Archive, 2013 -
Time Strollers / Port as in portal
Film HD 16:9, 03:23 min & Walk
2020
Part of the collective virtual & live group exhibition Connecting Georgia (2019-2020) hosted by Intercult. An artist-led project exploring post-industrial waterfront heritage in the context of urban planning and community development, connecting the city of Batumi with other European cities. I was invited by SIMKA (Karin Lind & Simon Häggblom) to make a site-specific work connected to the path between Slussen & London-viadukten, Stockholm.I conducted many walks back and forth during the week we worked, giving myself different tasks of walking, looking, listening while making memory notes after each walk. I then made a montage of some of these texts together with quotes from Walter Benjamin's writings regarding the flaneur, read by an AI voice. During the opening I also invited the visitors to perform silent backward walks with me.
Participants from Stockholm -
Oskar Gudéhn, musician och architect
Felice Hapetzeder, visual artist
Sofia Romberg, visual artist and set designer
SIMKA, curators och visual artists
Credits -
Intercult
BAHA, Batumi Art House Argani
Baltic Sea Cultural Center, Gdansk
PPV Knowledge Networks
TU konstplattform/Art Platform
Svenska Institutet
Photo -
José Figueroa
What the Thunder Said
Light Installation
2021
Looped light installation transforming The Waste Land Part V – What the Thunder Said by T. S. Eliot, into morse code.
Installed at Rundgång /
Royal Institute of Art.
Floor piece by Max Landegren.
Hänvisngar/Directions
Textile Installation
2021
Discarded curtain rod, metal pole with carved stage directions from plays by Sarah Kane, Shakespear & Strindberg.
Part of the “1st year Show”,
The Royal Institute of Art.
Photo: Jean Baptiste Béranger
Hens Köksalmenack
A5 Calender
1968, 2019 - 2020
Husmoderns Köksalmanack (”The Housewives Kitchen Calendar”) is a Swedish combined calendar and cookbook published annually since 1933. The title changed to Köksalmanack in 1979. ”What does the Köksalmanackan want? It wants to become the housewives essential sidekick. If you use the Kitchen Calendar, the household machinery, the cooking, and the care of your entire home, will run much more smoothly than before."
1968 was in Sweden as abroad, a year moved by uprising. In the copy I worked on (ed. Elisabeth Tham / Åhlén & Åkerlunds Publishing AB) life trivia despite ongoing major events became visible. This led to the idea to become a "co-writer" 30 years later, minding that the world is a constant turbulent site. In this book I am overlapping my own notes, comments and images with the original ones. Like: "Britta is sick" next to recipes about double toast and chocolate squares, or sew meetings and church gatherings accompanied with ads for napkins and jottings concerning birthdays and weather reports. Sometimes I just hijack pages, try to reflect my unknown co-writer's life or let the outside implode. The participatory lies in letting these two decades somehow intwine. Two women with different thoughts and beings but united in the wondrous curse of everyday life side by side with earthly dramas.
I Strömmens Spår: En Illusorisk guide
Publication & Field Work
2015 - 2018
I Strömmens spår started 2015 and deals with the Åland Islands author and public debater Anni Blomqvist (1909-1990) and has mainly been planned out during visits between 2015-2017 in her museum home, Strömmen, located at Simskäla. The working title comes from one of her novels that I found a discarded copy of 2014, the book worked as a catalyst for the idea to make a multifaceted project that finds its inspiration from her life and work.
I invited artists with different backgrounds to Strömmen during July 2017 with the task to make a work inspired by the location. They also lacked greater knowledge about Blomqvist as a way of making the image of her and the site more scattered. The collected material then became a 200 p publication with a CD and QR flyer to the video & sound pieces.
The first part of the book contains an introduction carried out like a script for a play between ”The Guide '' and ”The Visitors'" . I transcribed some of the guided tours that I held and added information about the book and thoughts about storytelling and the performance of the everyday accompanied by images from outside visits.
Kristina Janni Ståhl made a painting of a part of Annis bedroom wall that we moved around in the house and documented.
The dancer and choreographer Carima Neusser made a score looking at Blomqvists body language from still images, this was presented as a flip chart at the end of the book.
The performance artist Gabriel Bohm Calles made the film “Jag har lyssnat efter tramp av kära fötter; det går en stig genom huset som leder till havet.
View here >>
The musician Jon Lennblad made compositions out of field recordings from the site.
Listen here >>
Thank You! Jon Lennblad, Minna Romberg, Gabriel Bohm Calles, Carima Neusser, Kristina Janni Sthål, Marika Markström, John William Häggblom, Ann-Gerd Steinby, Bosse Ahlnäs, Ulf Romberg, Sonja Snellman, Peter Lundberg, Maja Romberg, Karin Lind, Simon Häggblom, Familjen Lindholm.
Project carried out with support from: Ålands Kulturstiftelse / Ålands Kulturdelegation / Svenska Kulturfonden
I Strömmens Spår: En Illusorisk Guide
Copyright 2018: Sofia Romberg & BAM publication
Graphic Design: Sofia Romberg
Printing: Finborg Graphic AB
ISBN 978 91 639 2876 5
Du är här / Olet tässä / You are here
Video & Sound Installation
2016
A video and sound installation for a single-viewer aboard VL Rosella that trafficed Kapellskär - Mariehamn. Here we used images and sounds to foil context, time and space. Being out on the ocean can be like entering a kind of vacuum in time and this was something that we experimented with to amplify further via a windowless room (the cabin), to let a sense of dissolution and disorientation get reinforced. In the work empty areas from the ferry, a desert and intimate sonic landscapes got connected.
In collaboration with the musician Jon Lennblad
Credits: VL Rosella
Fönstret åt gården / Rear Window
Installation
2015
A spatial installation for and about the 100 m2 exhibition art space Kakelhallen (former milk store) in Mariehamn, Åland Islands (FIN) before it got demolished and an exploration about narrating a multifaceted place. The labyrinth worked as a way to arrange several rooms in one space to contrast each other and tell parallel stories with the help of darkness as a portal between what you leave and what you enter.
After passing red velvet drapes and a dark passage you encountered a scene from the building filmed outside with a child dressed in a cape taking her time to mend and spend time with the surroundings. The following space was occupied with several monitors with flashlight films from the building and installation space by night. The path ended with a two-person tent, made by the cape that appears in the film, and the view of the installation space empty and endlessly sliding by at a monitor next to a wall which worked as a writing/message point.
CONCEPT Sofia Romberg / Jon Lennblad
PARTICIPANT AND PHOTO John William Häggblom J John William Häggblom
CREDITS Mervi Appel / Svenska Kulturfonden / Kakelhallen / Emmaus / Audiotrade
Holiday
Installation
2013
Holiday was my examination project at SADA when studying Scenography and a leap towards processes that enables rephrasing, different angles of approach and ways of blending mediums. It was also a way of exploring my newly found interest in audiovisual installations. The method was trial and error in large scale where multi channel video and spread sources of sound became some of the tools together with the composer and sound designer Christoffer Karlsson and inestimable help from several others.
One's relation to time and space and how the visitor's path could be choreographed by external components, was also part of the investigation.
A trip to the sun worked as video material where the subject of the tourist became the symbol of temporary attachments to people and places. The dubiousness about what is staged and genuine? The voyeuristic perspective between the locals and the tourist and how a memory can be reflected and constructed, were some of the interests.
The installation was built in a black box and presupposed that four to six visitors per loop would move through the room according to a dramaturgy set in advance. Your first encounter was in a quiet and pitch black gate, earlier you had been instructed to wait there and to start moving into the room at the start of sound. Simultaneously you saw a light evolving further in the room, voices instructing you became clearer. The first space was built like a peeping cabinet with tall red velvet curtains and hills of ochre colored sand. At the end of the curtains heavy light came flowing towards you like a sun rise. The landscape of light and sound changed as part of the dramaturgy of the room, ending dark again while the sound wandered off to another part of the studio. To help you find your way an old theatre back-drop slowly lit, leading you to a bigger room where a shaky film of a walk by the beach initially was projected, soon accompanied by two other films on parallel walls. This ended with the room pitch black again, letting the direction of sound change its position while fluorescent light gleamed behind black drapes of a further passage leading you out to the light of day again.
IDEA AND CONCEPT Sofia Romberg COMPOSITION AND SOUND DESIGN Christoffer Karlsson ARTISTIC GUIDANCE Katarina Eismann / Johan Scott / Per A Jonsson LIGHT DESIGN Sofia Romberg / Björn Nilsson / Esko Vuonokari TECHNICAL SUPPORT Max Edkvist / Pelle Holmberg / Johan Andersson SPATIAL CONSTRUCTION Sofia Romberg / Göran Wendel / Martti Malkamaa ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Romberg-Snellman-Lundberg Family / Jon Lennblad / Titti Grahl / Lena Uhlander / Johanna Janemon / Johan Sundén / Arne S Lindberget / Janne Nilsson / Torulf Holmström