Artist Talks with EKO 8 Artists / Wom@rts Masterclass
Tuesday + Wednesday, 13 July + 14 July 2021, 11:00-13:00
Online: YouTube + Facebook
Day 1 (Youtube, Facebook)
Tuesday, 13 July 2021, 11:00-12:00:
Emilija Škarnulytė in conversation with Alessandro Vincentelli
Tuesday, 13 July 2021, 12:00-13:00:
Nina Slejko Blom & Conny Blom in conversation with Alessandro Vincentelli
Day 2 (Youtube, Facebook)
Wednesday, 14 July, 2021, 11:00-12:00:
Laura Harrington in conversation with Alessandro Vincentelli
Wednesday, 14 July 2021, 12:00-13:00:
Danae Stratou in conversation with Alessandro Vincentelli
UGM organised four dynamic conversations with extraordinary and innovative artists from the selection of their EKO 8 Triennial, which took place online. Emilija Škarnulytė, Nina Slejko Blom & Conny Blom, Laura Harrington and Danae Stratou presented selected art projects and talked about the concepts, ideas and visions of their artistic practices in a conversation with the curator of the Triennial, Alessandro Vincentelli.
Presenting the artists:
Emilija Škarnulytė (b. 1987, Lithuania) is an artist and filmmaker. Working between documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. Her blind grandmother gently touches the weathered statue of a Soviet dictator. Neutrino detectors and particular colliders measure the cosmos with otherworldly architecture. Post-human species swim through submarine tunnels above the Arctic Circle and crawl through tectonic fault lines in the Middle Eastern desert.
Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Her films are at IFA, Kadist Foundation and Centre Pompidou collections and have been screened at the Serpentine Gallery, UK, the Centre Pompidou, France and in numerous film festivals including in Rotterdam, Busan, and Oberhausen. She received an undergraduate degree from the Brera Academy of Art in Milan and holds a masters from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, Norway. She is a founder of Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø, Norway and is a member of artist duo New Mineral Collective, recently commissioned for a new work by the First Toronto Biennial.
Nina Slejko Blom (b. 1982, Slovenia) is contemporary artist, curator and educator based in Sweden. She is a post studio artist, often examining the art world and its institutions, and various other power structures in her work. Working both separately and in a team, she has made over 250 exhibitions at relevant institutions around the world. Member of artist collectives Pektin and Klara Sax.
Parallel with her artistic practice she runs (together with Conny Blom) Conceptual Art Centre Bukovje/Landskrona, a budgetless non-profit exhibition platform whose program includes both up and coming artists as well as established names like Gillian Wearing, Jeremy Deller, Roni Horn and Trevor Paglen. In 2017 they published CAB – Conceptual Art Book with financial help from conceptual art legend Joseph Kosuth. Most recently she though at the Umeå Art Academy, and was one of the jurors as well as mentors for the Landskrona Foto residency program.
Conny Blom (b. 1974, Sweden) is living and working in Sweden and Slovenia. In his artistic practice Blom works in many different media and frequently examines hierarchies and reveals alternative readings by remediating pre-existing material. Censorship and copyright are two topics that he has often returned to through the years. Working both separately and in a team with Nina Slejko Blom, he has made over 250 exhibitions at relevant institutions around the world. He and Nina Slejko Blom run Conceptual Art Centre Bukovje/Landskrona.
Laura Harrington (b. 1980, Wales) is an artist, researcher and creative producer living and working in the North East of England, UK. Her work explores the complex relations between humans and particular landscapes, often in interdisciplinary research and collaborative ways. Situated between art, science and philosophy her practice of film-making, installation, drawing, fieldwork and listening seeks to create works that centre on an idea of upstream consciousness, an ethos for engaging with the world that draws on upland ecologies to think about various relations and connections. She received her BA from Northumbria University, UK and was affiliated with Durham University through a Leverhulme Artist residency in 2014, where she developed an interest in the field of geomorphology and peatland ecologies. She has been supported through a range of international residencies and commissions funded by arts councils, foundations, cultural and academic institutions, regional arts organisation and environmental agencies. Recent exhibitions and residencies include EKO8 (Slovenia), MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK), Projections (Tyneside Cinema, UK), UNIDEE/Cittadellarte, (Biella, Italy), Hangmen Projects (Stockholm), HIAP (Helsinki International Arts Programme, Finland), Durham University (Leverhulme), Invisible Dust, UK, Woodhorn Museum, UK, BALTIC 39, UK, VARC, UK and AV Festival 12, UK. She is a current practice-based PhD candidate with BxNU at Northumbria University.
Danae Stratou (b. Greece) uses a minimal, geometric visual language and engages in contemporary issues such as immigration, life in contemporary cities, the growth of population, the relation to the environment as well as political and social tensions worldwide. Her work consists of large-scale installations and audio-visual environments. She uses various media ranging from digital and audio technology, video, photography as well as metal or natural materials.
Representative of her work are projects such as: Desert Breath (1997), one of the largest land art installations worldwide located in the Sahara Desert, The River of Life (2004), a video installation recording the flow and rhythm of the world’s seven largest rivers, and Cut – 7 Dividing Lines (2007), a photographic installation that investigates the connections between politically or religiously divided parts of the world, Upon the Earth Under the Clouds (2017), her largest site-specific installation in Greece conceived for the Old Mill and the ancient city of Eleusis. Using water and soil as its core materials and 1000 hand-made ceramic pots. She has exhibited widely, including in the 48th Venice Biennale, Italy (1999), the 1st Valencia Biennale, Spain (2001), La Verriere, (Fondation D’ Enterprise Hermes) -Solo Show, Belgium (2010), Istanbul – Culture Capital of Europe 2010 International Program, Turkey (2010), the Adelaide International Festival 2012: Restless, Australia (2012). In 2010 she initiated and co-founded the non-profit organization Vital Space, a global, interdisciplinary, cross-media art platform addressing the pressing issues of our time.
