Hova 2007

The 25th of June I sat down on the train towards Hova, one of the main villages in the council of Gullspång. It has around 1500 inhabitants. I myself live in Stockholm with over 1.8 million inhabitants, so there was a clear difference. How pleasant! A few hundred meters to the store, to the forest, a few hundred meters to everything! I could walk everywhere and did not need to scuffle with herds of people under ground. It was so calm and quiet. A very comfortable tranquility, although Hova lies right next to a main highway, a bit inwards the forest you could not even hear that traffic. We picked mushrooms, blueberries and raspberries. It is really a complete other feeling in food that you have harvested straight from the plant yourself. I have lived in Stockholm for a year and previously in smaller places but never in such a small community as Hova. It was a long time ago I took a walk in the forest.
Another thing I appreciated was all the encounters with others. Of everyone that participated in the project I had previously only met a few. The atmosphere was splendid, I remember the dinners as very special. The Art was not the most important thing and perhaps so much occurred therefore. I barely painted, my ordinary practice, but I was very active in other ways. I manufactured several camera obscuras. Light is really a fascinating occurrence. Such a simple thing as a hole in a covered window and the light caught on a piece of paper. It felt completely magical. The view from outside as a blurry minature film. So light is a form of electromagnetic radiation and the photon its carrying particle. What are photons really? A particle without mass, only kinetic energy... How curious.
I usually work alone but in Hova I worked together with others. It was much more playful than at the University since I did not subdue myself under any kind of pressure, the result was not the aim, rather the collaboration itself. Together with Jennie Öhberg and Emma Ströde I was part of the cortège of the Hova Medieval Week, dressed as a three. Magnus Oledal and I got fascinated by the amount of coffee mugs at the missionary house and executed the installation "The Last Church Tea", which among other things referred to the fact that the missionary house would no longer function as a holy building since it had been sold. During the Medieval Week we had a theatrical supper in the medieval village where Sara Lännerström had tailored individual costumes for all participants. She additionally staged a funny light show where, apart from us, local teenagers got involved. Several fine exhibitions where organised, we filmed in a condemned house and painted the walls of 20 meter long pedestrian subway. A lot of things were happening even though it did not feel so at the time. It was calm and comfortable. I'm looking forward to next summer when I hope to participate again.

Maria Jokitalo