Contemporary Art and Context: Karolin Tampere

Karolin Tampere: Curiosity led learning through curating, collaboration and care

Karolin Tampere will show and tell from her ongoing PhD research project Down in the Bog – Thinking with Peatlands. A project led by an ambition to create cross-pollinating meeting grounds for art, natural science, environmental issues and the public. The three chapters project emphasizes the sharing and embodying of knowledge and awareness to create attention towards the need for increased care for peatland areas, locally, nationally and internationally. Practically and conceptually, the topic of peatlands act as a guiding map and compass to learn about historical, cultural and contemporary and geopolitical changes in the environments in Sápmi / Northern Norway, Estonia and selected places internationally.

Throughout the two group exhibitions Down in the Bog: Hibernation (Tromsø Art Center) and Down in the Bog – Sporulation (EKKM, Tallinn) followed by Thinking with Peatlands symposium, artists, natural scientists, environmental activists, NGOs and the public have lent the ecosystem of peatlands as a prism for sharing, learning and collaboration. Together we have dived deep into the bog, listened, smelled, touched it and learnt from it.

Karolin Tampere is an artist and curator currently a PhD Research fellow in Curatorial practice at Tromsø Art Academy, UiT and KMD, Faculty of Fine Art, Bergen, Norway. She has a particular interest in collaborative, cross disciplinary, long term socially engaged art practices, sound, music and listening. Karolin´s curatorial practice has dealt with a wide range of topics fueled by her interests, including gentrification, city development, art in public space, rights of nature, socially engaged art and ecology and the other-than-human.

Since 2004 she has regularly contributed to the “forever lasting” art project Sørfinnset skole/the nord land initiated by artists Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen. Together with Åse Løvgren their ongoing collaboration Rakett was initiated in 2003. In 2013 and partly 2014 she was serving as director of Konsthall C in Stockholm and collaboratively transformed the directorship of the institution into a collective named the Work Group/Arbetslaget. In 2017-2022 she served as curator at North Norwegian Art Centre, realizing context specific projects with artists across the whole region of Northern Norway. She co-curated Lofoten Sound Art Symposium (with Svein Ingvoll Pedersen) and LIAF2019 Lofoten International Art Festival (with Hilde Mehti, Torill Østby Håland and Neal Cahoon). Since 2011 she is part of ENSAYOS – a collective research practice that has developed distinct inquiries into extinction, human geography, and coastal and peatland health. The mission of Ensayos is to do eco-cultural conservation work in Tierra del Fuego and other archipelagos through collaborative art, science and community projects in partnership with existing decolonial, ecological, and cultural conservation initiatives. In 2022 ENSAYOS presented «The Gift» as part of «TURBA TOL HOL HOL TOL» – The Chilean Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale.

«Contemporary Art and Context» is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art.

The lecture will be held in English, everyone is welcome to join!