Social Art Work for Värmamo
Titel: Good Bread
Artist Melissa Vandenberg
Media: Bread, yarn, performance, video, photography
Invitation to participate
The artist Melissa Vandenberg invites Värnamo residents to share personal memories linked to bread and baking through recipes, photographs, and/or stories. The objective is to collect bread related material so that it may be circulated with those spending more time at home amid COVID-19. The collected stories, recipes, and images will be the basis for artwork to be exhibited at Gummifabriken in the fall of 2020.
Those who wish to contribute to Good Bread may send your stories, recipes, and photos to brabrod @ distancio.se.
Submissions in Swedish or English are welcome. Also, you are encouraged
to share your bread stories on social media–please tag posts with
#distancio, #goodbread and #brabröd.
Concept
- to be translated -
Samhällen
formas till viss del efter vår mattradition och vi samlas gärna kring
mat, det är en källa till gemenskap och tillit. Vilket förhållande har du till mat
och framförallt till bröd? Bra Bröd är ett samarbetsprojekt
där konstnären Melissa Vandenberg undersöker vilket förhållande
bröd och bakning har till identitet och familjetraditioner men även ur ett mer existentiellt perspektiv brödet som föda och ritual. Vad gör det med oss då vi stannar upp och bakar. Vilka minnen och drömmar triggas i processen, i doften och i texturen.
Att göra verk av alldagligheten så som materialet bröd eller om
kulturhistoria är utmanande. Melissa Vandenberg lyckas med sin unika
kombination av lekfullhet och allvar framkalla innerliga tankar kring
det vi dagligen konsumerar och det som vi ser som traditioner. Hon viker
på obehindrat sätt samman dagsaktuella frågor och existentiella
ställningstaganden så att sociopolitiska förtätningar sätts i nytt ljus.
Hennes arbetsmetod kännetecknas av djuplodad research sammanvävt med
viljan att ständigt utforska nya material och tekniker. Därefter följer
en tillsynes mer dynamisk fas då hon ber olika grupper och personer att
bidra med material som hon sedan bearbetar till nya verk både fysiska
och immateriella, som inte sällan uppstår som objekt, sedan förflyttas de till staged photography or performance infront of camera our audience.
Schedule
June-August, collecting material
Postcards distributed, and stories on bread collected.
August - September
The artist could not travel to Värnamo and do the work during spring as planned, due to Covid. Works and method of gathering material was addressed to fit in to an online/offline situation.
October 22 – November 22, 2020, exhibition
Venue: Gummifabriken, Värnamo
Exhibition produced by Jönköpings läns Museum and Värnamo municipality for the centennial of Värnamo City.
DISTANCIO Artists
Mark Rautenbach
based in Cape Town, South Africa, working with Tranås
Rui Mourão
based in Lisbon, Portugal, working with Gnosjö
Oscar de Carmen & Marinka Bobrikova
based in Cape Town, working with Mullsjö
Melissa Vandenberg.
based in Richmond, KY USA, working with Värnamo
DISTANCIO Concept Note
Tranås,
Mullsjö, Gnosjö and Värnamo in Sweden are all part of the regional art
project Its co produced between the municipalities and Region
Jönköpingslän together with curator Anna Viola Hallberg. The project was
initiated in 2018 and has evolved in to a highly relevant topic due to
the pandemic time started globally in the spring of 2020. Each artist
has formed a town specific project from the curatorial concept of
DISTANCIO bringing forward
immersive and community-reflective processes. Through their
practices the artists evoke aspects of distance in and in-between
society and what possibly can create new forms of belonging. By
this it takes a stance in a socio-political art context.
DISTANCIO is
site, situation and dialogue dependent, it address layers in society
that goes beyond the four towns; Mullsjö, Gnosjö, Tranås and Värnamo. It explores:
- the dynamics and unforeseen relationships within and between
different groups in society as well as the concepts of public art and
audience. The artist embark upon the crossroads of social art and its
potential to interact with and detect political and social contingencies
and structures.
- audience, the relation between public space and public sphere and embraces subaltern counter-publics towards social equality, cultural diversity, and participatory democracy.
”I spent much of my adult life looking for good bread, the bread my grandmother baked for my mom. Not out of some health-conscious or grand moral desire, but simply for taste... a taste of cultural identity. My mother spoke a great deal about the homemade limpa she grew up with. The project in Värnamo will address the personal journey, and almost mythologic relation to various breads. Together with the people of Värnamo form socially oriented and performative artworks with bread as a primary focus. These interactions will not be heavily scripted, but will be multi-faceted with several tiers of collaborative development."
Melissa Vandenberg
Framework Good Bread
My starting point was the search for my identity in foreign places, in places where I am estranged from myself.” - Rirkrit Tiravanija
As
a maker, I discover myself in the estrangement made available by the
unfamiliar. Whether that be unfamiliar places, tastes, or experiences. Det Goda Brödet investigates
the social and communal nature of food through various iterations
surrounding bread. The project will humbly approach the community of
Värnamo to produce several artistic platforms to exchange stories,
recipes, and trust–with bread as the catalyst. Bread is not only a key
economic and cultural signifier of identity, but bread is downright
biblical. They irony is I neither bake nor worship with any proficiency.
It is not for lack of skill or faith, but for lack of patience.
Det Goda Brödet welcomes collaboration by asking residents of Värnamo to bake with me–and me, asking to deserve to be baked with.
The initial outcomes will be a series of modest photographic portraits
of people, kitchens, and bread. These images will seed a petite
brödbibliotekt or brödarkiv, combined with bread recipes, new and old,
from local citizens. Not dissimilar to how women would collect and share
small volumes of recipes in a church cookbook. In return, the results
and related artifacts will be shared with contributors.
As my
knowledge of Värnamo strengthens, I will create an interactive public
embroidery experiment of knäckebröd with yarn and other sewing notions. The surface of the knäckebröd lends
itself to text and image needlework, with its organic grid of
indentations. The happening, in a shared public space, welcomes everyone
to contribute by embroidering personal epitaphs on the knäckebröd while
sharing conversation and coffee. The results will be documented and
exhibited.
In conclusion of my proposed time in Värnamo, I will
take several walks through the city, wearing shoes made from loafs of
bread, tentatively titled En Brödvandring. The walks, in an
oblique way, reference “walking in someone else’s shoes”, while
meditating on cultural perspectives surrounding identity, other than
one’s own. /MV
Good Bread - The Spirit of Gnosjö - u[ntelling] s[tories], (us) - The Museum of Happiness