Finding Doubt and Questioning Truths with Hillside Projects
Welcome to the weekly IMS seminar!
Hillside Projects (HP) presents its lecture performance Come Back and Stay and a screening of the video Searching for the European Roller. This is followed by a conversation that considers the format of the lecture as an artistic means to navigate the borderlands between fact and fiction, myth and spectacle in the telling of events in uncertain times.
About the seminar:
Come Back and Stay (lecture performance, 30:00 min, 2024) brings to surface the consequences of a failed symbiosis in the event of the declining vulture population in Southeast Asia. Socio-political narratives on death and hierarchies in nature and society are woven together with tales about food, eating, colonisation and tilting democracies. The lecture is performed by a female narrator, and accompanying the narrator is a male performer playing an 80s style selection of vinyl records.
Searching for the European Roller (video, 16:46 min, 2017) takes place in several public and private institutions and archives across Sweden. It targets to mimic the purpose of educational videos and playfully applies an “academic voice” whilst exploring strategies of storytelling. The video weaves in and out of the history of a disappearing blue bird whilst re-tracing its memories and emotions. The narrative excavates the many layers surrounding the bird’s need for departure and the strong national desire for its return. In doing so, concepts of migration and identity are connected to a larger political understanding of belonging.
Short bios:
Hillside Projects (HP) is an artistic entity, based in Stockholm (SE). Its members are Emily Berry Mennerdahl & Jonas Böttern. Situated within a conceptual framework, HP investigates the many ways of telling tales with a querying of who should tell them and why. Notions of failure, translation and acts of listening are explored and the works take their form as lecture performances, video, walks, sound, text and trans-disciplinary collaborations.
BIO. HP has performed, screened and presented its work in, amongst others, venues such as Röda sten konsthall(SE), Bonniers konsthall (SE), Oyoun KulturNeuDenken(DE), PhotoKTM 5 (NP), Dazibao (CA), Kristianstad konsthall (SE), International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (DE), SODA2132 (LT). Recent research presentations and workshops include Södertörn University(SE), Lunds University(SE), Ambedkar University (IN) and UQAM (CA). Recent artist residencies include IASPIS–International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts(SE), Clark House House Initiative(IN) and SEA Foundation(NL). HP is currently (2025) working on a relational public art commission with ArtPlatform and the municipality of Jönköping and are current residents of the HULT residency programme run by Bild och Form, Region Kronoberg.
How to attend:
To attend the seminar online, please email ims@lnu.se