Elina Sjöwall in Insular Limbo

An Interview by Lili Rachel Beke
April 2021

Elina Sjöwall, b. 1994 in Åland S/F, is an interdisciplinary artist. She specializes in merging the fields of directing, scenography, writing, and visual arts. In the fall of 2013, Sjöwall pursued her first degree in Aesthetical Philosophy at Södertörn University. She then continued her artistic education at Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and Konstfack University of Applied Arts in Stockholm. Sjöwall is currently directing ‘Medea Mensch’, an experimental video piece, premiering in Vienna this July.

Elina. You are the human equivalent of a gentle embrace. When I think of you, Liza Minelli starts crooning by my ear, “Life is a cabaret, old chum...”.
Lili. You are my favorite poet. I keep finding myself getting lost while running at the Prater. To get to the green part I have to run through the locked-down Tivoli. I can never remember if I am supposed to turn right after the haunted zombie house or the Liliputbahn-sign. If I reach the T-Rex, I’ve gone too far, that much I know. Life sure is a cabaret, old chum.

Elina. When I think of you, I imagine you wearing a chunky knit turtleneck with a braided chest pattern resembling fluffy brioche bread.
Lili. Vienna is getting hot. I googled ‘Brioche Turtleneck’ to see if it’s a band name yet.  

Elina. When I think of you, I am reminded of Trip Fontaine quoting T. S. Eliot in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, “She was the still point of the turning world.”
Lili. I keep seeing an Australian Shepherd dog with Bowie eyes; one blue one, one brown. We had a shepherd dog when I was a kid, her kennel’s name was Gun Lake Ticket to Run and we called her Ticki. We would be in the middle of the fields with the cows thundering around us,  Ticki soaring behind them in mid-air latched onto a cow’s tail, looking like a possessed furry blackbird. Oh boy. She was the worst. I loved her endlessly. She was the still point of the turning world, man. As still as a still point can be latched onto a cow's tail.

Should we let this conversation unfold between old friends, rather than you having to supply definite answers to my profusely abstract questions?  
Yes, let’s. I am now live broadcasting my neurosis and we can together wonder why I do what I do, and how I have ended up at this moment in time I think of as my now. Excuse the poor connection.

Take me back to the beginning - to those initial steps, first stages?
I knew I wanted to write and I knew I wanted to make soundscapes. I wanted to explore processes of perception, the relation between people/objects/spaces from a creative point of view. Starting with a philosophy/aesthetics degree at Söderntörn in Stockholm made sense in many ways. I longed to keep the textual and analytical research base, but I soon experienced an ‘other-ache’. I started wondering, would I want to be the subject of these philosophical musings? I for sure wanted to get my hands dirty. I zeroed in on architecture in my studies, but I was already leaning into the artistic, scenographical, cinematic, and staged dimensions of the field. Following my studies in Interior Architecture at Konstfack in Stockholm, I pursued an exchange year at the Stage and Film Department at Universität Für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and I never really left. I began working on plays with a performative art collective, while I had my own projects running parallel - and that brings us up to date.

Your early upbringing on Åland, a Swedish-speaking archipelago in the Baltic Sea belonging to Finland, seems to me the very definition of farm life.

It was and its influences are everlasting. ‘Island symbolism’, the insular as both a geographical and mental state, is present through and through my pieces. Growing up in such exile affects one’s relationship with oneself and one’s environment. It fosters a desire to achieve total independence, which later contradicts the urge of wanting to belong in places other than the island. My interest in character, narrative, introspection, and retrospection all come from my early island life, along with the intrigue concerning the various roles we play throughout our lives. My artworks are micro universes compiled of existing nature and interior scenes, into which I insert myself and those around me. I study and discern ways we adapt and internalize social functioning through them. A recent work, Höhlenbrüter (2020), and the related movement/interaction study Ärztin (2020) signifies the idea of performative functioning well. As the designer of scenography, my work enveloped the dramaturgy and the acting and the costumes and the sounds - tying it all together. The textile elements in that piece feel closely bound to me, all the puns intended. The medium denotes the changing shapes we embrace as we enter into various social contexts, wrapped up at first, unfolding along the way, taking on suitable forms/roles while continually concealing certain aspects of ourselves. The main sources are sensations and emotions tied to memories. The work becomes a reconstruction of a nostalgic past, fitted in a way that reveals something about both the past and the present. The intrinsic value lies in the process itself, making the end product more of a souvenir.

This search for some form of a 'true self’ is a recurring topic in your work. Do you think it is within this foraging for the truth that the allure you feel towards nature comes into the picture?

I think about how little we know and how art becomes a way to navigate both the known and the unknown, a way to empathize and appoint common denominators. I feel an automatic, intuitive, and fundamentally honest connection when I’m alone in nature - by the seashore or in the depths of the forest. With people these split-open moments of transparency are possible, but it is obviously way more complicated since we all walk around clad top to toe in protective armor. Art is a symptom of our differences, but also a tool, a vehicle with which we can tune in to each other's frequencies. Art, as action and as representation, is often beyond our control similar to nature. Algebra (2019-2021), an ongoing project I’m still in the process of figuring out, demonstrates this sentiment. My obsession with algae led me to approach biology and science, making the object of examination my subject matter. It started as an absurd textual piece, inspired by technical frames, storyboards, scripts, etc. from narrative arts, film, and theatre. The sort of diagrams and blueprints these art forms use are all very associative, forcing me to deal with notions of acceptance and creation differently, more in line with how organic processes unfold in nature. Acceptance to me right now is a lot about confessing and surrendering to what I don’t know. I have taken a step, or twelve, back from academic and professional structures and other kinds of fixed bubbles that have been numbing me to the bone, dictating how I respond, accommodate and satisfy. I am relearning to defend and celebrate the potential of failure instead of avoiding and fearing its occurrence. Wanting results and perfection brings forth stagnation. Then again for some people, the feeling of safety and stability comes from avoidance. Avoidance has led me astray. Of course, being lost has its benefits,  but that is easy for me to say, as I grew up in a place where the water sooner or later tells you when you’re done being lost. Perhaps Algebra will remain a two-dimensional piece, but I would love it if it could turn into a performance, play or film.

You often work with a couple of projects simultaneously, exploring diverse creative fields and initiating dialogues across presumed borders but your approach remains consistent.

I do and yes, the methodology itself is unwavering. For instance, in a sculptural piece titled Staged Symbios (2018), I attempted to identify character and narrative in the environments that were the Västberga industrial area of Stockholm. Although it was a highly urban project, made of SS concrete and aluminum, the way I went about conceptualizing and then executing it can be tied back to the manner in which I would go about building things out of given materials found in my immediate surroundings as a kid. Once again, that project turned out to be about my fundamental fear of being fixed and my experiences of chronic restlessness while growing up. Staged Symbiosis exposed an inability and also a reluctance to make a city composed of concrete my own. It was a part of a bigger architectonic project where I interviewed people living in the area and had them draw maps to see how they related to their setting. The title is meant to convey how a city constitutes tamed nature, a curated and staged environment within a larger performative echo system. There is that concept, again! Floating between different artistic contexts, roles and mediums is a way for me to put things into perspective. You cut the idea/ project open and crawl around in it. Oh, yes. Then you crawl outside again and you throw it against the wall with all your might and the sound it makes hitting the wall tells you what to do. There is always a moment of confusion when projects begin to materialize and I realize they are the same project in different bodies. You’ve said this yourself before, Lili, we keep writing the same story in different disguises. It is about capturing what is already there and finding an adequate way of channeling it. You make it make sense. Or nonsense, for that matter. This occurs in cycles though, and I think it is important to let it do so. What is constant is the core rhythm, representative of a spine, an inner logic, a manual. A melody. It’s like sound, so direct and objective in the way it washes over you and becomes part of you - then you pick an instrument with which you relay the tune.

You’ve also told me that you enjoy not belonging to a specific medium or artistic context because it allows for a sustained and necessary risk - keeping you on your toes.

I do indeed require the persistent presence of underlying tension. Of course, it’s also crucial not to push too hard,  there must be left room for rest and refuge. When I work actively I try to see it as creating momentum; a preparatory stage. It’s always when I let go and let the work simmer that synapses start connecting. The actual work up to that point is a very strange and scattered process mostly driven by self-hatred and confusion. The risk I aim to embrace comes from insecurities prompted by the ego governing everyday life. We think we need some sort of justifiable chronology, an elevator pitch ready to go to validate our existence. There's a constant pressure to simplify, to define, to choose - to say ‘this is me and this is what I do’. I understand the importance of this gesture, it creates an illusion of safety and order. But it is problematic. Maybe I’m scared of that restriction or maybe I’m simply not there yet. Then again the latter is an excuse to legitimize my freedom within a boundless creative process. Like Medea Mensch (2021), for instance, a project I’m directing, which started as a play but soon developed into a more experimental video piece. It is still within a performative context but channeled through and supported by the qualities of film. I used to think being a director meant you needed to have answers. But it’s quite the opposite. It’s more about finding the right questions. Directing is on the cusp of it all, it allows me to pass through several doors, entering and exiting at my leisure.

Let’s journey into the future now - what awaits us there?

Well, we have got to get working on the ‘Brioche Turtlenecks’ album. I want every musician reading this to contact me immediately, let’s get this show on the road! On a serious note though, I am developing Ö (2021- ), a kind of surreal drama-documentary short film, which will hopefully be premiering early next year. It’s an attempt, yet again, at applying the insular as a creative force. Themes of alienation are always worth investigating, as it is more than applicable beyond the ö/island subject. The notion permeates everything and I want to find new ways of understanding and communicating it. The imagery of the archipelago functions as an adequate visualization of a psychological state. Its borders are geographically and physically defined, affecting both the mental and actual boundaries delimiting its shores. These limitations birth a combination of confidence and submission, resulting in a sort of openness and trust in whatever is beyond its borders. Yet, the same is also true the other way around, as skepticism and fear pervade the world outside the fixed shore. This paradoxical tension of what the sea might bring about is interesting to me; the ambivalence of the water acting as a separator and as a simultaneous connector. I would like to take on the role of the ’intern observer’ through the camera lens and somehow embody the phenomenon. To turn the insular, the island, and whatever it means into a character with its own wants and needs and memories and thoughts and emotions; a figure I can enter into a meditative dialogue with. Film is an interesting medium for this cause, it lets me play with and manipulate the perspectives. The cinematic qualities allow me to access the story from various angles. I can anatomize the mind of others through it and erase where theirs and mine begin.

Elina. This is where we bid each other adieu.

Lili. Are you leaving for the cabin?

The one in Never Neverland. Catch you on the flip-side.

The flip-side is my best side. Jag saknar dig.

Ich vermisse dich auch, Liebling. Be seeing you.