Unfold Landscape

_{^{title: Unfold Landscape
location: Askhult, Halland, Sweden
material: Woolblend
project: AIR Shift Askhult, Art Inside Out
date: 2018}}

Unfold Landscape

In the project Unfold Landscape the focus has been on farmer activities in Äskhult and the mutability of land. To examine this, historical maps of land property and air photos were used, supported by modern maps obtained by lidar radar. The topographic visualisation and microrelief of land, visible and touchable in the feltscape, has been the starting point for a farmer’s conversation and revealed stories of the making and maintenance of land. The artistic research gave new insights into landscape and the feltscape became the artefact of information, a map containing historical information and actual data.

Äskhult is an uniquely preserved village environment that offers a good idea of what many villages in West Sweden looked like 200 years ago. Äskhult and the surrounded fields have been protected as a culture reserve since 2004.

The small-scale cultural landscape of Äskhult is being gradually reconstructed into a reserve, consisting of small fields, mounds of stones and hayfields. To provide an open grazed landscape of heather moorland intervention was needed. Large areas of planted spruce forest have been felled to recreate the landscape of the early nineteenth century. During the reconstruction settlements that can be dated back to the Bronze Age have been discovered.

Farmer labour is realized by a farmer, a task which is undertaken in consultation with experts within different fields. The maintenance of Äskhult is controlled by Kungsbacka Municipality, the County Administrative Board and the West Coast Foundation.

Art Residency in Sweden September 2018 – November 2018. Art Inside Out facilitates nomadic residencies with the county of Halland.