iceland. mobility, spatiality, virtuality. Conference recordings.

Iceland. Mobility, spatiality, virtuality. Defining new touristic relationships through remote encounters, distant desires and embodied experiences.

The conference Iceland. Mobility, spatiality, virtuality. Defining new touristic relationships through remote encounters, distant desires and embodied experiences. Took place on the 22nd of October 2021 and was a collaboration between aTE, Strondin Studio Iceland and Lancaster University. It was an exciting day with 120 people registering for the event. Click here for CATALOGUE and more info.

The event focused on Iceland, it’s cultural tourism industry and our desire as artists to ‘be there’, discussing alternative and more gentle ways of engaging with place (particularly within the politics of ‘islandness’ and the necessity of the fly-in-out residency model). The presentations made deep consideration of how we can continue to decolonialise our travel practices (including recognising how privileged and white the artist residency industry can often be) and consider the overlooked labour and histories of migration which underpin the leisure and tourism industry as well as the complicated mobilities and histories which transcend the tangible ‘cultural tourism’ experience: temporal slips, linguistic misunderstandings, and communications with the non human; Rocks, stones, machines, ice, dust…

The event discussed what is means to long for a place from a distance (particularly the Arctic, which holds a particular sway over the Western cultural imagination) and the hybrid subjectivities of remote and vicarious engagement considered alongside material on the ground encounters.

(Above) Opening talk ‘The near the far, the fast and the slow, the complications and ethical entanglements of artists’ travel experiences. On foot, by flight and at sea.’ Gudrun Filipska.

Image Refs: Kristen Scheving ‘Iceland is Not a Myth’ (first two slides). https://kristinscheving.com/

Page from ‘The Importance of Being Iceland’ Eileen Miles Semiotexte 2009 https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/importance-being-iceland

Front page from ‘A Spectral Glossary of Critical Tourism’ Jurij Dobriakov from 'Tourists Like Us: Critical Tourism and Contemporary Art'. Eds Federica Martini F and Vytautas Michelkevicius, 2014.

Images from Canadian Art, an article by Lucy Lippard. https://canadianart.ca/essays/lucy-lippard-then-and-now/

Front Cover of Island Zombie by Roni Horn. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691208145/island-zombie

Other refs: “Understanding and Constructing Shared Spaces with Mixed-Reality Boundar-ies”(1998) by Steve Benford et al https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216813094_Understanding_and_Constructing_Shared_Spaces_with_Mixed-Reality_Boundaries

Jóhannesdóttir, Guðbjörg Rannveig 'Phenomenological Aesthetics of Landscape and Beauty' from 'Nature and Experience Phenomenology and the Environment' ED BRYAN BANNON Rowman & Littlefield 2016.

Sarah Jane Cervenak 'Wandering Philosophical Performances of Racial and Sexual Freedom' (The quote used is from the introduction). Duke University Press 2014.

‘A Spectral Glossary of Critical Tourism’ Jurij Dobriakov from Tourists Like Us: Critical Tourism and Contemporary Art eds Federica Martini F and Vytautas Michelkevicius, 2014. https://echogonewrong.com/a-spectral-glossary-of-critical-tourism-by-jurij-dobriakov/

‘neoliberal anthropocene’ a term used by Ross Abbinett in 'The Neoliberal Imagination Politics, Aesthetics, and Economics in the Evolution of Hyper-Industrial Capitalism' Routledge 2020. Art historian TJ Demos has further pointed to ‘neoliberal anthropocene’ in his manifesto, ‘Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today' (2018).

Roni Horn on Iceland and ‘tasting experience’ https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/roni-horn-aka-roni-horn/roni-horn-aka-roni-horn-explore-10

(Above) First Session Chaired by Gudrun Filipska.

1.Valentina Schulte- Artist Presentation: Nattsol: The Resignation of Night.

2. Kirsty Palmer - Artist Presentation.

3. Kaya Barry - PAPER : Artists not tourists; residents, or maybe migrants? Tensions of international artistic mobility and tourism cultures.

4. Caroline Kelley - PAPER: Souvenirs of Iceland.

5. Grace Hailstone - Artist Presentation :Between imagination and reality: Embodied experiences and transcending the landscape.

6. Carly Butler and Gudrun Filipska- PAPER: Skirting around Reykyavik. Notes on a journey across Iceland.

7. Aki Poon - Artist Presentation.

8. Holly Chang - Artist Presentation: How to Disappear when No one is Looking.

9. Alison Shields - Artist's Presentation.

10 Sophia Sæmundsdóttir – Artist presentation: Places in progress – A different view.

11 Audio conversation between Rhona Eve Clews (artist) and Alex Knight (DJ and record producer) about the Icelandic Music scene.

12.Keynote Jessica Auer – Keynote PAPER: Looking North.

13.Matthias Egeler – PAPER: Seeing Iceland differently: towards a typology of travellers.

14 Taey Lohe – PAPER.

15 Karen Stentaford - Artist Presentation: The portable darkroom: wet plate collodion in never ending daylight.

16.Jay Simpson and Henri Fletcher – PAPER: Cairns in the Westfjords. Link to q and A with Jay and Henri https://vimeo.com/640640751

(above) Last Session. Chaired by Jen Southern.

1. Kristen Mallia - PAPER.

2. Katie Craney - Artist Presentation.

3. Morag Patterson - Artist Presentation.

4. Kathleen Vaughn – PAPER: Imagining Iceland, Again: Re-Conceptualizing Responsible, Reciprocal Visitorship for Post- Pandemic Encounters:

5. Amy Tavern - Artist Presentation: This Place Gives Me Room.

6. Matt Williams – PAPER: Practice: Absence and Distance.

7. Rhona Eve Clews and Berglind Hreiðarsdóttir – Expanded Artist Presentation: Opening to the Other.

Questions, thoughts and discussion led by India Boxall.

Closing comments Gudrun Filipska.