Stewardship and Structures: Enacting, Regenerating and Maintaining

This event explores the intimate politics of care through the methodology of world building—physical structures that (are yet to) exist and maintain, material lifecycle systems, and communal distribution of responsibility. Drawing from three artists’ shared politic that we are held in webs of interdependence with our localities, environments and communities, together we will investigate how artistic practices can embody disruption, embrace slowness, practice thrift, and foster deep connection. 

Through two distinct yet synergetic presentations, we examine how critical frameworks—concrete, chaotic and conceptual—can transform perceived barriers into foundations for reshaping our relationship with the world during a polycrisis.

-Sean Roy Parker Intuitive Sensing 

“delayed                                           digestion a shift of state

dissolve my borders / surrender to deep minerality” 

– from Hospitality in “stewarding”, published by Monitor Books, 2024

A session exploring practical ways to critically engage with our innate role as Consumer. We will work towards accepting temporality and embracing chaos as a path to belonging with the world. Through forest bathing, experimental writing, attention to plant life, and radical amateurism, Parker guides participants to finding home within their own bodies while suggesting how a ‘degrowth’ future requires drastic decay of norms.

This presentation focuses on the practices of careful observation, conscious slowing, and mindful digestion of experience as forms of environmental and personal stewardship. It invites participants to consider how artistic practice can become a form of at-tending—to ourselves, each other, and the more-than-human world.

-Eva Rowson Adventures in Concrete: Maintenance, care and courage in changing concretised structures

“The brickwall is what you come against when you are involved in the practical project of opening worlds to bodies that have historically been excluded from those worlds. An organisation can be a world; a neighbourhood; a street; a home; a nation” –Sara Ahmed

Presented as a radio show mixing music, reflection, and etymological exploration, Eva Rowson excavates the polysemic* nature of “concrete”—simultaneously a building material, something definite, and the act of solidifying. Through this format, she examines how we might demolish concretised walls in society while sustaining new, accessible structures that lift the concrete ceiling for collective liberation.

Concretised structures possess deep foundations that sustain them as “just the way things are.” Yet the opposite of concrete need not be structureless—radical structure can provide vital support and empowerment, particularly for those historically excluded from concrete partitions. This presentation brings together diverse voices cracking concrete and building transformational, sustainable change from its ruins.

* A polysemic word is a word that has multiple meanings. In the case of concrete: a building material; a description meaning something definite; and to form or solidify something.

Semi-foraged rocket stove cooked vegan lunch by Andreas Engman.

LjurhallaFabriken is a non-profit organisation and resource centre for art and design, based within a 1930s factory and surrounding forest in rural Vårgårda. 

Led by artist Rachel Barron and child culture designer Nathan Clydesdale, LjurhallaFabriken is a meeting place for community building, resource sharing, collaboration and exchange.

Practical info:

LjurhallaFabriken is situated at Ornunga 8, 44793 Vårgårda.

All welcome! A free bus is arranged to depart from outside Akademin Valand, Vasagatan 50 at 10:00 on September 24 in order to arrive at Ljurhallafabriken for 11:00, returning to Gothenburg for 18:00.

Vegan lunch will be provided.

The event is free- but to secure a place registration is required (we have limited spaces on the bus and need to know how many are coming for the food planning and prep).

The event will be in English.

Any questions contact: rose.brander@gu.se