The Swamp School and The Swamp Observatory

2018 Mellon Faculty Grant & 2022 International Exhibition Grant

Urbonas Studio, The Swamp Observatory at Walden Pond. 2023.

Friendly Spirillum by Nathalie flies in spirals, feeds on water bacteria and communicates with plants to make them grow better. Urbonas Studio, The Swamp Observatory. 2021. Conceptual sketches for AR environment. Drawings by the students of Athene school.

Urbonas Studio, The Swamp Observatory. 2021. Conceptual sketches for AR environment.

The Swamp School's Community of Plants workshop with biologist Daubaras, 2018. Photo: Urbonas Studio.

Swamp ponchos by Urbonas Studio, 2018. Design by Sandra Straukaite. Pattern: Gaile Pranckunaite. Photo: Norbert Tukaj.

The Swamp School discussion, 2018. Photo: Brent D Ryan.

Hybrid Radio by Nicole L’Huillier, 2018. Photo: Gabriele Urbonaite.

Imaginative ecosystems and explorations of non-material architecture

About the Project

The Swamp Observatory, supported by a CAST International Exhibition and Performance Fund Grant

The Swamp Observatory is an experimental form of public art that engages the community in environmental pedagogy and probes new perspectives in urban planning. The project uses AR to unveil imaginative ecosystems of planned stormwater ponds in a future city district of Visby, Sweden. The stormwater ponds land in the middle of the debate on environmental sustainability and constitute a model for how to reintroduce wetlands on Gotland island in the Baltic Sea (arguably the most polluted sea in the world), where water shortage is already a condition of daily life. The AR app enables community members to experience a future in the making and to practice adaptive technologies in support of community resiliency at a local level.

The Swamp Observatory builds on the network of a fictional society—The Society of Forgotten Futures—that is an assembly of experts who have contributed their local knowledges of flora and fauna, history, and mythology to the visualization of the digital instruments.

This hybrid reality project proposes a new model for public art that sensorially engages communities and facilitates their bonds with the environment. The Swamp Observatory supports environmental citizenship in Visborg through a new climate commons created and maintained by local stakeholders and users.

The Swamp School, supported by a CAST Mellon Faculty Grant

For the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas curated the Swamp Pavilion, representing their native Lithuania. The Swamp Pavilion was a networked effort to create new imaginary spaces for exercises in architectural and artistic practices, theory, and pedagogy through public interventions, field trips, workshops, lectures, discussions, and printed publications.

The Swamp Pavilion hosted the Swamp School, which focused on future learning environments, informed by and informing the architecture and installations within it. The Swamp School comprised three chapters: Swamp Radio: On transmitting; Futurity Island: On sympoietics; and Commonism: On cohabitation.

In a time marked by existential threats of war and climate change, the Swamp School set up a cross-disciplinary dialogue to challenge conventional concepts of territory. It aimed to reorganize identities and realities, and to envision the role of the immaterial in architecture, art, and nature.

More at the project website: The Swamp

Schedule

Upcoming Events

The Swamp Observatory features in multiple upcoming exhibitions and presentations:
Eco-Vision Plan, CAFA museum, Beijing, China, 2023
State of the Arts, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, 2023
Urbonas Studio Retrospective, National Gallery, Lithuania, 2023

Past Events

The Swamp Observatory AR Application Launch
Part of Out of the Sky, into the Earth Exhibition
August 27 – September 11, 2022
Gotland Art Museum and Visborg Field
Visby, Sweden

Curated by Edi Muka, curator at Public Art Agency Sweden, in collaboration with Helena Selder, artistic director of Baltic Art Center.

The Swamp Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale

Commonism: On cohabitation
September 24-29, 2018

Futurity Island: On symbio-poetics
June 26-30, 2018

Swamp Radio: On transmitting
May 23-27, 2018

Collaborators

The Swamp Observatory

The Swamp Observatory is part of the Region of Gotland’s Art in Urban Development Project Visborg led by the Baltic Art Center in collaboration with Public Art Agency Sweden. Supported by the Baltic Art Center (BAC), the Lithuanian Council for Culture, and the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST).

A project by Urbonas Studio: Gediminas Urbonas & Nomeda Urbonas

Conceptual drawings by students from Athene School, Atheneskolan, Visby

3D modeling: Indrė Umbrasaitė

AR development: Steven Bachelder

The Swamp School

The Lithuanian pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia was commissioned by Pippo Ciorra, produced by the Architecture Fund and presented by the Lithuanian Council for Culture with support from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), and the Nordic Culture Fund, OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway.

View the full Swamp Pavilion team on the project website: The Swamp

About the Artists

Gediminas Urbonas is an artist, educator, researcher and co-founder of US: Urbonas Studio (together with Nomeda Urbonas), an interdisciplinary research practice that facilitates exchange amongst diverse nodes of knowledge production and artistic practice in pursuit of projects that transform civic spaces and collective imaginaries. Urbonas also collaborate with experts in different cultural fields to develop practice-based artistic research models that allow participants – including their students – to pursue projects that merge urbanism, new media, social sciences and pedagogy to critically address the transformation of civic space and ecology.

Biography: Gediminas Urbonas
Website: Urbonas Studio

Social: Instagram