Nordic Hazardlands 2019 in Umeå= seminar and almanac

IMG-20190325-WA0007SJ overnight train, Stockholm- UmeåIMG_20190327_124448Walk to the Island, Umeå, 27 March (Shopping cart dilemma)

NORDIC HAZARDLANDS AT UMA, UMEÅ. Host University, UMA School of Architecture. UMA:  Ana Betancourt, Rector with Marie Kraft, Lecturer. Symposium: On the Frontier of Mental and Spatial Change in the Swedish – German Countryside(s) Symposium conceived by Daniel Urey -project coordinator-LABLAB with the support of the Goethe Institute Sweden. NORDIC HAZARDLANDS is the 4th in a series of workshops developed for R-Lab at the Royal Institute of Art Stockholm. For the academic year 2018-2019, R-Lab is conducting Marvels and Catastrophes, a post-graduate advanced research group focusing on real and imagined disasters, and their consequences for the future of  the planet. Course Instructor: Peter Lang, Professor Architectural Theory and History, the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. The R-Lab group was based in Umeå from the 26th  to the 29th of March (confined to the Old Prison) and explored the city and produced for its workshop “the Almanac of Marvels and Catastrophes 2019-2020.” See Below for images and descriptions.

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IMG-20190327-WA0007Peter Lang and Anna  Asplind assessing the gradual sinking of the shopping cart…
IMG_20190327_104146Untitled (shopping cart, R-Lab)
IMG_20190327_104322Snow sun dial melting through ice floor while casting shadow.
IMG_20190327_110556Anna Risell approaching the nose of the island.
IMG-20190327-WA0012Jerome Malpel and Orestis Nikolaidis in an ad-hoc interview.
IMG_20190327_130801Daniel Urey presenting On the Frontier of Mental and Spatial Change in the Swedish – German Countryside(s) Symposium
IMG_20190327_131219Dr. Marta Doehler-Behzadi, Director at IBA Thüringen, GermanyIMG_20190327_140049Front row: Madeleine Eriksson, Associate Professor, Department of Geography
Andres-20190328-WA0010From Left to Right: Daniel Urey, Marie Kraft, Madeleine Eriksson, Peter Lang and Marta Doehler-Behzadi.
IMG_20190326_152752Anders Jansson, Museum Curator, Bildmuseet, Umeå, walking us through “Entangle, Physics and the Artistic Imagination.”
IMG-20190326-WA0048Moment of relaxation, Bildmuseet, Umeå.
rptozPeter Lang. in front of a barrel sauna.
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Working session on Almanac, Umeå, 28/03/2019

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Working session on Almanac.

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Working session on Almanac.

Meaningful Schedule Update for the Umeå Workshop & Seminar:

R-Lab @Umeå
Tuesday March 26
Visit to the Västerbottens museum, 10am.
Helena Elisabeths väg 3, 903 42 Umeå
Exhibition:
Perspectives on the regimental town
What does the garrison town Umeå tells? Exhibition and collection at the same time.
see link for further exhibitions and activities:
Afternoon visit to the BIldMuseet, (unfortunately we miss the William Kentridge exhibit: the Refusal of Time by a week only)

THIS JUST IN:

Norrlandsoperan= E|A|S – Evolving Asteroid Starships

DSTART (TU Delft Starship Team) is a multidisciplinary team of engineers, scientists, architects and artists developing next-generation concepts for interstellar exploration. DSTART aims to critically explore ideologies underpinning space exploration paradigms, and tries to propose alternative concepts.

The installation in Vita Kuben was created by Nils Faber, Anton Dobrevski, Amélie Kim, Joris Putteneers, Sharon van Rijthoven, Angelo Vermeulen, Arise Wan and Jasper Wennekendonk.

The hostile and unpredictable environment of deep space requires a new conceptual approach for interstellar flight, one that differs radically from any current design in aerospace. Using biology as inspiration, E|A|S suggests creating starships that physically grow and evolve during their journey. Resources extracted through asteroid mining are used to 3D print new components of the ship in an almost endless process of adaptation. The DSTART team is currently developing concept studies and computer simulations to test these ideas.

The proposed art installation is a combination of a large-scale animated video, a composition of flat screens with moving and still images, and a living plant sculpture. The animations and still images are visual studies of the E|A|S project

Located in the middle of Umeå you’ll find the cultural institution Norrlandsoperan. Since its foundation in 1974, Norrlandsoperan has developed from a regional opera ensemble into a centre for performing arts. Still with a regional reach.

Norrlandsoperan includes Norrlandoperan Symphony Orchestra and departments for opera, dance, music and contemporary art. In house we have four stages, production workshops, studios and our own ticket office.

Wednesday March 27
Morning Open Walking Tour to Umeå’ s other side.
Symposium: On the Frontier of Mental and Spatial Change in the Swedish – German Countryside(s)
at the School of Architecture
13:00 14:30 Talk Session
14:30 – 14:45 Coffee Break
14:45 – 16:00 Round Table
16:00— non programmed for  free R-Lab discussion groups.
18:00 — optional Fab Lab Wood Carving Workshop. (details to be announced)
Thursday March 28
8:00 am (Iron field trip by bus— to be confirmed)
13:00 lecture (english) the Wood Factory. at the School of Architecture,
details to be announced.. Sponsored by UMA at Umeå. Marie Kraft, instructor.
14:00- 17:00 Lexicon of Marvels and Catastrophes. the Workshop. Open public participation encouraged.
18:00  celebratory final fete. (unofficial) location to be announced.
Friday March 29: Departure

Symposium 27 March, 13:00 – 16:00, Umea @UMA

With support from: UMA, KKH, LABLAB, and the Goethe Institute.

On the Frontier of Mental and Spatial Change in the Swedish – German Countryside(s)

 
Transformations in 21st century city is leading into the deepest rural areas, bringing along with it increasingly new forms of activities, infrastructures and social transformations. Rural areas are experiencing accelerated realities consisting of demographic influx and outflux, social exclusion, digital divisions, extended landscapes of monoculture, decreased biodiversity and an urgent need for ecological reparations. 
 
It is obvious that the rural areas in Europe are on the frontier of a spatial and ecological change, yet these transitions are too often overlooked by architects and spatial planners. Other disciplines have introduced new and alternative perspectives that are having an impact on the applied research and design methods focusing on these expanding city networks. 
 
To be able to anticipate these fast moving trends, the European countryside(s) urgently needs to apply cross-disciplinary readings and invest in transnational co-operation. This is the first in a series of seminars that begin with the ambition to understand and to connect historic and contemporary transformations affecting the Swedish and German countryside(s). Along with the seminars we’ll make attempts to critically distinguish what kind of possible future(s) do we as European citizens offer the union’s countryside(s) as well as what kind of life values does the countryside(s) offers us as humans. 
 
Participants:
Dr. Marta Doehler-Behzadi (main speaker)
Madelaine Eriksson
Maire Kraft UMA
Peter Lang KKH
Daniel Urey LABLAB

Biographies: (incomplete)

Biographies: (incomplete)

Dr. Marta Doehler-Behzadi

Internationale Bauausstellung Thüringen. 1975 – 1980 Studied urban planning at the School of Architecture and Construction in Weimar (today Bauhaus University Weimar). Dr. Doehler-Behzadi collaborated between 1984 – 1991 in the office of the chief architect of the city of Leipzig and from 1992 – 2007 she was freelance city planner, office for urban projects in Leipzig with Prof. Iris Reuther. Between 2007 – 2014 Doehler-Behzadi was Head of the Department of Building Culture and Urban Heritage Protection in the Federal Ministry of Construction and since 2014 managing director of the International Building Exhibition Thuringia.

Marie Kraft

Marie Kraft is an architect, urban researcher and multidisciplinary artist. Born in Sweden, she lives and works between France, Italy and Sweden. She studied architecture at Ecole d’architecture Paris La Seine, theatre and cinema at Sorbonne University and she holds a Master in Urban research at Ecole des Hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Her practice is developed between artistic interventions, social engagement and urban development.She was a cultural project manager at the Swedish Institute in Paris 1994-2017. Since 2018 she is a lecturer at   Umeå school of architecture and she is been involved in education of children, professional architects, urban planners and real estate holders. Her current research focuses on reuse of urban heritage and its relation to urban regeneration

Peter Lang

Peter Lang is professor in Architectural Theory and History at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, where he conducts post-graduate and pre-doctorate research courses in architecture, design and multimedia communications. Lang holds a Bachelor in Architecture from Syracuse University and earned a PhD in Italian history and urbanism at New York University in 2000. He is a Fulbright recipient in Italian studies. Lang works on the history and theory of post-war Italian architecture and design, with a focus on sixties Italian experimental design, media and environments. Lang has written and curated a number of projects on the Italian Radical Design and Architecture movement.   He has been a member of the Rome based urban arts research group Stalker since 1997.

Daniel Urey

Daniel Urey is the Head of LABLAB research & design think tank at the architect studio ARKLAB, based in Stockholm. Before LABLAB he was engaged in developing the international urbanisation programs at the contemporary art centre Färgfabriken. Daniel Urey has experience working in the Baltic Sea Region, the Balkan’s, Middle East and East Africa. Daniel Urey has an academic background in European Politics, Art History and Philosophy. 

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Fargfabriken:  Updated December 20, 2018.

January Färgfabriken workshop: Dates?
Should we present, or even activate the projects we initiated in Istanbul, can some of them be made relevant to Stockholm? i could see all four of them  becoming a public thing, but we would need some ideas about title, poster, etc.
—i am very impressed with the 15 year old girl Greta Thunberg who told off all the old guys that they were very useless on the environment in Poland. i think it would be great to target a disaster workshop for teenagers like her. any ideas?
finally i think we should do something on the local Cimenta site, following Gerda’s research, something we could bring a local audience together.
it would be great if someone or a few of you would come back with some ideas.
—Umea: week 13. now we are planning to go up on sunday 24 march night train direct to Kiruna. spend one night in Kiruna and then go down to Umea. this way we can have evening seminars wednesday and thursday, and finish mid afternoon on Friday. we will have some faculty partners and some UMA students joining us.  the seminars will be a collaborative effort between Daniel Urey, UMA faculty headed by Marie Kraft, and our course R-Lab. Goethe Institute will be sponsoring two speakers.
the basic premise of the workshop is to continue the Makerspace concept we began in Istanbul. but instead of micro artisan workshops we will be in the land of big wood factories, big wood harvesting, paper, big mining, river transport,  maybe resins production and plastics, and of course many critical issues dealing with the countryside unfolding. We will have the Umea university working spaces for our use and we could make things there. of course we could make mystical stuff, charms and amulets, but also huts boats etc. just need to take into account the short amount of time.
and finally these developments will be folded into  Fargfabriken in May, weeks 21 and 22.