| Recidency center | |
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| Recidency type | |
| Art form | |
| Time of residency | June 2024 |
| Country |
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| Contact info | emmalohan.mgmt@outlook.com |
| Definition of artistic practice? | I am a songwriter, collaborator, musician and performer experimenting with and inspired by the world around me. |
| Title of the investigation at the residency | Co-creation - The Sea Hotel |
| Description of investigations and findings | The Sea Hotel, a site specific immersive performance, is a tongue and cheek reconstruction of a luxury hotel highlighting the ecological devastation of the sea. The Baltic Sea is dying and this was very apparent during my stay on the residency. Speaking with locals and marine biologists, there was a sadness in their eyes that spoke wonders. The fishing industry has been replaced by tourism, old factories are summer coffee shops and fishermen are captains of tour boats. The island only works for three months of the year. The Baltic Sea is a warning to the future of the rest of the seas. We should look for ways to prevent further devastation. It is important for us as artists to help people to see under the water and see the devastation so they can make personal changes. Empowering care. I would like to take this research to my own Island. I have left Bornholm with the feeling that I am not just a performer. My art is active, reactive, resistant. |
| What are you most curious about or invested in in your own practice? | Group work, self-reflection and self-evaluation. I discovered a lot about myself. How I work in a group. How I see myself as a creator. I realised I want to make honest work that doesn’t need validation. That the process is more valuable than the outcome. How can I create art that includes audience in the process, gives them space to engage and reflect? Including rather than showing. Working in a group of people from different backgrounds and art practices coming together to create something. |
| What questions did you bring to investigate and what questions are you leaving with? | I arrived with questions about ancestry and historical trauma and how that affects cultural and local responses to ecology. I am leaving with questions about the dying seas around us and how we can help, as artists, to highlight these issues. That this is an urgent issue. I am leaving questioning my own place in the world as an artist. How I can make impactful resistant art that can educate and engage. I am leaving with a sense of urgency to making work to help change. |
| Transformative, creative moments at the residency | I enjoyed the “workshop with”. They gave me a sense of what everyone in the group could bring to the table. They also opened creative channels in myself. Like Marta’s dance workshop and Hectors visual senses promenade. I definitely felt my most creative in these workshops. It was lovely to present my work in this way, as I am very much about connecting to an audience through improvisation. It gave me great ideas on how we can make a soundscape for our final presentation of the Sea Hotel. |
| Keywords for the work done at the residency | Birds, Co-creation, Islander identity, Ocean, Sea, Water |
| Research locations | Baltic Sea, Tejn harbour |
| Further documentation | |
| Photos documenting the research |
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| Videos of work in progess or reflections | |
| Webside links |
Emma Lohan
