The third residency period was aimed at working on an art video which would sum up the project. I spent the two weeks revisiting people and places from my previous residency periods, and added some new ones as well.

BAC and me also recorded a conversation between me and two of the participants in the evening school, meant for documentation and social media presentations with On Mobilisation. The video was recorded in the home of Hans and Maud Söderberg, two veterans from the 1980’s peace movement in Gotland. Among other things, we talked about the role or function of art within a movement, such as the one they were a part of.

An initial bonus activity for the third residency period concerned the possibility of arranging an additional Peace Talk, in the vein of the evening school sessions previously arranged in March this year. This proposal fell through, due to a lack of time on the part of the four different organisations (Rebellmammorna, Nej till NATO, Svenska freds- och Skiljedomsföreningen, and Gotland for Palestine) asked to participate. In the end, Svenska Freds- and Skiljedomsföreningen arranged an evening with an invited speaker, a researcher on Swedish arms exports, which I participated in documenting.

Working on the art video, ‘Freden på Gotland’ or ‘Peace on Gotland’, was my main focus during this residency period. I visited people and places in order to shoot original material, and I also spent a lot of time looking up and securing the rights to archival material, i.e. images produced by other creators.

Among the people I revisited, I could mention Kerstin Blomberg in Fårö, who provided me with new image-material from working with Ukrainian refugees. Following up on that, I visited and filmed at a collection point for materials donated to the Ukraine. But the visit with Kerstin in Fårö was foremost spent in heartfelt conversation and in helping her with some manual labor around her farmhouse.

When visiting Kerstin, as well as in every other visit and conversation during this period, I took some time to talk about the video I’m working on, to explain the editing of the work and the way in which all the collected images are to be used, as well as where and how the finished video will be presented in public.

Also among the people and places revisited was the eco village Suderbyn, where I shot some new sequences for the video. The eco village is situated literally across the road from a recently re-opened military shooting range. If my previous visit to the village concerned collecting documentation of their situation and their work, this visit concerned shooting specific images that I wanted for the art video – a consequence of going through all the previous documentation and experimenting with placing it alongside other images. I contacted the local press-representative of the Swedish army in Gotland, who provided me with the rights to use their press images from the shooting range. I also got the rights to use some video shot by NATO during a joint practice drill at this same range. These images and clips are to be edited into the montage together with footage from the eco village, to give these contrasting images of peace work and peacekeeping a common context.

Both the inhabitants of the eco village and the local press-representative of the Swedish army in Gotland were generous with their time and their images, and replied with kindness.

Among the new places and people I got involved with, I could mention a circumstantial event during a local protest action that I participated in. I met with the students, teaching staff and researchers, who were part of the group Gotland for Palestine, and took part in three of their protest actions (Tuesday walkouts outside the university building, and Saturday manifestations in the central shopping street).

In between these actions, I went to visit a site in the farthest southern point of Gotland, where an engraved stone lies in a field to commemorate an experiment which took place in 1972. The Bang experiment was meant to measure the stress effects on people who were overflown by military jets passing the sound barrier, resulting in a bang. A group of mainly women were placed in a field, were overflown by fighter jets, and their stress reactions were measured by researchers from the National Institute of Health.

Back in Visby again, I took place in a Saturday manifestation with Gotland for Palestine, which was suddenly overflown by military jets doing a low pass with roaring engines. This event created a natural montage, which is now incorporated into the video.

There were many more meetings and more places, more images and more montages, which I think will be best presented in the video, as the video.

Until then – all the best!

from

Kalle Brolin

Malmö, October 2024