A professor called me up in 2020 and expressed concerns about our name.

“When I google Swedish Girls, there’s not art and design coming up… You have to change your name.”

Our brilliant friend and collaborator Kourosh Hekmatara built our website that we launched early 2021 to make sure Google is only about Swedish Girls.

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We had time for one group exhibition before the pandemic paralyzed the world. It was a formative time for us, we were in a vulnerable position and as under duress we reevaluated our practice. We used the time that suddenly spread out in front of us to develop the projects that mattered to us.

"Seats" developed into "Seats System", a modular furniture series that we produce independently and evolve by the day. Design is something that we live alongside and form can affect your mood, actions and being. This work is for public as well as private spaces. Sorry for the start up tech guy energy but the idea of this system is that it can be a framework for LIFE.

In 2020 we started selling it through APOC store, where we are still represented. This is where the curators of Alcova found us and invited us to exhibit in Milan 2021. This led to a chain of events that characterize the practice we have today. More on that later.
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Stay sexy

During the spring and autumn of 2019, we began to search for context. We had no interest in what was set out for us after graduating. After assisting the artist Tjitske Hemkes together with Matilda Ellow and Julia Jondell in Amsterdam, the four of us realized we shared the same ideas. We tried to formulate a manifesto but didn't have the tools yet. What we could talk about was an ambition to create an environment for exchange, without hierarchies and friendship as our foundation. This was also a way to split a studio rent, it was crucial for us to have a physical space to go to (and from) to be able to take ourselves seriously. Together we created a context and gave it a name, Swedish Girls.
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‍Swedish Girls is their joint vehicle that will run in parallel to their respective practices. ‍

As the curator and critic Ashik Zaman beautifully put it after he was the very first to visit our studio.

We hosted a party to inaugurate this context; "Experience Swedish Girls" – an interactive exhibition divided into 4 rooms. "Taste Swedish Girls", a spatial installation made out of sugar crystals that you could lick. "Touch Swedish Girls", a bar where you had to put your hand into jelly to grab a beer. "Admire Swedish Girls", large scale-portraits of Swedish Girls in a gallery set up with benches to sit down. "Dance with Swedish Girls", a dance floor accompanied with a video work of a day in Swedish Girls' lives.

From this moment it became clear that the search for context could expand into community. And luckily for us you could already buy Swedish Girls merchandise in every souvenir shop in Sweden.

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BFA project by Mira Bergh, 2019

Transcript started

Mira: Hello

Josefin: Hey how are you today?

Mira: I'm good. Yeah.

Josefin: Good I'm happy to hear, okay, so for this conversation I would like us to deep dive in your BFA project. I wrote about mine in the previous blog post but I would like us to have a conversation about yours and analyze it now that five years has passed and yeah I mean I have some questions. Want to see if there's anything here that we can trace back to and develop.

Josefin: We start with the video and you get to live commentate, okay? Or just say something. If you don't feel anything, don't say anything.

Mira: Okay.

Mira: Yeah.

Mira: Let's see what's. Yeah.

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Dancers: Filippa Fahlin, Filippa Lindman, Jenny Håltem Fongaard, Alicia Karhunen Larsson / Music: Karl Johannes Jondell / Film: Kourosh Hekmatara

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Josefin: Did you know all these dancers?

Mira: No, so this is maybe the first, not feeling, but memory that comes up that I reached out to the girl in the red hair first.

Josefin: Was it the first time you met? I thought you knew Filippa.

Mira: No I didn't know her. I got a tip about her when I was looking for dancers and reached out on instagram. I thought it might be hard to find someone that would be interested in this kind of project that’s intuitive, experimental and a bit weird but she was very interested and very positive. We became friends afterwards and she's an amazing, positive person.

Mira: And her reaction to me inviting her to this was really talking to who she is as a person because she was so interested and really got into the thoughts that I told her. She was part of this dance group and asked them if they wanted to be part of the project too.

Josefin: What instructions did you give them?

Mira: I tried to not give them any instruction at all. I wanted it to be very spontaneous because the project was about the body and how the body interacts intuitively. So I also didn’t want it to be a choreography or something. It was not really about dance in that way. It was more about the body and how they very spontaneously wanted to act around the objects. The music was added afterwards so for the performance it was only the bodies with the objects.

Josefin: But did you tell them about your process of making the pieces? Because it was a similar approach?

Mira: So, yeah, this was the only input I guess, that they had to work around and think about, but I didn't tell them that much about it.

Josefin: It's really interesting to return to these thoughts because I'm so surprised over how smart our projects are actually. I mean, I've been watching this film a few times now, and it's so beautiful. Maybe we can look back at the ideas and feel like they're a bit naive and surface level because the degree project is not more than three months. But I think yours is so well put and executed. Can you tell me a little bit about your feelings because you have had conflicted feelings about this project in hindsight?

Mira: I haven't thought about it for so long because I think it was such a hard period in our lives, it was so stressful and you had a lot of pressure on yourself to do something good. I think I forgot about it for a long time, like I pushed it away because it was so connected to that certain time. I'm not embarrassed about it. I think it's good and it really resonates with my way of working now. And I can really see this project as part of the timeline of me and us growing into who we are today.

Josefin: And it's the first time any one of us brings in a performance. When I read your description about the project again I also realized that we had the same thoughts on being emotionally oriented in the process and examining the result as a testing ground for our thesis.

Mira: Yeah, I'm thinking about this interaction part. This is what we’re still talking so much about, that the interaction is the gateway in between the art and the design practice and this part I know I can also see in your project. We were exploring interaction but in a different way than we had been taught during our education.

Mira: I guess in my point of view this project was about focusing on the interaction in a way that you do whatever you feel like is good in the moment and not what you're forced to. This was also part of my research.

Josefin: Also letting go of control and being interested in people's way of approaching your work.

Mira: As a designer, you mean you let go of control? Yeah, because I was thinking as the interactor, you kind of gain more control.

Josefin: Yeah, it's really interesting. Also I remember now when we started talking about your research, do you remember that artist that you were referring to, that made art pieces where the visitor's interaction fulfilled the art piece. What’s his name?

Mira: Yeah, Erwin Wurm and particularly the installations “one minute sculptures”, it had instructions for the visitor to interact in a certain way and all this together creates the artwork. Yeah that time in life and in school this was mind blowing, like wow you can see interaction in a whole other way.

Josefin: Yeah that way the end result is also not a constant.

Mira: No it changes and is an ongoing investigation. It depends on the visitor and the context.

Josefin: The reason why we're looking into these projects is to understand what we have done and how we want to move forward. We've been talking about how we want to approach different mediums and in this project you directed your first video, how was it? Was it you who filmed the video?

Mira: No, it was actually Kourosh

Josefin: It was Kash.

Mira: It was Kor.

Mira: We both directed, the way it was filmed was not so important for me at the time. And then I had this idea to have a frame that was, how do you say it? Still

Josefin: Fixed

Mira: Then mixed with these close images close shots, but as I said it wasn't so important for me at the time. I did direct,  before I said when you asked that I didn't say anything to the dancers but did direct them sometimes because I had ideas that I wanted to test. It was kind of experimental also during the filming that I had these ideas of the three objects in different constellations.

Josefin: Funny how you said it wasn’t important to you how it was filmed when it clearly was and how you didn’t direct the dancers but you clearly did. Now that we're about to move into additional mediums, we're still talking about having our perspective, the process that we know and see if we can apply it to  for ex performance or video work or sound work. This is basically what you did, you had the three objects as a starting point and you had sculptural ideas that informed the dramaturgy of the performance and not the other way around. It's a cool way of using your knowledge in a different context.

Josefin: Can you also tell me how you made the objects because that process was also conceptual?

Mira: I had the point of view of using the body as a tool also for making them. So I worked myself in the metal workshop and used thick metal tubes that I bent myself with the strength of my body to the point that was possible. Slowly but surely I found shapes that me and my body were drawn to. I had to also follow the materials will.

Josefin: Did you feel that this was a reaction from the previous project that was "Seats"? Where we had nothing to do with the production except for visiting the workshop once. We did precise drawings and 3D models and they came out from the machines and workshop looking exactly like the renders. I remember feeling that I wanted to be more present in the process after that project. Even though the result was exactly how we wanted. And I think that for me was why I wanted to get more of my own senses into the degree project.

Mira: Yeah, I think I had the exact same feeling, I wanted to test for myself if I like to work in this way with my own hands in the workshop because we actually didn't have that much craft in school.

Josefin: How do you feel like you have developed since this project?

Mira: What first comes to mind is that I remember being so anxious and stressed that at one point I was just sitting and crying. I couldn't do the smallest thing like I had to put up something on the wall for the exhibition and I was like it's impossible I can't do it. Since then we’ve made so many projects and we learn something everytime. I feel like I have so much more in my back, is that a Swedish saying? I don't have to be so insecure anymore. I know it's going to work out.

Josefin: Yes, this goes for both of us, have we taken anything else from the two of our graduation projects into our collaboration?

Mira: It’s interesting to reflect on what we had in common and what we didn't have in common in our projects.

Josefin: I feel like what we didn't have in common was the ambition of the project

Mira: What was your ambition?

Josefin: Or I think both of our projects were about exploring how our practice could exist, already trying to unlearn what we learned in school and trying to break free from what was presented, so in that way we both have the same ambitions. But I think my question was way too big, I took on too big shoes. I had the ambition to investigate three dimensional design in a digital and analog context within art, design and architecture. The frame was too big for me to have time even to come to a conclusion that made sense. I think even more interesting thoughts could have come out of that project if I were to narrow it down even more or had more time. Whereas I feel like you really pin the point and stick to a “smaller” topic and it made more sense. I mean maybe my project makes you think but you really have to invest yourself into it to be able to understand it.

Mira: But yours was more theoretical than mine. It's funny to talk about this because it speaks a lot about our personalities. Not personalities, maybe that's the wrong word, but our personas in our work life and in our roles in Swedish Girls. You’re over ambitious and I'm kind of a realist I guess. But also it's interesting how it feels a little bit twisted backwards because now I am more into 3D and technical things and you are more into performance and other media.

Josefin: Yeah, it's funny.

Josefin: One of my 300 million ambitions that I had with this very short project was that I wanted to learn 3D better because I was so bad at it. I didn't have the patience to do it and I also realized while I was doing it that I hated it. So for me having you who really enjoy it is a blessing! A blessing in disguise.

Mira: Blessing and glues guys. Is that something you said?

Josefin: Yeah no a blessing in disguise is something that is a blessing in a costume kind of

Mira: something out and open.

Josefin: Not really. Anyway I feel like your BFA project opened a door for me by involving performance in this way, how design can be more than meets the eye

Mira: No the black cat is on the ceiling

Josefin: how like my longing and yearning and notion that I've had since I was a child to perform in some way could actually be integrated in the practice that you and I have created.

Mira: I have to take a picture.

Josefin: What? Did you not listen to my very deep analysis?

Mira: I'm so sorry. I saw the black cat. Yeah. That a way to work doesn't have to be the way it looks. No, but you said it just a minute ago that design doesn't have to be what it’s not…

Josefin: That's not what I said

Mira: My attention span lost it.

Josefin: We can look at the transcript but that's ok we’re done now. Do you feel inspired by yourself?

Mira: Not extremely, but a little bit.

Josefin: Teeny tiny

Mira: I have to show you the picture of the black cat on the roof, it's a really bad picture. Okay. Are we done?

Josefin: Yeah

Transcript stopped

BFA project by Josefin Zachrisson, 2019

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Our digitalized contemporary world has opened up the concept of spatiality. We exist in both physical and digital space – space with or without material bodies, with or without resistance.

What does it mean to be a human being in an age when our interaction with the world around us is governed by digital phenomena? Tactility is not just an innate source of satisfaction but has a profound effect on our mental and physical health. Are we losing control of our sense of touch or can the physical reactions that we get from digital impressions replace the sensations that arise from actual, physical interaction? I have grown up alongside intensive technological developments and am used to the shift from analogue to digital. In design, with one foot in each world, I am curious about a meeting instead of a shift. I think it is important, for society and for design, that different realities meet.

In my graduation project I have studied three- dimensional design in a digital and physical context. In the borderland I have sought to find a method and an approach that will enable me and my intuitive and material-focused process to function.

‍My bachelor thesis (2019) was focused on research in the hierarchy of the senses, in society as a whole but particularly in design, architecture and art. In the journal "Viewpoint - the tactility issue", Kate Franklin and Caroline Till (2019) write about the importance of tactility in a digital age and describe it as "The cornerstone of humancentric behaviour". There is a debate about the digitized society and what effect it has on people. Franklin and Till continue: "Human contact is, after all, a fundamental part of what makes us human" and points out that "No other species has hands as sensitive as ours but today we are just as likely to use these miracles of evolution for clicking and swiping as for feeling and interpreting.” They ask themselves: "Are we losing touch with touch?".

They share their concern about the dominance of other senses over touch with the architect Juhani Pallasmaa. Pallasmaa is a Finnish architect and author of "The eyes of the skin - architecture and the senses" (2012), where he explains the position of touch in the hierarchy of the senses and above all directs his concern towards the all-too-dominant position of vision:

“Despite skin being our largest and most sensitive organ, with touch often referred to as the ́mother of the senses ́, sight has been regarded as our predominant sense since the ancient Greeks. ́The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears ́wrote Heraclitus; Plato thought vision was ́humanity’s greatest gift ́; while Aristotle claimed that sight ápproximates the intellect most closely ́. By the time of the Renaissance, when the senses were categorised into strict hierarchy, not only was sight at the top but touch had also been relegated to the bottom. (...) All the senses, including vision, are extensions of the tactile sense; the senses are specialisations of skin tissue, and all the sensory experiences are modes of touching, and thus related to tactility.

Pallasmaa writes that "Profound architecture makes us experience ourselves as complete embodied and spiritual beings. In fact, this is the great function of all meaningful art.” He also criticizes the role of technology in design education and believes that "Computer imaging tends to flatten our magnificent multi-sensory, simultaneous and synchronic capacities of imagination." (Pallasmaa 2012)

In parallel with literary research into the value of tactility, I also devoted myself to physical research. When it comes to material, there are many different ideas about its values ​​and properties. All materials in our physical context have and provide resistance and they all fulfill some kind of function. In this touch-focused research, I navigated towards materials and objects that only exist to be touched. The demand for tactility meets the supply of slime videos, and there I was researching ASMR, nonsense that made sense. The project became an investigation of what made sense – for me in my practice and also what made me feel. I exhibited a virtually and physically interactive installation to see if others could feel it too.

I had a back and forth-method in designing – from physical to digital and vice versa, over and over again. What was impossible in the physical world might inform me what I could try in the digital world. And techniques of digital tools could inspire different approaches with the physical tools. I presented my process in the shape of a virtual sculpture park where visitors could walk through my tests and sketches. I made it this way to point out that the process is the result too. However the physical objects were examined as my result and I presented objects in sand casted aluminum with different functional surfaces. They honestly made more sense as sculptures, so nonsense furniture if you may.
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I had such a hard time articulating my own project during this time, almost didn’t pass my degree and had to add a lot of explanations – partly because some of my professors had barely heard of VR and I had to use my tutor opportunities to explain the context and why I chose it but also, mostly, because it’s so hard to have perspective of something you're in the midst of. This left me once again questioning the importance of writing in this field – form is also a medium through which you can communicate. Idk maybe I’m naive and just need to practice.. hence this blog !

Another reflection of this project that hits in hindsight is the societal aspect of the question and concept, I ask myself more than ever; are we losing control of our sense of touch? Are digital spaces making us strangers to one another, why can we not relate to each other's humanity? Are there other ways and shapes for realities to meet?