Art, climate and community development: Meet the HULT residency fellows Ida Bencke and Kibandu Pello-Esso

We at IMS are proud and excited to be the academic host of newly founded HULT residency in Kronoberg. The residency provides curators and artists with the opportunity to explore the relationship between humans and to connet art, climate change and community development.

About the seminar:

In this seminar, Ida and Kibandu present their work and their plans for the residency.

Residency statements:

Ida Bencke: “With the HULT residency, I look forward to working my way further into an interdisciplinary and activist-oriented curatorial field between the local and the international, between ecological issues in neighbouring landscapes and communities, and in networks of solidarity that link ecological practices and social justice struggles across borders, positions and geopolitical contexts. I look forward to learning more about and from the stories, artistic communities and self-organised activism that exist in the Kronoberg region, and to exploring the possibility of making connections between different actors through curatorial practice.

Kibandu Pello-Esso: “During my stay, I will be taking a closer look at energy as a prerequisite for ‘industry’ as a phenomenon. As we will be in Kronoberg, my gaze will easily fall on the glassworks that have been so important to the region. There is also exciting research at Linnaeus University on energy and regenerative methods that promote ecosystems, which I would like to take a closer look at. To have this opportunity to work in a focused way in the region, and then to be able to present my work at Växjö Konsthall is so exciting. I am very much looking forward to this.”

Biographies:

Ida Bencke is co-founder of the self-organising collective Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology and co-curator of the exhibition project Hosting Lands, a slow and translocal exhibition movement revolving around common land use, and the politics of hospitality. She is a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen as part of the research project OIKOS - a cultural analysis of care and crises in the 20th century. For more information: labae.org & hostinglands.com

Kibandu Pello-Esso explores the division of different spatialities. This can be anything from urban public spaces to rural spaces. Pello-Esso participated in Documenta 15 in the collective art project Inland 2022. Kibandu Pello-Esso has a master's degree in spatial design from Konstfack and a post-master's degree in Decolonising Architecture from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. For more information: kibandupelloesso.com

Find out more about the HULT residency programme here. (Website in Swedish)

How to participate:

It is possible to attend the seminar both from Newton C1202 in Växjö and via zoom. Contact us at ims@lnu.se if you want to participate via zoom, or sign up for our external email list to receive automatic updates on our events here (zoom link and additional information are sent out one week in advance).

Photo: 'Aurora - Connecting Senses’, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Signe Kjær Jensen