DISTANCIO

Work for Mullsjö

Title: The Museum of Happiness

Artist: Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen

Concept

The artists are interesteded in exploring what happiness is and how we can give to it more space in society. Their approach is to take on the entity museum, a public space with educational and inspirational approach. The starting point fort the project is interaction with the people in the town Mullsjö, Sweden. The discovery will be presented as an internet institution. The Museum of Happiness, works to implement various measures of well-being, happiness, and satisfaction within the lives of individuals. The artistic methodology draws from their previous work where we researched notions of value and power that govern politics in the economic and social spheres within the circuits of capital. The material is collected through a survery, observations and dialogue. The museum focuses on the construction of communicative and reflexive practices aimed at the construction and reconstruction of qualitative thinking and sensory capacity; offering personalized learning frameworks to each of the visitors

Schedule

January-August
Gathering/generating material
Dialogue, survery and observation

Link to suvery >>> (to be added)

October 21st, release of distancio.se/showroom

Venue: Public Library, Tranås
The release of distancio.se/showroom and panel with the artists

The artists spent one week during the fall of 2019 and 3 weeks in january 2020 in Mullsjö, sampling public opinion and researching governance and happiness

Original proposal december 2019 by de Carmen & Bobrikova, the adation of the project is due to the pandemic wave sweeping the world in the spring of 2020. More about the artists and original proposal >>>

Happiness Survey

As artists, we are interested in exploring what happiness is and how we can give to it more space in society. Questions are around the following topics:

- The meeting between you and our thoughts leads to an event or maybe a museum of happiness?

- How do we improve our quality of life? Can we imagine a better life? Can we actively change that?

- Our ambition is to gather as many thoughts as possible about quality of life based on Mullsjöbor’s daily life in order to later figure out something that can bring happiness to many.

- What kind of quality of life-enhancing activity would you like to contribute to, or participate in?
We would love to hear what you think can be done, take the survey >>>

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.  

Framework The Museum of Happiness

We want to create a space, to offer different alternative frames of reference, by promoting the search for and access to new options or frameworks of existence through collective creation and recreation. This project will provide a space of education where people of all ages and backgrounds can meet to learn about the essence of long lasting happiness and well-being, a discourse we encourage in the project through facilitating questions, recreational activities, and workshops.

We propose with this project to build sites for interactions and create interlocutions between and with the subjects, resulting in a series of live, dynamic, changing, and renewing actions that will facilitate the implementation of happiness in participants. The Museum of Happiness’s aims to cultivate happiness and focuses on the construction of communicative and reflexive practices aimed at the construction and reconstruction of qualitative thinking and sensory capacity, offering personalized learning frameworks to each of the visitors.

THE MUSEUM OF HAPPINESS