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Open Call for driftwood objects: „Rekaviður – A Call to Action”

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Deadline: August 1st 2021

„Rekaviður – A Call to Action” is an educational research project on climate change through the eyes of the journey of driftwood, as well as a call to action for greater awareness of climate change and how we can prevent further damage. 

Our project aims to tell the alarming story of our climate crisis through driftwood’s archive of „living data“. Driftwood is not only an inherent part of Iceland’s history and culture but also particularly suitable to explain climate change data, as it contains detailed climate records as well as information on changing oceanic currents, sea ice and sea levels.

Rekaviður will culminate in the presentation of an exhibition at Nes Artist Residency in Skagaströnd in the fall of 2021 and creating a website, which will offer insights into Iceland’s relation with driftwood, show facts and figures on climate change that are contained by driftwood and explain the importance of afforestation for a climate neutral country. The exhibition is designed as a touring exhibition.

Groups and initiatives will be encouraged to design their own driftwood objects under a Creative Commons license and sell them to locals and tourists. Profits from Rekaviður sales are expected to be used for afforestation projects, helping Iceland to become climate neutral.

What we’re looking for:
Easy-to-make, creative and inspiring objects made of driftwood that are eligible to be recreated by everyone under a Creative Commons license

Submissions should include:
Photographs documenting your driftwood object(s)
Easy to follow step-by-step instruction(s) on how to recreate your driftwood object(s)
Care tips if applicable (e.g. for objects that can be used for food preparation/consumption)

Please note that driftwood is the property of the land owner, so before gathering driftwood, please ask for permission!

Please send your applications to meier@lichtung-berlin.de by August 1st 2021. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, we’re looking forward to seeing your submissions!

Outlook:
If selected, your driftwood object(s) will become an integral part of the Rekaviður project. Your objects will be shown at the exhibition and your step-by-step instructions will be available for download on the project’s website and inspire groups and initiatives throughout Iceland to engage in the creation of driftwood objects and in funding afforestation projects. You can make a difference!  

Project background:

„Rekaviður – A Call to Action” was developed by Berlin based media collective Lichtung, received funding by Rannís and is realized in partnership with Nes Artist Residency Skagaströnd and the University Centre of the Westfjords. Read more: lichtung-berlin.de/rekavidur-a-call-to-action

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Artist in Residence – Alex Close

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Alex Close is a Canadian visual artist and researcher currently based in Ottawa Canada who recently graduated with an MDes in industrial design research from Carleton University in Ottawa (2020) and an MLitt in fine art practice from the Glasgow School of Art in 2017. She graduated from her BFA in drawing and painting from OCAD University in Toronto in 2015.


Critical and curious about mechanical rhythms adopted by humans, she questions the material imprint man-made items or rhythms have on subconscious movement patterns and the process of archiving images in memory.

In this vein, she also explores optics and perception with a critical eye on constructed or designed experiences/spaces and how organic powers such as sleep might fight back.

In this realm of dyads she explores the juxtaposition of supernatural (such as mythology) and hypertechnological spaces, and the meeting point of industry and natural environment (which in some cases can be oddly harmonious).

She is also committed to cross-disciplinary dialogue with her recent research exploring remote multidisciplinary drawing ideation through digital media such as virtual reality.

Before leaving Iceland Alex exhibited at Litla Gallery in Hafnarfjörður near Reykjavik. You can find more information about her work here: https://a-close.com/

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Artist in Residence – Janine Gerber

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Janine Gerber is a german artist, working and living in Lübeck close to the Baltic sea. She graduated in 2006 from the School of Art and Design Berlin-Weißensee and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. In 2018, she was awarded the 1st Possehl-Art Award for Lübeck Art.


Her artistic research is based on the transition between the illusional space in a painting and the natural space.

Janine explores themes of materiality and its poetic value, sensory aspects of surfaces like ink, oil paint or paper (unprocessed white, or paint with machine oil) and the opening towards the three-dimensional.


During her one-month stay at NES artist residency Janine is focused on themes of folding and tangency in nature.


More information can be found at http://www.janinegerber.de

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Artist in Residence – Ragga Róberts

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Ragga Róberts is an Icelandic artist who lives and works in Reykjavík, Iceland. She graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Painting. Ragga has exhibited her work in Iceland, New York, and Texas. Her work narrates the beauty of icebergs and hints at the sadness of them slowly melting away due to climate change.

Ragga’s recent work explore light, color and nature. She is inspired by artists such as Fairfield Porter, Louisa Matthíasdóttir and Zaria Forman.

https://www.instagram.com/raggaroberts.art/

http://raggaroberts.com

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Artist in Residence – Kyo Kayamoto

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Kyo Kayamoto is a Japanese illustrator based in New York City. After graduating from Pratt Institute, she started her full-time freelancing career; writing and illustrating books, creating animations, and other illustration and graphic projects for a variety of clients. 

Recently she is focusing on making postcards series as a personal project; in the picture you can see some of her illustrations for halloween and easter. She illustrates a story with some sense of humor with her original cute characters in each picture.

https://www.kyokayamoto.com/

Instagram:@kyokayamoto 

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Artist in Residence – Erin Estrada

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Since arriving in Iceland, artist in resident Erin Estrada has been making paintings about perceptions of land through the lens of tourism, capitalism, and kitsch culture. She is fascinated in how a landscape can act as an extension of the self, and reflect certain political and psychological ruminations.

Specifically, she establishes kitsch as a gimmick to undermine the subtle ways violence is woven into the fabric of the American society, directly a consequence of hyper-consumerist propaganda, and how this can lead to conspiracy theories. Commodified spirituality/lore, read as either banal or deeply meaningful, is of particular interest to her. She portrays places with this in mind, layering the image with borders, windows, signs/symbols specific to the region, and references from memory, as a way to point to the obfuscation of assumed realities.
Website: http://er1n.com/

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Artist in Residence – Hannah Witner

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Hannah Witner is a visual artist and designer originally from Charlotte, NC, USA, and currently based between New York City and North Carolina. She earned a BFA in Integrated Design from Parsons School for Design in 2018.
Hannah Witner’s work spans from colorful, surrealist, and psychological oil paintings, whimsical drawings, and experimental & commercial design. Hannah is a multidisciplinary artist: at the heart of her work lies a passion for uncovering the hidden potential of materials, psychological processes, and strange figuration, which she undertakes in a spirit of curiosity and experimentation.

Her work combines humanoids with an expansive array of visual material with immense play of colors, beginning in consciousness and transience. Her work combines touches of reality with meta-fiction and comedy and reflects our disorder, dissociation, detachment, individualism, and weird minutia of humans. She pokes at the flawed and unexplainable through painting and illustration, expressing a disorderliness that is both humorous, dark, and amorphic.
At NES she hopes to make lots of drawings and studies on paper. Usually she works on large scale canvases, and the restriction to work on a smaller scale will be a great challenge. These drawings will be a continuation of the work she has been doing in New York and at the residency she attended just before arriving to NES in Lisbon, Portugal. It will hopefully start to open up a new avenue of regular practice of drawing and illustration in a more pronounced way in her practice. They will be mostly figurative, experimental, contemplative, surreal, whimsical, and sometimes nonsensical.
Web: www.artbyhannah.me
IG: @hannahwitner

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Artist in Residence – Alexandra Ivanova

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Alexandra Ivanova is a composer, musician, researcher and writer, mentored by Lebanese-American composer and pianist Tarek Yamani. Through her writings and music, Alexandra aims to recreate connection and relatability between cultures that are othered in present times.  Alexandra is working on new compositions and deepening her study of Azeri and Cuban folklore.

During her NES residency, she also discovered Icelandic folkloric songs through the history of the forgotten Icelandic Fidla. Alexandra sheds light on possible links of certain Icelandic folklore to Oriental influences and is creating new arrangements that celebrate these unlikely connections.

Performance live on July 30th, 2020 in @lian.kulturraum Vienna with Mahan Mirarab (@mahanmirarab) on guitar.

Posted by Nes Artist Residency on Þriðjudagur, 25. ágúst 2020

When not on the keys, Alexandra is researching and writing about identity, belonging and privilege. Her activities and interviews with Skagaströnd’s local community are part of her process creating an interactive theatre piece that questions social norms.

Building on her recent debut concert in Vienna, Alexandra is also combining her spoken word poems and compositions in live performances that spark questions around current social and cultural topics.

Follow her on Instagram: @a.i.jazz
Photography credits:
(1)Group in Skagaströnd:  http://ludwignikulski.de
(2) Solo image: Sam Adutwum (@samadutwum)
Live video credits: Amin Ebrahimi (@amin_embrahiimii)

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Artist in Residence – Ludwig Nikulski

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“I hate photography. Because it is limited to the visual means of reality. But to hate something you must also love it. You can not hate without knowledge and you can not love without commitment.


For me inside the photograph there must be a transformation from what I see, in order to transform what is depicted into a self-contained conversation taking place within the photographic framework. I use all genres and work exclusively analog.

I am excited by the idea of having a product that emerged 100% from physics and chemistry. Non-digital in a digitalized world. By being restricted by the analog technic, the focus and concentration on the photographic work and its process increases. Which leads to complex stories that deal with absurd and existential issues.


In Iceland I am documenting remote communities, concentrating on the harsh co-living of nature and civilization, weird everyday rituals as well as cultural heritage in modern society.”  http://www.ludwignikulski.de/

Skagaströnd, Iceland