Isabella Chydenius: To everyone who ever escaped the day onto the dance floor // A Shrine

At the end of 2019, I was invited to make an installation for the New Year’s festival called Search. Informed by my research as well as the festival’s agenda to foster an environment that is inclusive and safe towards womxn and the LGBTQI+ community, I created the light installation A Shrine // To Everyone who ever escaped the day onto the dancefloor (2019). My aim was to design a spot away from the dancefloors and stages where people could pause, reflect and connect. The installation was set in a calmer forest area and consisted of minimal structures made of transparent Perspex and a Club Pink light. The piece functions as a social experiment in similar terms to what the art theorist Nicolas Bourriaud (2002:44) calls Relational Aesthetics in which artistic practices embedded in interactive social engagements can give rise to “places where alternative forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality are worked out”. It is in this sense that I’ve observed how the Club Pink light would attract people to take a break from festival activities, and serve as a meeting point, a location for connecting with friends but also strangers. The piece functions as an experiment in the process of
working with this pink light in spaces that aim to be intersectionally inclusive and safe.