Application for ‘Globus Opstart’ - Nordic Culture Fund
Project name For Rest
Summary This project will explore how humans can use technology to enhance and access benefits of being in relationship with nature by creating a global network of transdisciplinary online labs and immersive interdisciplinary art projects, all through a lens of focus on embodiment and care. The project involves a broad range of artists, researchers and cultural and academic organisations from around the globe and is led and managed by Caribbean-British-Norwegian artist team Space is the Place.
Global vision
****‘For Rest’ is a transnational, transcultural, transdisciplinary project connecting roots from the Nordic forests with the world.
It aims to create space for cross-pathway pollination, gathering and creating a network of diverse ideas, disciplines and backgrounds. Seasonal online labs will establish global structures and co-creation through the fields of art, technology and care.
The project aims to be a long-term international practice, collectively developed by artists, researchers and cultural and academic organisations from around the world. Other voices, voices from the global majority (people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous, and or have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities’), will be highlighted in the project. As we find ourselves in a reality where digital is present in everything, we believe challenging, exploring and playing with this reality allows us agency to look at the world we live in from different perspectives.
Idea and theme Via highly sensory art works and environments 'For Rest' will be asking us to renegotiate our relationship to the natural world.
Our aim is to connect and engage critically important ways of thinking about how we live, how we are in relationship and explore ways to live better together in a global society. Using innovative technology and research, this project is a co-creation of transdisciplinary artists, scholars and researchers who have disrupted and revolutionised artistic and care work for decades.
Our work explores the environmental crisis and this most important issue of our time and how connecting through digital art practices can offer new perspectives and practical solutions as well as engage with those often excluded from these conversations.
‘For Rest’ uses innovative tech and digital environments such as sonification and visualisation of biodata, VR/AR, 360 dome, interactive online spaces all backed by new research from scholars and tech/cultural institutions.
Global network and collaboration The global network of artists, scholars, tech/cultural and academic organisations involved in ‘For Rest’ have already collaborated for decades on a range of crossover artistic and embodiment projects.
The collaboration will take the shape of a network anchored by seasonal labs with a focus on sharing research, resources, developments and co-creating crossover art works combining transdisciplinary approaches.
Labs will include sponsored places/scholarships to make ‘For Rest’ accessible, sustainable and also to ensure the introduction of new voices and collaborators, as the project evolves. 'For Rest' is a crossover project of art, tech, community, co-creation, collaboration, and care. The global network and sharing of research and practice is the core of the project and engages a transdisciplinary approach. The intentional curation and combination of people involved creates a truly diverse, engaging, community driven and inclusive project
What is going to happen in your Globus Opstart project? In this first phase of the project we will focus on artistic research and artistic development in addition to solidifying routes of communication and network development with the participating artists and institutions.
Digital and physical meetings happening between October 2023 and July 2024, leading to an online LAB with all contributors in May 2024 led by artists Elizabeth/Endresen, Space is the Place.