Release of issue 22 Hurricanes and Scaffolding

Luis Berríos Negrón is a Puerto Rican environmental artist and experimental architect researching decolonial forms and forces of climate injustice. He is an Associate Professor at Umeå University. Recent exhibitions and installations include “Tormentera (Refuge)”, Hosting Lands, DK, 2024-ongoing; “Estratas, viveros y entrañas / Strata, Nurseries, and Entrails”, Las Lunas, Caguas, PR, 2022; “Sin Título / Untitled”, POST, Houston, Texas, 2022; “Passage of the Specularium”, Onoma, Fiskars, FI, 2020; “Anarquivo Negantrópico”, Gammelgaard, DK, 2019; “Wardian Table at Agropoetics”, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, DE, 2019, “Impasse Finesse Neverness”, Museum of Ethnography and Archaeology of Bahia, Salvador, BRA, 2017; “Collapsed Greenhouse at Undisciplinary Learning”, District, Berlin, DE, 2016; “Earthscore Specularium”, Färgfabriken Konsthal, Stockholm, SE, 2015; and “Tear do Terreiro”, 3ra Bienal da Bahía, Salvador, BRA, 2014. He holds a BFA from Parsons New School (2003), and a MArch from MIT (2006). As Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Art and Architecture at the UmArts Research Centre and in partnership with Bildmuseet (2023-2024), he is concluding “Tree nurseries remediating of colonial memory of landscapes” (TBD, 2025). This is the continuation of a research residency titled “Strata, nurseries, and entrails” (2021-22) that took place within the ongoing, national post-hurricane reforestation project by Para La Naturaleza, Puerto Rico, and from his PhD dissertation in Art, Technology, and Design from Konstfack & KTH titled “Breathtaking Greenhouse Parastructures” (Konstfack Collection 2020). 

For more details on the other contributors, see https://www.umu.se/en/umarts/about-the-conference/luis/

Gabriel Bohm Calles is an independent artist, lecturer and teacher based in Nybrostrand and Malmö, Sweden. He is one of the main initiators of the Interpresence Institute at Umeå University and works with education programmes and text production at Malmö Art Museum. In his art, Gabriel Bohm Calles focuses on non-verbal aspects of being together and telling stories. Drawing on a rich tradition of Butoh dance, his performances push the boundaries of the self and revolve around the tension between society and individual, mediated through the body, its identities derived from personal history, class, race, gender and age inscribed in its movements. Gabriel has exhibited and performed as a solo artist and in groups at Bildmuseet, Umeå, Tate Modern, London and Studio Plesungan, Solo, Indonesia, among other venues. He has taught performance classes and given lectures at Malmö University, Goldsmiths College of Art, London, Umeå Art Academy and elsewhere.

Geir Tore Holm comes from Olmmáivággi/Manndalen, Troms. Since 2010 he is a farmer at Øvre Ringstad in Skiptvet, Østfold. Alongside his work with video, photography, sculpture, performance and installations, Geir Tore Holm mediates, writes and teaches contemporary art. In 2003 he initiated the infinite Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land in Gildeskål, Nordland, together with his partner Søssa Jørgensen. He is a participant in Ensayos, a collective research project rooted in the natural park Karukinka in Tierra del Fuego, Chile. Geir Tore Holm led the establishment of the Academy of Contemporary Art and Creative Writing, University of Tromsø in 2007, and did his PhD at Oslo National Academy of the Arts with the artistic research project “Poetics for Changing Aesthetics”. He is a recipient of the National Grant for artists and the John Savio Prize 2015.

Niclas Kaiser is a clinical psychologist and associate professor, leading the Interpresence Institute. His research interests are intersubjectivity, implicit shared intentionality, systemic processes and their evolutionary and biological underpinnings, including their meaning on an individual and dyad/group level. Most of all, he wonders how relations and their unfolding may be studied and what theories are valid. As a way forward, the concept of “social breathing” is introduced for its ability to engage and maintain the interactive psychological weave and interpresence as a condition-dependent phenomenon of being here-and-now with another. These concepts are included in the recent suggestion of the ConNECT approach for neuroscience towards meaningful interpersonal moments. These concepts align with the paradigm shift from synchrony to temporal dynamics, from individual to dyadic, from cognitivism to embodied/enactment, from the observing brain to second-person neuroscience, a shift that reflects the present changes in technical and methodological development and cross-theoretical endeavours.

Timo Menke is an interdisciplinary artist based in Stockholm. His practice is driven by an interest in dark objects, processes and methodologies to cultivate a “dark holism”. Using a wide spectrum of light-sensitive, performative, conceptual and text-based methods, his work deals with various forms of nature-cultures and their entangled histories, phenomena and agencies—from Danish sperm donors to Finnish male choirs, from a defunct Swedish mine to a waste landfill in southern Sweden. Menke graduated from Konstfack in 1999 where he also taught as Assistant Professor in the Art Department between 2004 and 2014. Menke’s work is represented in Moderna Museet Stockholm, Kalmar konstmuseum, Pori Art Museum, and is distributed by Filmform—The Art Film and Video Archive. He is the recipient of major grants from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee/IASPIS and was on the board (treasurer) of The Nordic Art Association (NKF)—a non-profit organisation dedicated to the visual arts in the Nordic countries—in 2022–25.

Lisa Nyberg is a visual artist, teacher and researcher at Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in Sápmi/Sweden. Nyberg’s work takes the form of installations, sound pieces, books and performances as well as facilitating workshops, guided meditations and institutional processes based in embodied learning and radical pedagogies. Her current research examines what it means to know and be known by (a) place. Nyberg’s work has been exhibited at the Research Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Kunsthal Aarhus, Konsthall C, Trondheim Art Biennial, Signal—Center for Contemporary Art, Röda Sten, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Dunkers Kulturhus, Liljevalchs Konsthall and Gothenburg Art Museum.

WASP-HS Art and AI Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Umarts in partnership with Umeå School of Architecture.