During this workshop we created a collective visual backdrop with digital and analog means. The participants worked and re-worked their own visual portraits into composing a collective pattern using various digital, automated, and analog tools such as collage and composing, photography, printing/copying, and artificial intelligence. The participants then used the backdrop to take self and collective portraits.
Throughout the workshop we had insightful moments of discussion, critically reflecting on our references, choices and processes. We explored themes of beauty, taste and visual norms, as well as artificial intelligence and generative graphics for the production of hyper-images and new concepts of beauty. Discussions also based itself on questions of self-image, identity and the perception of the self and others; activism and the power of crafting messages to ourselves and others through visual intervention.
Curator: Kristina Ketola Bore
Project Manager: Marisa Molin
Youth Worker: Trine Ottosen
Mobilizing Citizenship has received generous funding from Arts Council Norway and Nordic Culture Point.
Benedetta Crippa is an independent designer based in Stockholm, specializing in the craft of visual communication. Crippa's aim is to continuously expand horizons for aesthetic production. She works with clients at the crossroads between social equity and the arts, with a special attention to sustainability and visual production as a motor for equity. Her work spans from visual identities, to brand strategies, digital and printed platforms, pedagogy and all kinds of expansive visual interventions.
Mobilizing Citizenship (MC) is an educational project where Norwegian and international artists and designers are invited to work with a small group of young people aged 12-16 at Kunsthall Stavanger during one semester. The overall focus of MC is to investigate how young people can use tools and methods from contemporary art to express themselves and be heard in today's society. MC is not a talent development programme, but rather an investigation into how contemporary art can be a relevant contribution in young people’s lives.
Since its inception in 2018, MC has developed into a practice-based research project. During the period 2022–2024, the project will focus on building more knowledge about how we can create good meetings between contemporary art and young people. As part of this, we are collaborating with institutions and cultural workers from around the world who have expertise in this area. The result of the project will take the form of reflections and documentations, made accessible to artists, curators, cultural workers and institutions who want to create relevant offerings for young people.
Previous Themes and Participants:
Spring 2022
DRAMA
With: Lee Heinemann (curator), Delali Ayivor, Lex Brown, Ingela Ihrman
Autumn 2019
Unpacking the Visual Norms
With: Benedetta Crippa, Toxic Waste Face, Jennie Bringaker, Lee Heinemann
Spring 2019
Movement and Body Representation
With: WALK OF SHAME, Sidsel Christensen, Zinzi Minott, Trojan Horse (Kaisa Karvinen, Tommi Vasko)
Autumn 2018
Public Space in the Context of the Digital
With: Clara Balaguer, Eglé Kulbokaité and Dorota Gawęda, Laurel Schwulst, Andreas Knag Danielsen and David Lamignan Larsen
Spring 2018
Activism as Artistic Tool
With: Hardworking Goodlooking (Clara Balaguer, Kristian Henson), Synnøve Sizou G. Wetten, Hans Edward Hammonds, Nicole Killian and Benjamin Hickethier