From Gothenburg with Art

From Gothenburg with Art B A LT I C C R E AT I V E C L A S H

Knowledge exchange for sustainable growth catalyzed by artistic competence Baltic Creative Clash was a knowledge exchange project in the Baltic region, structured around 3 interdisciplinary conferences/workshops, in Kaliningrad, Tallinn, and Gothenburg. The group of partners shared empirical knowledge of different methods and tools about how artistic/cre-

ative competences can support sustainable growth for the BSR, researched the conditions of each location for sustainable growth through implementation of artistic methods, and prepared future cooperation by seeking further resources outside the current project.

In Gothenburg for a few days, participants of Baltic Creative Clash explore how culture can stimulate cooperation, development and drive for innovation in the Baltic region. Artist Malin Bellman leads a full-day workshop in which practical challenges of the creative process become artistic guerrilla attacks on the city space. In art and love, all means are permitted – and in Baltic Creative Clash, all are used, from hula-hoops and cookies to cute cat robots, to reach the goal. Here are the notes that could be salvaged from the creative storm.

Question

Reflection

Warm-up

Context

What is so peculiar in places where creativity and innovation thrive? Short answer: an environment which encourages natural and sincere meetings between people. Follow-up question: how do you create such an environment?

Take a dozen people from 5 different countries.

Give them a hula-hoop. Yes. A hula-hoop. Tell them to, in silence and helped by the hoops, to explore the room, the relationships with one another, and the shared significance. Observe what happens. Notes: People who move like planets in space, with their hoops around the body. Carefully, tentatively, but soon with boldness. Touching the other(s) with their hoop.

Hooking in. The hoop ahead and over another body. Hooking in. Two bodies in a hoop. A shared space. Celestial body.

Creativity seems to require both community and seclusion. An own place and readiness to give up your place. Openness and introspection.

Proximity and distance. To be simultaneously in and out. Is paradox the core of creativity?

Representatives of entrepreneurship, art, and the academy from the Baltic take part on a lab with the theme: ”How can artistic processes promote cross-sectoral /cross-cultural cooperation?” It is about testing artistic methods to create the pre-conditions for innovation. During the day, the participants explore the city space and its borders, openings, offsets, possible contact points and communities, by conducting a sort of artistic guerrilla attacks. Call it “relational” art. The city as playing ground. Or even the own physical experience as innovation policy.

�An arena of conflict.� So does Wikipedia describe the Baltic Sea. That picture also needs to be included. The list goes on. Pirates during the Middle Ages. The Swedish Empire during the Great Power era. The Crimean war. The World Wars. The Cold War. Borderlands. Enclosures but also openings.

M I S S I O N

1

Smile, respect, and intersect – my O meets yours. Task: Go out in the city and interact with people. Notice what the interaction area seems like. Tool: Hula-hoop, curiosity, openness.

Snapshot from Gustaf Adolfs Square. The statue of a warrior king, a Jamaican food truck, a Swedish construction worker and a Russian with a hula-hoop. The Russian throws the hula-hoop around himself and the construction worker and asks how it feels. He answers that he feels safe and secure inside the hoop. And maybe there is no need for anything else other than a thin symbolic marker to make us feel

home. Enclosed. My hula-hoop is my castle?

Before: Some worries in the group. Somebody heard that there is strong segregation and shootings. Will there be tension in the streets?

Are the people suspicious?

After: Relief. Most were curious and friendly.

Mostly young. But busy. Feeling: We go out and try again!

Question: What is the balance between wanting to interact with other people, and our need for privacy?

Answer: Like the impossible act of drawing a storm?

M I S S I O N

2

Claim the square. Task: Go out in the city. Find a place you like. Claim a square of around 1,5x1,5 meters. Think about how it feels to have your own place. Invite others to your square. Tool: Blue masking-tape, coffee and cookies.

A group chooses the shopping mall Nordstan.

An ambivalent place, in which visitors are both citizens in a public space, and consumers in a commercial environment. The group tapesup a square at the top of an escalator, and decorates it with a stool from a coffee shop.

For the group, the square quickly became a

symbol for safety. Also, when the coffee shop staff requires the stool back. The conversation there is about the feelings of being inside and/ or outside. Participants or spectators. Home or away. An older man stays for a long, long time in the warm community. Once the tape is gone: “Now it became colder”.

Votes: What is your place? My city. A beach. In bed with the one I love. At the corner. Where my family is. Lesson: Home is to a big degree a mental place.

Reflections from participants: It was a little dull to invite people inside the square. The coffee and cookies made it easier, a universal symbol for community and care. The respect for the marking of the place is big: not many walked right through the square, although it would have been easier. More comfortable to invite people inside the square than with the hoop, that was too small. (Preliminary conclusion 1: The limit for personal leeway space is somewhere between a hula-hoop and a blue square.) Counteract: “easier with the hula-hoop. Then I went inside their world. It is more difficult to ask people to step into my world”. (Preliminary conclusion 2: The limit for personal leeway space is inside each human being).

And the observer who sees and notices all this, where does he locate himself? Inside or Outside? Where are his borders? Where is he home?

Detour: Water: We could also begin somewhere completely different, in a completely different time. The Vättern Lake (Sweden).

Middle Ages. The economy, society and culture around the oblong lake, which is almost an inner sea, are closely related. The water a communication line, the land a hindrance. The Center is the middle of the lake, at the island of Visingsö. A circle around the lake describes the arena for human activity. Conflicts but also cooperation, community, love. And today? Vättern is an efficient traffic blocker between West and East Sweden. Literally and metaphorically.

The historical community is broken. The back turned towards the lake, the gaze removed from the water. The conversation discontinued.

That, which was a clear meeting place, has become an empty, silent, cold surface. The land a communication line, the water a hindrance.

This fate has befallen upon several historical communities around water. Development has made us blind to the cultural and commercial potential carried by life close to the water.

Here is a breeding ground to generate ideas, businesses and experiences. If we would once again turn the gaze towards the lake, or towards the sea. Conclusion: one of the things which Baltic Creative Clash can contribute to is to remind us to turn our glaze towards the Baltic Sea and see a natural place for innovation. That which unites, rather than separates. Shortcut: Water.

”Despite physical distance having lost much of its meaning, by no means has the geographical environment played out its role in our own time.”

GUNNAR TÖRNQVIST, THE GEOGRAPHY OF CREATIVITY

The observer sends a sms to a friend. He tells him that he is at Gustaf Adolfs Square with a Russian, an Estonian, and Bellman. Answer: Oh yeah…? Explanation: the inside joke is only funny for insiders.

Stated differently: In Swedish the Baltic Sea is called ”Östersjön” (East sea), while in Estonian it’s called Läänemeri (West sea). It’s all about perspectives.

M I S S I O N

3

The square and the circle. Task: Go out in the city and design a prototype to dissolve prejudices and create new meetings in the urban space. Combine the experiences from Mission 1 and 2. Tools: hula-hoop, blue tape, coffee, cookies.

Or: whatever works.

Give or take: a street corner. A man. A hat. The man looks down at the ground. He held out his hat to passersby. We all saw the scene before.

Without having seen it.

Without wanting to see. Why should our society’s inability to provide for the wellbeing of all people be so openly exposed to us? We just want to go ahead. We just want to believe that we are still pretty decent people. The man with the hat at the street corner suggests otherwise.

We don’t want to see. We don’t want to know.

Looking away. Pretending to check something on our smartphone. Someone else will take care of it.

We think we saw the scene before. But now it is something else, something new we see. But

don’t see. The man at the street corner is at a 3-day symposium about how artistic methods can promote innovation. Now he is researching prejudices in the city space. In the hat, there are cookies he wants to give away. Now there comes a woman. She intends to put a coin on the hat. The man stops her and challenges her to take a cookie instead of giving a coin.

The woman shakes her head frenetically. She wanted to give. Now she will take. No. No. No. Now everything is too complicated. By giving we become free. By taking, will I be in debt?

The strength of art and artists: to shape what we really already know, but can’t or won’t see with our regular theoric eyes. It is only emotions – not facts – which make us act.

”During the Middle Ages, wealth and poverty were seen as complimentary states. The kingdom gave alms for the salvation of his soul. The beggar was expected to ask from the donor. Beggars were necessary. No solution, but a kind of consolation. This reciprocity is not completely extinct. It happens that I get a blessing or a prayer as thanks from the beggars in the streets of Gothenburg. If it’s the thought that counts – who gives the most? ” GERT GELOT TE, GÖTEBORG-POSTEN, 3 JUNE 2015

O B S E RVAT I O N S 1: Poverty makes people invisible. Action: see people!

2: People don’t smile much. Action: make them play more.

3: People feel unsafe and afraid of new people. Action: give them something to make them feel safe.

4: People are closed inside themselves. Action: give them the chance to express their feelings and show their worries, so that the prejudices can disappear.

Notes on the artistic method (1): to work from the inside out rather the outside in: ”Two truths approach each other. One comes from the inside, other from the outside, and there they meet one has the chance to see himself.”

(Tomas Tranströmer) Notes on the artistic method (2): to switch between method and spontaneity. ”A perfect order is crystalline death; a total chaos is a formless death. But in the middle there is a

fabulous cross of overview and surprise, on which creation is built. And in it, all possibilities exist.” (Ilya Progogine) Notes: To grasp at something in the semi-darkness is also to travel. There are places which can only be found by those who allow themselves to get lost. To stand at the eye of the storm with their notebook. And let go of the loose pages.

Partners TILLT [Gothenburg, Sweden], a social enterprise and innovator in the field of Artistic Interventions in Organisations, a methodical tool for innovation and sustainable development, in which artistic competence is employed as a catalyst for social change and cultural awareness. TILLT was the founder of the Creative Clash network.

Loov Eesti (Creative Estonia) [Tallinn, Estonia], established by Enterprise Estonia, in order to increase awareness about the potential of creative industries in the Estonian economy.

Activities are focused on development of web

resources and channels to support creative companies, mapping and networking, as well as efforts to cooperation and exchange expertise nationally and internationally.

Cobuce & Tranzit [Kaliningrad, Russia]; Cobuce’s main competences are interdisciplinary facilitation, inspiration and training in the fields of business, education and cultural/creative industries, along the several parts of the innovation cycle. Tranzit supports the development of the cultural field in the Kaliningrad region, and promotes culture as resource for regional social and economic development.

Text – David Björklund / Kontakta Produktion / kontakta.com; design – Artem Zaitsev / pictorica.ru