FUTURES Talent 2023
SUSANNE FAGERLUND
THE DOPPELGÄNGER SERIES – MOURNING MIRRORS FOR WHAT LOST
Susanne Fagerlund is a camera-based artist who explores the extended complexities and boundaries of the medium. Her installations oscillate between photography, video and digital technologies. ‘THE DOPPELGÄNGER SERIES – MOURNING MIRRORS FOR WHAT LOST’ explores the loss of biodiversity and unique biotopes, the project tackles our relationship, care and belonging to nature.
An act of mourning what is being lost
Project: THE DOPPELGÄNGER SERIES – MOURNING MIRRORS FOR WHAT LOST
The project ‘THE DOPPELGÄNGER SERIES – MOURNING MIRRORS FOR WHAT LOST’ consists of photographs from nature reserves, collaborations with artificial intelligence (AI), holograms and videos. Exploring the loss of biodiversity and unique biotopes, the project tackles our relationship, care and belonging to nature. Old-growth forests are essential biotopes for many plants and animals. Clear-cutting them instigates diminishing biodiversity and increases carbon dioxide emissions.
In parts of the project, Susanne Fagerlund collaborates with AI, where she feeds an algorithm with her own photographs from nature reserves. The algorithm then tries to learn how to mimic similar landscapes, and images of artificial nature are created through machine learning.
The process is vital to the project where the artist visits nature preserves – photographing, hiking, and experiencing the immersive feeling of forests. Afterwards, she collects her photographs into an archive of images for AI to train from. Subsequently, AI mimics Fagerlund’s photographs and creates interpreted artificial landscape images. The result of the collaboration is a reminiscence of nature. In fiction and mythology, the presence of a” Doppelgänger” is often seen as a harbinger of future misfortune.
Everything from photographing to letting AI process her photo archive – is an act of mourning what is being lost.
She collaborates with HASSELBLAD CENTER in her upcoming project, where she will work with Göteborgs Naturhistoriska Museum’s photographic archives. Using artificial intelligence to process the photographic archive, she creates a speculative future where images of new plants and species are formed. A digital ecosystem where past and future images coexist in the perpetual tension of the present climate crisis.
ARTIST BIO
Susanne Fagerlund (MFA in Fine Arts) graduated from Valand Academy in 2021 and is currently completing a post-master course at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Sweden. Being a camera-based artist, Fagerlund explores the extended complexities and boundaries of the medium. Her installations oscillate between photography, video and digital technologies.
As an artist, she works project-based, resulting in different exploration paths, but human and non-human relationships are always the underlying current. Informed by glitch feminism and posthumanism, she grants the error and malfunctions in conjunction with technology as enabling departures. In her recent project, she focuses on eco-nihilism and collaborates with artificial technology (AI) to extend subjectivities beyond the human species through nature and technology.
Selected achievements
- Since her graduation in 2021, she has had three solo and five group shows, including Borås Konstmuseum (duo), Galleri KC (solo) & Gothenburg Art Association (solo). In 2023 she will have five exhibitions both in Sweden and Norway. Furthermore, she will collaborate with Hasselblad Center on a project for the 100th anniversary of Gothenburg’s Natural History Museum. In the project, she will work with the Museum’s photographic archives. Using AI to process the photographic archive, she creates a speculative future where images of new plants and species are formed.
