BIO/ARTIST STATEMENT: Margrethe Kolstad Brekke (artist/initiator of the Rjukan Solarpunk Academy)

Utopia as motif, motive, and method

As an art student in the years 2009-2014, the discussion around the Anthropocene
and general knowledge about the climate crisis had established the apocalyptic sublime as a growing rhetorical backdrop in cultural production. In this constant mindscape, I spent most of my years studying. In the textile arts BA program, you could find evidence of apocalypse and colonial-era injustice in every tool, fiber, trade route, and pattern design.
But towards the end of the MA program, I started to get the sense that I had to do
my own artwork a bit differently. That a more interesting, more responsible,- and counterintuitive artistic challenge would be to try and make art about hopes and dreams in times like this. So this is
what Ive been doing since the autumn of 2013. 1st, in Bergen, through all kinds of interdisciplinary collaborations in the years when post-petroleum technologies still came with a sense of the unreal, and the knots- and bolts of real-life green transitions still had a sense of optimistic innocence about it. Since 2019 my perspective has been rooted in the rural rust-belt town Rjukan, where I moved motivated by cheap housing, large abandoned industrial buildings, and among other things the promise in the town’s motto, inspired by the recently installed sunmirrors: ``To make the impossible possible ``. in collaboration with the Sunmirror artist Martin Andersen and Siddharth Sareen (UiS), we established Rjukan Solarpunk Academy (RSA) in 2019. RSA has since then developed into a fruitful hub of science, art, and community development. Inspired by our partnership with the PHD-school ``Empowered Futures`` we piloted the festival concept ``Solarpunk Campus Rjukan`` in 2023. Over the next years, fueled with new creative forces like the traveling writer Daniel Nyiri, and transitioning from ``indiestyle-relational-artproject to a more solid organizational structure- we will work on continued institutionalization of the RSA, and give space for a more diverse interpretation of the term Solarpunk. While RSA will take on a life of its own, I will gradually turn most of my attention back towards traditional studio work, where main topic of my own artistic practice will be the IPPC SSP1-5, so chances are that this will also influence the direction in RSA over the next couple of years.
My role model for this balance of activities has throughout the years been mainly
William Morris, a productive textile artists trying his best to respond to the burning open questions of his own era.

https://www.mkbrekke.com/
https://www.rjukansolarpunkacademy.com/
https://www.solarpunkcampus.org/