Workshop conducted by Helga Lára Halldórsdóttir in conjunction with DRAFTS 4: Body and Space Relations, at Art Address Canada.

The workshop took place on the 11th of April, 2023 at the Oakville Museum. Participants were invited to approach ordinary everyday objects as materials for creating new tools for very specific (and ridiculous) tasks.

The video work explores, analyses, and suggests a new set of embodied behaviour between body and object. The value of care in everyday life between individual and object is the main research focus. This relationship is highlighted in the artefacts core materiality, Icelandic lambs’ fur, where the hairy properties are explored through interaction.  The work is a collaboration with fashion designer Marta Heiðarsdóttir.  

Credit list:

Creative direction, concept, and design: Helga Lára Halldórsdóttir and Marta Heiðarsdóttir Cinematography and editing: Sigurður Unnar Birgisson 

Inter-actor: Vignir Heiðarsson

The video was premiered in Reykjavík Iceland in May 2022. Since then it has also been exhibited in Berlin, Germany and Lahore, Pakistan. 

You walk into an ordinary classroom. What can you already see as soon as you picture the classroom? There are probably some desks and chairs, a projetor or a screen. Can you remember how they are to the touch? A classroom can be full of material objects that we have stopped giving notice to and that simply fall into the background of our fast-paced everyday routine. The same goes for our everyday environments that have become the slaves of routine. Care, comb, connect... Learning to Care is a site-specific interactive installation that encourages participants to care for their material surroundings by doing. By dressing the familiar classroom table in fur clothing, it alters the objects function through materiality and how we should interact with it through our bodies. The fur needs to be cared for, combed, and connected with. Here sits an imperative opportunity to learn from a material. The installation takes inspiration from the fact that the conference is held in a school, where classrooms are in abundance and classroom tables are a vital place of learning. Therefore, we would like to welcome all to class.

Where all can learn to care in a soft learning environment.

The Pet Project

Gæla, or the Pet Project, is an explorative design research studio operated by fashion designers Marta Heiðarsdóttir and Helga Lára Halldórsdóttir. The foundation for the Pet Project originated from a fur coat. They are a unique piece of garment and fashion history that can have a significantly stronger and emotionally charged meaning compared to other wearable materials. Fur coats and other fur garments are more likely to get repaired or altered and can be passed down through generations as an object of value, both emotionally and economically. This added value interpreted through a material or garment caught our interest and we have been exploring this relationship since starting the project in 2019. By using the long-haired Icelandic lamb fur, a demand for attention is created. Our main attraction towards the mate-rial is because it needs to be kept and maintained, as well as the fact that the material used to be a part of a living being. The material of fur has immense interactive properties that can be implemented into the design of various products to study the relationship between body and object through tangible communications and affection inspired by how we care for hairy things and beings. The Pet Project therefore challenges the relationship between consumer and product from the perspective of the owner and the pet to explore the life-cycle of material objects.

The study of the interaction between body and space has taken centre stage in recent design and architectural debates. Space is being re-examined for its fluidity and ability to adapt, give dimensions, and how space measures change when understood as time. In contrast, the body inhibits both this space and time and constantly changes. 

The relationship between body and space is interdependent and intertwined, where they constantly affect, shape and impress on one another. The nuances, spirit and social implications of the many cultures and spaces we inhibit imprint on the body; while the body is where identity, reflexivity, soul, and mind mediate; thus, the two incessantly become sites of shifting cultural meaning.  

After the three efficacious proceedings of the artistic research project DRAFTS, this multi-platform exhibition brings together an international and multigenerational group of artists, researchers and designers to share current understandings, opportunities and challenges of Body and Space Relations through basic experimental art and design research. 

The exhibition explores empirical artistic expressions and functional aesthetic ideas to examine the role of objects and materiality in cultural sociology, the relation between bodily perception and space, and how it affects people’s experience of art when encountered in an unconventional setting.  In an international collaboration between Art Address Canada and the University of Borås – The Swedish School of Textiles, both artistic and research-based works are presented as a part of an exhibition and online webinar. Along with these activates, workshops are organized to interact and explore varied insights into Body and Space Relations. 

Exhibition: 6th - 15th April 2023 

Curators: Tazeen Qayyum & Faisal Anwar (Art Address Canada) and Faseeh Saleem (University of Borås, Sweden)  

Artists/Researchers: Akash Inbakumar, Atanas Bozdarov, Clemens Thornquist,  Erin Lewis, Helga Halldorsdottir, Karin Landahl & Stefanie Malmgren de Oliveira, Marjan Kooroshnia, Sameer Farooq, Soheila K. Esfahani 

The study of the interaction between body and space has taken centre stage in recent design and architectural debates. Space is being re-examined for its fluidity and ability to adapt, give dimensions, and how space measures change when understood as time. In contrast, the body inhibits both this space and time and constantly changes. 

The relationship between body and space is interdependent and intertwined, where they constantly affect, shape and impress on one another. The nuances, spirit and social implications of the many cultures and spaces we inhibit imprint on the body; while the body is where identity, reflexivity, soul, and mind mediate; thus, the two incessantly become sites of shifting cultural meaning.  

After the three efficacious proceedings of the artistic research project DRAFTS, this multi-platform exhibition brings together an international and multigenerational group of artists, researchers and designers to share current understandings, opportunities and challenges of Body and Space Relations through basic experimental art and design research. 

The exhibition explores empirical artistic expressions and functional aesthetic ideas to examine the role of objects and materiality in cultural sociology, the relation between bodily perception and space, and how it affects people’s experience of art when encountered in an unconventional setting.  In an international collaboration between Art Address Canada and the University of Borås – The Swedish School of Textiles, both artistic and research-based works are presented as a part of an exhibition and online webinar. Along with these activates, workshops are organized to interact and explore varied insights into Body and Space Relations. 

Exhibition at the Textile Museum Borås 23rd of November '23 - 4th of February '24

Curators: Tazeen Qayyum & Faisal Anwar (Art Address Canada) and Faseeh Saleem (University of Borås, Sweden)  

Artists/Researchers: Akash Inbakumar, Atanas Bozdarov, Clemens Thornquist,  Erin Lewis, Helga Halldorsdottir, Karin Landahl & Stefanie Malmgren de Oliveira, Marjan Kooroshnia, Sameer Farooq, Soheila K. Esfahani 

In todays material driven society, we have more things than we can care for emotionally. The objects that make up our everyday are simply not designed for caring through embodiment or affection. However, humans are predisposed to project human emotions and beliefs onto any-thing to rationalise and process from the external to the internal. Objects that exude empathy (care) can affect our emotional being and can define the way humans and non-human objects interact with each other and sustain a more lasting relationship between the two.

Humans are social creatures and react strongly to emotional cues. Facial expressions and body language are natural when evaluating a persons mood or emotional state but can also be used to assess anything “vaguely lifelike”. These lifelike characteristics have been explored through various activities and active agents (tools) to test the boundaries of emotional care and to problematise care within a new embodied relationship between body and object.

Materials have properties and characteristics that can inform an objects care function and instruct their needed care. Simple actions such as combing a hairy material object can be viewed as a fundamental and trivial act of caring between product and consumer. To keep the objects hair in order, it needs to be combed, maintained, and cared for. Failure to do so will result in tangled hair, or what can be universally understood as visual representation of carelessness.

Care is a fundamental human behaviour that can define the way humans and non-human objects interact witheach other. The objects presented in this interactive presentation demand care by design and have the potential of aiding in a more meaningful interaction with our material surroundings. These alternative objects demand our attention, and, in some cases, they demand our affection. This is highlighted within the objects materiality and function by design of artefacts that are referred to as emotionally intelligent objects.

We often convince ourselves that material things around us do not matter because they are in fact just things. That is why it is easier to discard and dispose of them and get new and fresh things to replace them. 

Things build up the foundation of the everyday routine and therefore we live in a constant embodied dialog with the material objects around us. The video work Fill me with things, gives the viewer an insight into a hairy universe that explores the everyday routine differently through the materiality of hair. 

Gæla is an explorative design research studio that analyzes and suggests a new set of embodied behavior between body and object. The value of care in everyday life between individual and object is Gæla‘s main research focus. This relationship is highlighted in materiality, with the use of Icelandic lambs’ fur and its hairy properties that manage to highlight and initiate interaction.

The designers behind Gæla are fashion designers Helga Lára Halldórsdóttir and Marta Heiðarsdóttir. They have been working together since 2019 and have exhibited their work and products internationally. 

Fly Around is an outdoor installation of shirt sleeves. They (a)dress the wind in a similar manner as a flag and point out a directional balance to guide the viewer through the installation. Because they are directed by the movement of the wind, the route through the sleeve maze can be different each time or in constant change. The installation embodies the wind both in turbulent and calm times. This alters the experience and expression of the work in relation to dissonance, similar to the weather (and social) climate we live in today. 

In today’s material driven society, we have more things than we can care for emotionally. The objects that make up our material everyday are simply not designed for emotional care and we miss out on establishing a significant relationship with them. Care is a fundamental human behaviour that can define the way humans and non-human objects interact. Humans are predisposed to project human emotions and beliefs onto any-thing to rationalise and process their surroundings. Because of this, care practises between consumer and product can support a lasting relationship between the two to explore an alternative material consumer existence. This PhD research creates and analyses artifacts that demand care by design to aid in meaningful interactions with the objects of our everyday. These objects demand our attention, and, in some cases, they demand our affection. This is achieved through the objects materiality and function by design to generate emotionally intelligent objects. 

The Meth(od) Lab is a place where active, live-action peer review of artistic research methods can take place. It’s a meeting place for design researchers to test out each other’s methods as a form of practise-based peer review. For this edition of the Meth(od) Lab, PhD candidates Helga Lára Halldórsdóttirand Matilda Forssblad have performed a review of each other’s core research method within their PhD studies in fashion design at The Swedish School of textiles. This is the first formal live edition of the Meth(od) Lab, and the lab is fully powered by the trial-and-error generator. We see the lab as an important new venue to evaluate design research, outside the text format, to push how we view artistic output in a research context.

The work is a re-design of the label for a signature drink for the design festival DesignMarch in Reykjavík, Iceland. The label explores the notion of altering the tactile experience and behaviour of well-known objects and transferring them between each other

The work is done in collaboration with designer Marta Heiðarsdóttir and Lady Brewery. 

Dwelling somewhere in between, facing the forest gaze and playground maze inside an outlined space. Collective force and external source moving through the course of time. 

The performance piece was created in collaboration with choreographer and artist Gígja Jónsdóttir and interactive composer Örlygur Steinar Arnalds. The work was done for and in collaboration with the graduating students of the contemporary dance department of The Iceland University of the Arts. The creation of the work was done in complete harmony between sound, movement and artefact in order to study how each factor can affect the ecosystem of the stage. Behavioural artefacts were the building blocks for musical instruments, generators of movement and functioned as translators between fantasy and reality. 

A full video recording of one of the performances is available here: https://vimeo.com/716084692 

Credit list:

Performers: Birna Karlsdóttir, Gabriel Marling Rideout, Inga María Olsen, Jóna Hlín Elíasdóttir, Lena Margrét Jónsdóttir, Marikki Nyfors, Ragnhildur Birta Ásmundsdóttir, Rebekka Sók Þórarinsdóttir, Sóley Ólafsdóttir, Tiffany Margelin.

 Choreography: Gígja Jónsdóttir in collaboration with the performers 

Costume and set design: Helga Lára Halldórsdóttir 

Composer: Örlygur Steinar Arnalds 

Lighting design: Valdimar Jóhannsson 

Dramaturgy: Nína Hjálmarsdóttir and Valdimar Jóhannsson 

Design store Epal curated an exhibition that showcased a wide range of products from the Icelandic design scene. The designers participating in the show have excelled in their field, both in Iceland and abroad.