and–akter. rehearsals of escape. is an exploration of care, breath and the forest, shared by artists Hanna Wildow, Alva Willemark and Tony Karlsson Savci, in collaboration with composer Johan Wahlberg and video photographer Adam Nilsson, as well as with the audiences that participate.
‘and-akt’ is a Swedish word for a spiritual service. At the same time it brings together the words for ‘breathe’ and ‘act’. This intimate relationship between breath and the spiritual can be traced through most major languages, which historically have understood the lungs as portals to the unknown. and–akter. rehearsals of escape. examine these affinities between spirituality and language, while also connecting them to the forest. We invite ourselves and the visitor to enter a breathing, hymning pine forest called Gränseskogen (The Border Forest) – a distant and highly inaccessible nature reservoir in the midst of a rural Swedish mountain chain. Dressing the space in a borderland of video, sound, object and body, we unfold a site-specific, audiovisual and participatory installation. We invite the visitor to breathe through acts of slowness, proximity and together- ness.
The forest and it’s system of care – it’s roots covered in mushrooms through which a tree protects and shelters every other tree body – is explored as an artistic matter as well as an imaginary prophecy for the future. With the intention to pause and imagine other ways of relating to one another, we uncover historical and mythological connections between lungs, roots and languages through poetic playings within various mediums and materials. Reaching for practices of sharing and caring, we ask what it would it be like – as artists and as humans – to act with the intention of making ourselves, as well as every other body in this space, feel good? As an exhortation rather than a question, we dwell, unravel and entangle, while searching through objects, video, sound, installation and performance. Evok- ing, confirming and challenging conceptions and experiences: talking and caring, protecting and sheltering. Know- ing that one tree makes no forest.
As such, and–akter. rehearsals of escape. also searches for an unknown exhibition format. Neither a solo, nor a group show, but rather an interstice within which works are being made from the necessity of relation and connec- tion. It is the attempt of us as artists – and of whoever chooses to become part in the making of our installation – to direct attention towards systems of care and towards what it means to share – share a past, a present and a future – in a space, a world, and a system that persistently tries to make us not share. It is a call for breathing together.
Alva Willemark 