading potential. (read more) (less)