| 1. What is the most challenging aspect of your work at the moment? (Sweden) Art Inside Out is run as a collaboration between Halland County and its six municipalities. On one hand, that gives us the opportunity to operate in a rather vast geographic area and exciting sites. On the other hand, the municipalities are run by their own governments and politics, and their funding of arts and culture is even more limited now. So, even if all our thematic residencies are site-specific and tailor-made, and the county covers most of the costs, we need to look for more elaborate ways to get a job done in this new reality.Some of the strategies are both finding new alliances and increasing established collaborations with actors who can offer various support that is not ncessarily financial.But also inviting artists to our residencies who can produce work and ideas that are multilayered and can appeal to different audiences. 2. What are you working on now that has got you excited? “In the Wave of the Waves” is the residency that we are conducting this spring and summer, in relation to the World Heritage Grimeton Radio Station.The residency explores the possibilities and limits of translation as well as its inconsistencies, dissonances and resistence. What happens when language, matter and identities are transferred from one context to another? What is gained and what is lost when boundary lines are crossed? The artists Einat Amir and Eric Magassa are using this heritage site as a springboard for excavations of historical and contemporary events which opens up for philosophical and existential reflections, about geopolitics, everyday life and everything in between. I’m really excited about the process that we’re just starting up with these two artists and I’m looking very much forward to working with them. 3. What do you wish you knew when you first started in this position? Since I’ve been holding this position for almost ten years now, it’s a bit hard to go back to that very moment. Moreover, this type of nomadic residency institution, without fixed place or facilities, that is constantly moving, adapting and reinventing itself, was just launched when I came aboard and it was something rather unique in Sweden (and in many ways it still is). And even if we knew what we wanted to achieve, there were no guarantees for anything. Also now, being a well-established and renowned art institution, there is no way to tell for how long it will last. So perhaps, more of an insight after all these years than “I wish I knew back then”, but in order to survive and thrive in this sector you really need to stay relevant and true to what you believe in. 4. Looking at the field of art residencies in your region, what do you think is the most pressing issue? Funding is probably the most pressing issue, not only for the smaller artist-run residency, but also for bigger institutions. There are a lot of great initiatives, both locally and nationally, but we have seen severe cutbacks in government funding of arts and culture - which is of course not limited to Sweden. The tradition of private funders is still not so established in Sweden, although it is what our current government is favoring, so it brings some insecurity also to the field of art residencies. Of course, to build up a more robust field we need to have different types of funding, and artist-run residencies are de facto often funded by the artist themselves – via side jobs or such. But we are definitely in some sort of shift now, that is also questioning the ways artistic work ( and all that surrounds it) should be paid for. 5. What are you reading (or watching/listening to) at the moment? There are two rather distinct books that I’m reading now. One is “Art Rings”, by Maria Lind, perhaps the most renowned Swedish curator today, who uses twenty art pieces to discuss contemporary art as a form of understanding. The other one is “Ottoman Empire” by the historian Dick Harrison, which is a bit more truthful and multilayered account of this phenomenon. | 