Testing Ground 1

Tilraunaleiðangur / Nomadic Expeditions
Human Beings in Nature – Mt. Hekla’s Hazard Zone

Curator and guide: Ósk Vilhjálmsdóttir, artist (see attached résumé)

17 – 21 August 2021

Fieldwork and workshops in the environs of Stóri-Klofi in the Landsveit district, led by Ósk Vilhjálmsdóttir and members of Stalker/Osservatorio Nomade

At the foot of the volcano Hekla, all is jumbled together: farm landscapes, hydroelectric operations, tourist sites, and a wilderness undergoing continual rebirth and destruction. We’ll consider the interplay of human beings and nature, humans within nature.

Ósk Vilhjálmsdóttir is an artist with decades of experience in tour-guiding, teaching, and exploring diverse terrain along the ever-shifting borders of life and art.

Stalker is a group of architects and scholars that formed in Rome in the mid-1990s. In 2002, Stalker established the research collective Osservatorio Nomade (ON), which comprises architects, artists, activists, and scholars who perform experiments and organize actions to recreate and redefine the potential and elasticity of space.

Stalker has developed a methodology of urban research using public walks to create a “collective imaginary” of a place. The method is generally used to “actuate” places anew, to open up new and unforeseen potentials. Stalker focuses on and investigates places that are generally neglected or even regarded as problems from a conventional standpoint. Collective walking becomes a tool and a collective communication device, opening up the potential to remap, reactuate, and even transform.

Testing Ground 2

Borgarvæðing landslags / Urbanizing a Landscape

Curator: Sigrún Birgisdóttir, Professor of Architecture, Iceland University of the Arts, (see attached résumé)

Field trips, presentations, and a symposium

Changing rural demographics, the introduction of new agricultural technologies, large- scale energy production, and escalating tourism have all had an impact on social and economic realities in the countryside. Fuelled by the debates on climate change and what has transpired in the relationship between urban and rural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic, we enquire into how the countryside is changing and the importance of the countryside for the challenges we face regarding our future.

The tract Urbanizing Landscapesanalyses and researches the contemporary local landscape and the processes of urbanisation. With events, workshops, field trips, and presentations we bring together artists, architects, urbanists, engineers, geographers, and tourism specialists to debate and analyse the countryside of Iceland.

Testing Ground 3

Aðlögun og mótvægisaðgerðir /Adaptation and Mitigation

Curator: Garðar Eyjólfsson, Docent, Department of Design, Iceland University of the Arts (see attached résumé)

Field trips and a symposium

“Adaptation and mitigation” is a governmental policy-making model for when to adapt to climatological and technological change and when to apply mitigation measures. The idea here is to shift this familiar governmental methodology to another context and use it to bring artists, designers, and architects together with specialists and scholars from other fields (philosophy, natural history, ecology, geo-engineering, bioengineering, terraforming, and etc.) in dialogue through lectures, works, and workshops.

This lens is pertinent to the present day because many contemporary challenges (climate change, emergent technologies, etc.) oblige us to choose between these two options. This platform is thus intended to voice expertise and raise possibilities in order to envision scenarios and facilitate critical conversation on decision-making for the future.