An exploration into the systems of myth and meaning that shape natural history, reinventing a nature where we find ourselves confronted with a multitude of life forms and a blurring of the boundaries of classification.

SPACE/The White Building, Wed 20 Jan – Sun 24 Jan 2016

On the Edge of Time is a project by Emma Löfström that began in the archives of the Natural History Museum. Whilst considering the relationship between natural and human history, the project comments on humankind’s quest to map, name and ultimately control the natural world. We are living in a time of extinctions and transformations, and simultaneously experiencing a culture saturated with dystopic images of fear and disaster. The challenge is to create inhabitable narratives, looking at alternate ways in which nature and culture could take on new and unexpected forms in the future. Beginning with the idea that nature is constructed not discovered, the project considers the complex relations that have informed our natural history, reflecting on how this knowledge could be reinterpreted if only viewed from another perspective. Interested in the tension between science and fiction, the project is envisioning a post-anthropocentric era playing with ideas of trans-species solidarity, multi-sexual beings, and unconventional ways of becoming.

Meticulous graphite studies combined with intuitive ink collages form an ongoing investigation of the historic connection between science, observation and drawing. The project is presented as an open-ended process, where works on paper are accumulated and displayed across an architectural installation, reflecting on nature’s permanent state of flux and the constantly changing truths of natural science.

Address: The White Building Unit 7, Queen’s Yard White Post Lane London E9 5EN

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More information: spacestudios.org.uk

With support by Iaspis – The Swedish Arts Grants Committeé’s International Programme for Visual Artists

Exhibition installation photos by Benjamin Westoby

Artwork photos by Petter Löfstedt

On the Edge of Time is a project by Emma Löfström that began in the archives of the Natural History Museum. Whilst considering the relationship between natural and human history, the project comments on humankind’s quest to map, name and ultimately control the natural world. Beginning with the idea that nature is constructed not discovered, the project considers the complex relations that have informed our natural history, reflecting on how this knowledge could be reinterpreted if only viewed from another perspective. Interested in the tension between science and fiction, the project is envisioning a post-anthropocentric era playing with ideas of trans-species solidarity, multi-sexual beings, and unconventional ways of becoming. This publication was developed whilst in residence at SPACE Arts+Technology/The White Building, supported by Iaspis, The Swedish Arts Grants Committeé’s International Programme for Visual Artists.

More information: spacestudios.org.uk

Graphic design by Johanna Lundberg.

Photos by Petter Löfstedt.

Drawings and short film shown at the exhibition Strange Cities: Athens at Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens (GR) 20 April - 28 June 2015, curated by Double Decker UK.

Intrigued by the song of the cicada, at the same time persistent and ecstatic, this project is investigating an imaginary Athens using this peculiar sound as a starting point. The cicadas were important creatures in Greek mythology and philosophy. According to a story told by Socrates they were once humans, but intoxicated by music they lost their lives in trance, rewarded by the muses for their passion they underwent a metamorphosis and returned as cicadas to a life dedicated to music.

Playing with ideas of voyeurism, this project is exploring a foreign place through a vision distorted with desire.  In a series of images we are viewing Athens from the Cicadian perspective, seeing without being seen, in a multi-perspective installation including large-scale graphite drawings and a hand rendered animation.

Short film shown at the exhibition Strange Cities: Athens at Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens (GR) 20 April - 28 June 2015, curated by Double Decker UK.

In this short animation we are viewing the world from the Cicadian perspective, seeing without being seen, we are exploring a foreign place through a vision distorted with desire. The cicadas were important creatures in Greek mythology and philosophy. According to this myth that appears in a dialogue between Plato and Socrates, the cicadas were once human, but intoxicated by music they loose their lives in trance. The muses reward their passion, and allow the dancers to undergo a metamorphosis, and they return to a life dedicated to music in the shape of cicadas. Intrigued by the song of the cicada, at the same time persistent and ecstatic, this animation is investigating the exotic using hand rendered drawings and stop-motion animation to create a wordless hypnotic voyage.

Mountain Deep is a project exploring lines and landscape, geology and time in the semi-arid mountains of southern Spain. Developed as part of AADK Spain Centro Negra artist residency the project begun at the foot of Sierra Solan in the Ricote valley. The project considers the tension between human and geological time, the present experience of time as constantly accelerating versus the pace of the mountain often misread as timeless. Sierra Solan wears traces of human civilizations replacing one another throughout history, from the ruins of a Moorish castle, to the more recent statue of Virgin Mary. Humankind’s attempts to colonize territory and leave a permanent mark can be read in contradiction to the transience of human existence, as the limestone remains is a reminder of a time when the mountain above was the ocean floor. At the same time human impact is causing irreversible changes to the geological landscape, high intensity farming and global warming are contributing to desertification in the region, slowly causing the mountains to erode.

In a site-specific installation Löfström explores the over-layering of times and realities, observations of the mountain are juxtaposed with recreations of interventions with the landscape; small scale attempts to constrain the mountain and prevent the erosion. Graphite studies of the landscape in its various stages of desertification, and detailed studies of rocks in its various stages of erosion, highlight how the immense presence of the mountain stands in paradox to how fragile the landscape is to environmental degradation. In a series of exercises and experiments, Löfström is expanding the drawing field by applying her collage techniques directly onto the landscape.  In the installation Löfström is merging, covering and constraining the rocks with collaged paper, challenging the strengths and vulnerability of the environment. This project is both a tribute to the mountain and an attempt to visualize the process of desertification.

The project is supported by Iaspis – The Swedish Arts Grants Committeé’s International Programme for Visual Artists.

In a series of still lifes resembling the memento mori of the 17th Century, drawings and textures are layered and combined with found objects and organic matter. The memento mori, meaning "remember you must die" in Latin, was designed to remind the viewer of the fragility of human life. These assemblages take their starting point in fictive travel tales and Science Fiction from the likes of Jules Verne and John Wyndham, imagining post-human scenarios and the collapsing binary of the natural versus the human-made. 

Photoraphy: Petter Löfstedt

This installation was created for FLORA ars+natura (Bogotá) September 2014, a collaboration between Emma Löfström and Irene Fuga. 

Cabinet of Unnatural History is an interface between past and future, a reflection upon the transience of human existence and the attempt to leave a permanent trace. In a world where human relationships, history and culture are defined by social network and mediated by technology, how will technological media affect people’s recollection of the past and the perception of the future? 

The Cabinet displays a collection of findings and specimens of a fictional museum set in the future. A vitrine that re-evaluates meanings of classification, collection, accumulation, personal and collective memories. IPad, found photographs and made up fictional post-historic hybrid figures co-exist simultaneously. Fuga+Löfström reconsider the relationship between natural and human history working across drawing, sculpture and installation, simulating specimens of the flora and fauna of a future ecosystem. Fuga+Löfström have created a series of artefacts and fabricated sets, collaboratively forming a collection that alludes to a potential natural world mediated by technology.

Read about the project in Colombian magazine Semana.
www.arteflora.org

In collaboration with Irene Fuga (Fuga+Löfström) led the project ‘Dis Play’, a site-specific installation at Lugar a Dudas (Cali, Colombia). The gallery space at Lugar a Dudas was turned into a drawing class session. Using the Cattleya trianae plant as the object/subject matter for the workshop, Fuga+Löfström led a week long drawing class where the public was invited and taught how to draw the orchid in different ways; using different types of media and techniques, exploring possible ways of representing it. Fuga+Löfström used the drawing medium as a way to create a visual conversation, investigating the plant's anatomy and curious sexual habits as a a starting point to encourage the participators to tell their personal stories. Examining what it means to draw today, in an age of constant distraction, the project is focusing on the act of mark making as one of the most basic forms of communication. 

Exhibition in collaboration with Irene Fuga, shown at Yinka Shonibare MBE’s Guest Projects July 2013.
Through drawing, sound and sculptures, the work explores feelings, relationships and sensorial experience in a time when physical encounters are punctuated by online communication. In a series of layered pencil drawings and detailed collages Emma Löfström is investigating how the 21st century human mind may be adapting as technology advances; with a particular interest in the antagonism between private and public, freedom and surveillance, and the endless opportunities of creating alternative identities. Inspired by early Science Fiction writers such as Aldous Huxley, the work is playing with the idea of technology as a second nature, a complex and self-generating system, in which we partake, but long ago lost control of. 
 

In the Ideal Field, as described by John Berger in Why look at animals (1980), time and space conjoin. In the ideal field an observation of an event leads you to notice further events, connected to, or completely independent of the first, expect that they take place in the same field. Without noticing it, you are within the experience, the events, in themselves not over-dramatic, allow you to enter the experience where “the visible extension of the field in space displaces awareness of your own lived time”.

The drawings and observations were initiated during Residencia en la Tierra's residency program Lenguajes en la Tierra in January 2014. The residency is located in a remote mountain setting in the department of Quindio, Colombia, a region declared as UNESCO World Heritage Property for its beautiful landscapes. 

Big thank you Residencia en la Tierra and the Swedish Art Grants Committee for supporting the residency.
 

Emma Löfström and Irene Fuga took part in Residencia en la Tierra's residency program Lenguajes en la Tierra. As part of the residency we held a mask making workshop with the children of the Embrera Chamí community in Puerto Samaria, Quindio. As part of the ‘Super Hero from the Future’ workshop we asked the children to envision the future, what they would like to change, and think of a ‘super power’ they would like to possess to make these changes happen. The outcome was some fantastic and thoughtful masks.
 

A drawing workshop held in collaboration with Irene Fuga at FLORA ars+natura, Bogotá 2014. Interested in the participatory aspects of drawing and reflecting upon the primitive need of mark making, Fuga+Löfström turned the auditorium at FLORA ars+natura into a drawing class session. Questioning meanings of display and art, personal history and memory, Fuga+Löfström asked the participants to bring a personal item of affective value (object, garbage, family photograph, piece of clothing, broken camera, etc) to be explored through drawing during the workshop. Investigating the possibilities of collaborating with diverse groups of people especially brought together for this session, the artists are interested in empowering the collaborators to make decisions and to take aesthetic action.