A site for exploratory

THIS IS A SITE FOR COLLABORATIONS AND EXPLORATIONS

Gylleboverket is a non-profit organization that operates in the tension between artistic and performative practices. Our field of interest spans across art, movies, deep ecology, permaculture, and eco-pedagogics taking off from both ritual and scientific viewpoints. Everything that takes place here is interloped and attached as a nexus where lecture series, think tanks, as well as artistic explorations contribute to one another.

We address questions of change and investigate what it means to be human. We aim to challenge and seek new political, practical, philosophical, poetic, and artistic perspectives on what radical change entails. We strive to find methods to navigate a world where the map keeps changing.

Our operations are ecological in the holistic and relational sense. The processes initiated here are part of an ever-changing ecosystem where all aspects of our operations interact. Those who visit the site as audience, and those who present or perform here are all part of the process of finding new ways to explore methods to address the rapid change that our world is experiencing.

The vision is to enable a site that charges our ability to act, where we dare to enter deep waters together.

The art platform Gylleboverket was initiated in 2010 on a previous site for recycled building materials, located outside Östra Vemmerlöv in Simrishamn’s municipally in the southeast corner of Sweden. The previous scrapyard was full of abandoned material, old engines, used bricks, and old windows, together with everything else that may be labeled as junk. It was a site plagued by the remains of consumerism.

But it was also a hopeful site where these remains could be used again for new purposes. Where the locals were accustomed to visiting to find bargained material for their building projects, they knew the place much better than we did, and they kept coming as we started to reshape the site into its present purpose. More than ten years have passed since then, and although many faces have changed throughout the years, a lot of what was here initially remains. Many of those who helped us in the start still contribute practically and intellectually in the daily operations where we together may gather our different perspectives to meet sincerely out of the most profound concern combined with curiosity.

The artistic platform works as a combined work site and a place for public events. Here people come to find exhibitions, take part in performance art, or participate in courses and lectures, either as visitors, collaborators,  and/or as artists in residence. During the years, we’ve started a cinema, the hangar that previously was used as storage is now converted into a scene for performance art, the old barn is today a grand work space and at the center of the compound you’ll find a beautiful outside kitchen and meeting space. The transformation continues, our next step is to upgrade the space into working as well during winter as it does throughout the summer.

Gylleboverket is a social sculpture, and the site is part of our artistic practice. At the same time, the road ahead is shaped by the people who make it into what it will become, through the artistic and interdisciplinary collaborations that occur here between professions of all kinds. The participating parties span from public institutions to self-organized and informal bands and sole individuals.

We strongly believe in long-term relations and in-depth experiences.

Etta Säfve and Jona Elfdahl, Artistic initiators

Gylleboverket collaborates within a network of individual artists and artists groups, theatre companies, and partners with a multitude of public as well as independent institutions. Among these are BRUNAKRA Temporary, Protect the Forest, Tankesmedjan Korsdrag (Think Tank), Teatr Weimar, Österlen School of art and design, Folkuniversitetet, Simrishamn’s Municipality, Skåne Region and the Swedish Art Council.

Gylleboverket is also a resource hub in partnership with Holma Folkhögskola, where we hold courses in topics of environmental adaptation.

Gylleboverket is a partner in Malmö Theatre Academy’s international Masters program.