What is 3 WOODS?
Interdisciplinary artist duo Mia & Eric are undertaking a multi-year engagement process to create three interrelated works in response to three different woods: one in the Rhine-Neckar Region in South West Germany, another in Northern Norway, and a third located within the small town of Gateshead in Northern England. The works will be commissioned by Matchbox - the itinerant art and culture project in the Rhine-Neckar Region (Germany), Festspillene i Nord-Norge | Arctic Arts Festival (Norway), and Gift: Gateshead International Festival of Theatre, North East England's home for contemporary performance (England).
Why the woods?
The three communities are connected by their individual relationships to wooded areas. These woods are historically significant sites, places of folklore, used for recreation, and are biodiverse habitats for animals or other species. Mia & Eric, in collaboration with local residents, will research the biological, social, and industrial networks that are connected by the woods in each region. Over time, the artists hope to bring the communities and their woods together to be represented in a larger social/political context.
Who are Mia & Eric?
Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis are an artist team from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We bring together elements of craft, performance, and cultural geography to create site-specific and socially-engaged art works. Thematically our practice deals with urban and rural ecologies, social relationships, and place-based knowledge production. Throughout the last 12 years we have developed a practice that operates in both a gallery and public context. Our projects, workshops, artist talks, and lectures have been presented in formal and DIY festivals, galleries, and post-secondary institutions throughout North America and in Europe.
(see more of their work here)
Who is supporting this work?
Matchbox - the itinerant art and culture project in the Rhine-Neckar Region - is an extraordinary programme of artistic discourse, spanning theatre, dance, performance, visual art, music and literature that travels through the region and manifests itself in diverse ways. It appears, disappears, re-appears, continuing on its way while leaving traces. Matchbox is a format that relies on the spirit of discovery and love of participation by the audiences in the Rhine-Neckar region for its specific projects that are individually bound to places and local people and created by artists of international renown, thus radiating beyond provincial and national borders.
Step by step, the map of the Rhine-Neckar area will be explored as musicians, performers, artists, authors, painters and sculptors encounter local communities in which and with whom they will develop unusual, idiosyncratic works of art that are always specifically bound to the locations. The Culture Office of the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region invites them to specifically work in these more rural areas, away from urban centres. After all, this unique art and culture programme is all about offering everyday people the chance to not only witness but experience and participate in the artistic process right in front of their doorsteps, in the very communities of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Hesse and the Rhineland-Palatinate.
The individual projects serve as social events, creating exceptional yet collective spaces. As such, Matchbox is a format that invites, or even requires, and welcomes participation. This is art concerned with the real lives of people, taking on their working world, turning them into subjects or even protagonists.
Festspillene i Nord-Norge | Arctic Arts Festival was founded in Harstad, Norway in 1965. During summer solstice in June each year, we arrange a week-long international arts festival, dedicated to music, theatre, dance and performance. With its home base at 68° latitude, the festival is in and about the north where we foster and honor creative processes, contemplative exchanges and a communal spirit.
We care about our audience and we are dedicated to reflecting our surroundings. We encourage artistic cross pollination, celebrate the multiplicity of our communities and are passionately committed to the artists in our region at the same time that we are curious about processes and practices from other parts of the world.
Aiming at stimulating local arts and culture, we provide the opportunity for artists to think big and take a risk! Through our Young Artists Stipend and Open Call funding we allocate support for creative performance-based projects which challenge the boundaries of artistic expression through exciting collaborations and mentorship. We also organize the annual NUK-NyUngKunst (New Young Art), a workshop-based festival with abled and disabled participants that takes place within the framework of Festspillene.
Festspillene i Nord-Norge | Arctic Arts Festival is made possible with funding from the Norwegian state, the Finnmark/Troms and Nordland regional councils, as well as Harstad town council. Funding for international collaboration derives from partners such as the Nordic Council of Ministers, Creative Europe and cultural institutions in different parts of the world. From 1995 to 2015 the festival was officially designated as an ”artistic hub”.
Gift: Gateshead International Festival of Theatre, North East England's home for contemporary performance
Placing artistic experimentation and collaboration at its core, GIFT’s annual three day festival offers a supportive platform for artists to come together, to push the boundaries of their practice. International in scope and interconnected in approach, GIFT is a carefully curated conversation, providing a meeting point for meaningful exchange between artists and audiences based in North East England, and the wider world.
Founded in 2011 by Festival Director Kate Craddock, in response to a gap in the regional cultural offer, GIFT is committed to presenting contemporary and experimental practices that otherwise wouldn’t be seen in the North East.
The festival supports artists at all stages of their careers, enabling them to use GIFT as a space to come together, to take risks, and test out new ideas. We embed opportunities for audiences to get involved, and to connect with artists and their work across all festival activities.
GIFT links otherwise disparate organisations and locations - with events traversing the culturally regenerated Gateshead quayside and the commercially redeveloped town centre - and beyond. GIFT serves as a direct response to a location in transition and flux.