Installations
I will show you how the mountains move under our feet
when the clouds stretch from the cloud cover's unfiltered light gaze. (2024)
Installation with photography on glass and video work
Size: 25 m2
Fascinated by how the concept of landscape has evolved over time and the way it influences how we see and feel a place, Peter Stridsberg reflects on the physical and mental dynamics triggered by the encounter between human and natural dimensions.
In the installation conceived for this exhibition, the artist combines his artistic practice with his explorations of recent years, where human beings, the landscape and mountains meet. Seated on the sofa, the temporary inhabitant of this room can turn his/her gaze to the mountain landscape present in the video, or the one portrayed in the photograph. In doing so, the fictious encounter between the urban dimension and the natural context is evoked.
The work directly brings into play the condition of forced isolation experienced during the pandemic period, the sense of the impossible and, equally, the perceived need to be in direct contact with natural and outdoor environments, such as mountain spaces or city parks. In this sense, his work makes reference to two highly topical themes: “nature-deficit disorder” and “solastalgia”, both negative reactions generated by biological annihilation and the progressive extinction of experiences with nature.
These conditions are part of the wider universe of those that have been indicated as “psychoterratic mental conditions” to describe emotional disorders – such as eco-anxiety and global fear – deriving from the sudden change in the state of health of the Earth and its ecosystems.
Anxious about Climate Change
The climate crisis, one of the greatest challenges of our time, is raising increasing disquiet and concern. In psychology and the social sciences, these emotional reactions have been analysed as an expression of eco-anxiety. Eco-anxiety is defined by the American Psychological Association as a chronic fear of environmental doom and a generalised sense that the ecological foundations of human existence are collapsing. It is a complex feeling that stems from the perception of an increasingly unsustainable future that creates uncertainty. Fear, worry, guilt and anguish are just some of the emotions associated with eco-anxiety. Although this type of anxiety is not identified as a real pathology, many empirical studies show that it can have major impacts on mental health, especially among younger people (18-35 years old), women and in those countries of the Global South that are already significantly exposed to environmental catastrophes.
In our region as well, where the effects of climate change are already visible, there is fear of extreme weather events. In a joint research project, Eurac Research and the Provincial Institute for Statistics ASTAT have analysed the emotional reactions of the South Tyrolean population to the climate crisis. The results speak clearly: also in South Tyrol, people are dealing with eco-anxiety. Indeed, 70% of the sample stated that they are afraid, 80% feel concerned, 39% feel guilty and 67% feel powerless. The South Tyrolean population is particularly worried about risks related to droughts, water shortages and floods.
How can eco-anxiety be addressed? Firstly, and most importantly, governments need to take more ambitious measures to tackle the climate crisis, also by involving the population through participatory processes. This could reduce the widespread feeling of powerlessness related to policy inaction. Secondly, it might become more important to develop new emotional skills to deal with eco-anxiety, as it is not going to disappear anytime soon. Therefore, psychological support services should be implemented that acknowledge the effects of eco-anxiety on mental health and help people transform the disabling feeling of eco-anxiety into a proactive attitude for social and ecological change.
— Ilaria De March, Felix Windegger, Christoph Kircher
Center for Advanced Studies, Eurac Research – Bolzano (BZ)
More texts about the work you can read here
Fragment of a construction that seeks our light (2024)
360 x 480 cm
The room as a projection surface in the direction of the wild landscape. Wood, the landscape and the home. The border and distance that we create for ourselves in nature. The construction is built from reclaimed scenography and is an attempt to scale spatiality into a fragment for a new meeting about home architecture and function.
The window as distance and meeting is something that I return to in my artistry.
What do we seek the open space between the wall and reality?
Reflection #1-2 (2023)
44 x 54 x 14 cm
54 x 44 x 14 cm
Digital print on glass and pine wood
The two works Reflection is an ongoing project that deals with the landscape's representation of urban space. The window installation with a pine window frame and with a window glass with a digital print on glass creates a reflection of our surroundings when illusion and fiction meet.
With the concrete structure and surface of the window containing the photographic motif, I want to investigate how the boundaries of architecture can be moved and investigate how the spatial environment is reinterpreted when it is erected in an exhibition room. How do we view the depiction of the landscape when it is out of context? What remains and what is preserved?
The project is part of an artistic investigation that consists of site-specific designs based on the Bohuslän landscape that I am currently working on.
Scenery #1-2 (2023)
252 x 300 cm
252 x 250 cm
Wooden sculptures
With the sculptural installation Scenery, I wanted to explore the limits of architecture and its relationship to place and landscape. I wanted to mark a thin line that shows the border between the landscape and the home. Boundaries in nature determine what we call outside and what we call inside. The home is a construction, a staging where we create and maintain ourselves daily. The work is based on the planed wooden studs which form a scenography in its purest form with a wooden skeleton which, with its construction, stands in the middle of nature and in the direction of the horizon.
The works are a continued investigation into reaching and making visible the needs and function of architecture. The construction explores how minimal the distance can be between the landscape and the living environment of modern humans. The sculpture seeks support from the trees and constitutes a fragile boundary between what is considered an architectural site and what is a wall directed against and what does it do to our contact with the landscape?
Our curtain (2023)
500 x 280 cm
One pair of curtains linen fabric with representative leaves
The border with nature is always visible and tangible when we face the landscape, the home and the culture in our everyday life. In this work, I have worked with the spatial object the curtain, which shuts out the outside world and the light of the landscape. The material's soft appearance contributes to a safe and cozy place in our homes. The curtains in linen fabric contain patterns with green foliage representing leaves from the Ornäsbjörken.
The species cannot survive without human intervention and must be planted using cuttings. The Ornäsbjörk to Sweden's National Tree can be found in many of our urban environments and parks around Sweden. With this work, I want to make visible the presence of nature in our everyday environments and at the same time tell about our approach to the landscape outside.
The first person to find the Ornäsbjörk was Hans Gustaf Hiordt in 1767 in the village of Ornäs, Dalarna.
In connection with the discovery, the discoverer of the tree, Hans Gustaf Hiort, was eventually ennobled as Hiort af Ornäs. The tree was given its Latin name Betula pendula 'Dalecarlica by Carl Von Linné the Younger in 1781 after several years of correspondence.
Photo: Daniel Strandroth
Installation view of the work exhibited in the exhibition The Mountain Touch, curated by Andrea Lerda at Museo montagna, Turin 2022. Photo: Mariano Dallago
I embed everything that sounds against my chest before our own horizon (2022)
Mixed-media installation
450 x 450 cm
In my site-specific installation at the Museo Nazionale della Montaga, I explored the borderland between the personal dimension and nature as a function and place of recovery in an urban urban environment. I was fascinated by how we see and approach nature as a security in existence where new research shows clear signs of well-being with being in nature in connection with serious illness. Italy was a country that was hard hit during the pandemic and I wanted to show how nature can be used both as a view and as a place for recovery. The fictitious bedroom would with small subtle details such as a fictitious window with motifs outside the museum in Turin invite to raise questions about the important role of nature in urban urban environments.
During the exhibition, patients at a children's hospital also had to create models in a research project that was based on my artistic works as a method to investigate how nature can be used as a healing tool for people in need of care.
Peter Stridsberg develops his research predominantly through the photographic medium. In his practice he tries to explore and expand the borderland between personal dimension, nature and stage set. Fascinated by how the concept of landscape has evolved over time and the way it influences how we see and feel a place, the artist reflects on the physical and mental dynamics (bound to thought and perception) triggered by the encounter between human and natural dimensions.
The artist usually creates domestic sets directly in the natural environment and subsequently immortalises them via photography. With the ensuing pictures, in which the artist’s presence is fundamental, Stridsberg explores the physical and emotional relationship that exists between human beings and the environmental context.
For the exhibition, the artist has expanded his work mode and created the set of a bedroom within the exhibition context, a private space that the onlooker is invited to occupy. Seated on the bed in the room, the temporary inhabitant of this place can turn his/her gaze to the mountain landscape outside the window. The artist brings into play the condition of forced isolation experienced during the pandemic period, the sense of the impossible and, equally, the perceived need to be in direct contact with natural and outdoor environments such as mountain spaces or city parks.
In this sense, his work makes reference to two highly topical themes: “nature-deficit disorder”
and “solastalgia”, both negative reactions generated by biological annihilation and the progressive extinction of experiences with nature. Richard Louv’s expression “nature-deficit disorder” refers to the impact of a lack of connection with nature on human health. According to Louv, this term describes “the human costs of alienation from nature: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, higher rates of emotional and physical illnesses...”
The term “solastalgia” was coined by Glenn Albrecht to describe that chronic emotion, situated and painful – a mix of comfort, nostalgia and destruction –, felt by human beings when they impotently observe the loss of a natural place as a result of the environmental devastation underway. Albrecht also coined the phrase “psychoterratic mental conditions” to describe the emotions, sentiments and illnesses – such as eco-anxiety and global fear – linked to the earth and mental health.
The benefits of “mediated nature”
The first scientific studies on the influence of nature and vegetation on health were the work of Professor Ulrich who conducted several experiments in the 1980s to “measure” the leverage of exposure to natural elements on recovery from stress and on healing processes. In one of his pioneering studies, he showed that patients who had a view of a garden from their post-operatory hospital room had a far better outcome in terms of time, complications and drug use than those who did not have a view of a green space.
Similar results were obtained in experiments conducted in prison, where cells with a view of green space and trees were generally associated with a smaller number of healthcare calls by prisoners. Numerous subsequent studies have corroborated Ulrich’s results on different types of patients, confirming the ability of exposure to the natural environment to improve emotional states, health and recovery from illness and increase pain tolerance. Patient reactions linked to the presence of plants in medical in-patient/diagnostic screening environments are no less impressive. Patients operated on for thyroidectomy, appendectomy and haemorrhoidectomy, to provide but an example, were found to have a greater tolerance of pain and as a result required minor recourse to painkillers, as well as being less anxious when plants were present in their hospital room. Similar results have also been obtained in healthy subjects with artificially induced pain.
Ulrich was also the first academic to demonstrate that just visualising images of forests prompts improvement in certain physiological parameters (blood pressure, alpha brainwave amplitude, muscular tension). Today, multiple studies demonstrate restorative effects and a reduction of stress linked to even indirect exposure to natural environments, i.e. via various types of “nature substitutes” such as photos, videos and virtual natural environments. Although “technological nature” cannot, of course, completely reproduce the effects of real nature and lacks many major advantages of forest immersion, virtual “immersive” technologies might be significant in improving the wellbeing of people with no direct access to nature or for whom direct contact with nature is not possible or indeed hazardous.
This applies primarily to subjects with physical disabilities or in situations of bedrest and treatment but also to certain forms of mental illness, including depression and anxiety.
Francesco Meneguzzo, Federica Zabini
Istituto per la BioEconomia, CNR – Sesto Fiorentino (FI) CAI Comitato Scientifico Centrale
Four different scenographies (2020)
360 x 360 cm
Wood and oil paint
During the process of my staged photographic works for my exhibition at Reykjavik Museum of Photography 2020, I built four different scenographies. The scenography was a cube of 360 x 360 cm that was built outdoors to be adapted to the different motifs where all were painted with linseed oil paint. The solo exhibition's title The border between nature and the scene was also my working title when I started working on the exhibition.
“Through my work, I seek to understand my roots and belonging by exploring places connected to my family history and the romantic memory I have of the locations I use in my imagery. I seek to answer that which lies behind a sentimental gaze and its effect on the storytelling"
The home along our river (2019)
A site-specific installation
900 x 350 cm
The house and the home had long united my interest in exploring and discussing the significance of places for us in everyday life. The installation would stand there as an impact in the middle of nature and in a place that is usually used as a green area in the middle of a growing city. I chose to build an illustrative image of a classic Nordic home with a colorful facade, two windows, a door and a roof. This is because I wanted to integrate with the people who passed the installation. I wanted to open up dialogue about the importance of the home in our lives, but also as a conversation starter about how we see the home's influence and influence in our lives both individually and collectively when cities and urban communities develop and change.
The project included processes ranging from building and painting myself and then hiring 14 people to help build the structure. The process also innovated, temporarily applying for a building permit from Umeå municipality and applying for a police permit to build the installation in a public place as well as snow shoveling.
