MASTER PROJECT
INFO ABOUT WORK(S)
Liselli’s current research engages with collective dialogue to question the systemic racist, colonial and anthropocentric ways of thinking in today’s Norwegian society. How can this patterned knowledge be unlearned, archived and passed on to future generations to allow for inclusive, just and sustainable future societies, aware of their pasts?
With her hybrid lens of a trans-cultural, multi-ethnic immigrant, mother and person of colour, Liselli examines these patterns of thinking through a developing ritual and participatory artistic practice through ritual-workshops. This practice uses the workshop as a knowledge-sharing, care-informed ritual space, and is inspired by the mutual knowledge-sharing practices seen in ecological eco-systems. Through this community-based practice, the artist explores how the workshop space can be used for furthering dialogue about inclusive, just and sustainable future societies, aware of their past.
This ritual-workshop method and research-questions are examined together with constellations of people related to Liselli’s hybrid context: her siblings and a group of mothers with a Caribbean background, living in Norway to start with. Following with potentially a group of first and second generation immigrants living in north Oslo and an Oslo-based FAU parent group whose children share a context similar to hers.
The ongoing ritual-workshops with this hybrid public, together with theoretical reading rooted in post-humanistic theories, decolonial æsthetics, black and eco-feminism, weaves together the framework for this network of stories that makes up RITUALS TALKING DECOLOGY: The Rhyzomatic-Tree(s).
Feel free to help yourself to the pamphlet provided for further information on the artworks. See website for details on the RITUALS TALKING DECOLOGY research and Liselli’s practice (https://liselligrunwald.cargo.site/rituals-talking-decology-homepage).
“Through this network of stories, I invite the viewer to embark upon a visit of the various storytelling spaces of my practice: be it a ritual-workshop space inside an installation or an imagined space created by a performance or artist books. These spaces are meant to inspire dialogues and reflections on the importance of generational knowledge, time, identity and decoloniality in relation to how we humans co-relate with the other.
In 80 years' time, or more, or less, my own daughter might be old enough to have grandchildren who might be old enough to have children of their own. What aspect of my inherited knowledge will they pass on to their descendants? How much of it will still be tainted with systemic racist, colonial and anthropocenic patterns of thinking?”
A recipe for sensory awareness
Sunday 8th June, 13-15,
Seilduken 1 Gallery,
Fossveien 24,
Oslo.
This installation will also hold a story-telling and performance reading event involving some of the Arts and Crafts artists and other KHiO students to offer other ways of engaging with contemporary art.
Storytelling event
Tuesday 10th June, 17-18.30
Seilduken 1 Gallery,
Fossveien 24,
Oslo
The Rhyzomatic Tree(s) artwork includes a performance by the artist to be held at Losæter on the 14th of June at 17.00. This performance offers another layer to understand Liselli’s research-based practice into generational knowledge, identity and ecology.
Unfolding Roots
Saturday 14th June, 17-19,
Losæter park,
Bjørvika Oslo.
I want to acknowledge that this installation was built from borrowed discussions, thoughts and ideas, thanks to the following inspirators:
-Textile Designer Elin Igland and DoP Alvilde Naterstad for the work with the randomly-pulled yarn to create a space, all those years back.
-The support from my dear Tree Witches, and that of my sisters, eternal childhood Witches.
-Artist Abirami Logendran for the ‘translating poetry to film' talk.
-Artist Rosanna Paulino for the collage works.
-Esteemed colleagues, artists and dear friends Marie Cole and Marea Vigesaa for showing me the importance of soil and making me feel welcomed in my community.
-Artist, Researcher and Performer Fernanda Branco for the hanging books, the iceberg-tip of an artistic practice of wonder and curiosity.
-Artist and Designer-Maker Zoe Jo Rae for the discussions on trees and craft, for the tree-stumps to sit on.
-Urtealliansen and Losæter for the more-than-human discussions on craft and ‘herbotany’, and for the ongoing collaborations.
-Artist Eline McGeorge for the guidance, inspiration and presence.
-Artist and friend Ingrid Solvik for the enthusiasm, inspiration and shared experiences.
-Artist, Researcher and Professor Merete Røstad, for introducing artistic research as one of the many possible artistic journeys.
- Artist and friend Finlay J Hall for the title help.
- Nesodden-based Community Interest Company Remonter for the paper shredding.
- Oscar for the lasercut stamps, and for all the rest that comes with life.
- All those authors, whose books are, have been and will be my companions throughout this research.
- Morena, Sarah Camille and Johanna for the exciting beginnings and futures.
- Artist and friend Marie Payan for her inspiring participatory practice.
-Artist Sara Zamecnik for the talks on clay-life and clay-storytelling.
-Dearest Bélen, artist and friend and wisest of all of us Witches.
-Ancestors of the Past, Present and Future, my own and those of each of these elements that make up this space.
List of Artworks
- The Rhyzomatic-Tree(s) (2025)
400cm x 400cm x 500cm.
- Recollection & Recitation - Soundwork I (2025)
0h9m00s.
- Under the Silk Cotton Tree and Other Words (2023)
15 cm x 15 cm x 2,5 cm.
- Collection of thoughts on Ritual as Method and The Workshop as Ritual (2024)
13,8 cm x 13,8cm x 0,5cm.
- Second Thoughts on Decology (2025)
20 cm x 20 cm x 2 cm.
- Unfolding Roots (2025)
0h30m00s.
- Recipes for Sensory Awareness (2025)
2h00m00s.
Collaging artist book nr 3 - work in progress (second thoughts on decology)
- laser-cut texts into lino stamps.
- testing out stamps of text, with naturally-made ink (nettle, arronia berries). but they were old and not concentrated enough. lino stamps worked with normal ink though.
- write texts with natural inks? stamp some of them?
Riso- artist book nr 2 production
- click for link to final layout
- specs:
Sixth A3
149 x 140mm
PAGE ORIENTATION:
Landscape
BINDING:
Short Edge
SHEET SIZE:A3
297 x 420mm
PAGES PER SHEET:12
PAGE COUNTS
12, 24, 36, 48, 60,
Rhyzomatic Third Tree text- sound recording
- precursor to sound work (in collaboration with Vjolla?): second part of Sound artwork in the MA installation.
The Rhyzomatic Third Tree (2024-2025)
Mammy was an Immortelle tree from Tobago,
Papa was a Linden tree from France.
and I am the third tree.
My Mammy, her mother was a Silk Cotton tree from Plymouth Tobago,
and her father a Coconut tree, growing up on Friendship Estate Lowlands.
And I am the third tree.
My Papa, his mother was a Chestnut tree from Ardèche France,
and his father a Pine tree growing up in Grenoble during the Second World War.
And I am the third tree.
‘Your leaves don’t look like your mum is an Immortelle’,
‘You muss’be just a Linden tree, but your bark is all wrong’.
To them I say, I am the third tree.
Their æsthetic judgements
are imbued with all the ignorant and accepted
codes and patterns inherited from an Anthropocenic
colonial past, present and future.
The value of the invisible,
the unknown and unknowable,
what is below ground and expandable,
holds those old knowledges, rooted, in our bodies.
Bodies are like vessels of memories and thoughts,
beliefs and experiences. And stories.
They are archives of cyclical time,
whether they’re those of a
hand-woven tablecloth on Granny’s table,
a pebble who lived a thousand lives,
a newborn human, or a third tree.
Below or Above Ground
My roots shoot out to the side,
connecting and betweening with other roots,
implanting themselves deeper into the memory of our soils,
I am the third tree and I remember all the past, present and future stories.
My roots run deep in the past to my Caribbean and West African ancestors under the
Atlantic Ocean and through the air, because this third tree also has roots reaching for the skies.
They are potent with memories, traumas, thoughts and ideas that resurface in the deep pattern of my bark and will live on in my fruits.
My roots run through the Ardeche river, climb over the Vercors fortress
towards the Caucasus mountains and the trees of the Green Forest
feeling the traumas of the past coming from the east and west, in search of a land
to cultivate decolonial ideals in line with the knowledge of the moon.
My roots feel the rape of the land, the pain and anger and destruction of being
forcibly uprooted from the known to the unknown across the sea,
forced to adapt to new soils and air and food only to be exploited again and again
over so many centuries. And still today.
My roots feel the fear of the planes, of the boots’ rhythmic stamping,
the tense sound of the waiting trains mingled with that of the mother’s silent panic:
This is the last train to freedom.
My roots are not my own alone.
They remember the cool composure of the moon ancestors when danger knocked at the door, looking like they had nothing to hide but their undying richness of heart and strength of character. And the obvious presence of my grandfather, still a child.
My roots know deep down in the belly of the earth
that no root denies another their belonging because roots know they are connected,
roots know they are aware and sense everything around them.
And my roots know that their separation and categorisation is a construct inherited from colonialism,
the divide and rule systems cannot apply to them.
This third tree, despite its privileges, is still rooted in plantation societies,
those exploitative patterns and social codes are still there and filter through the soil.
And everyone’s guess is as good as the other:
‘Which box do you really hail from?’
This third tree knows, unlike its human counterpart
(constantly hurt by the man-made invention of dichotomy),
that with worldly becoming-withs comes worldly unlearning-withs,
Roots unfolding?
Yet, the sheer force of these folded lives,
inherently intertwined with exploitative Anthropocenic constructs,
spreads painful exhaustion in my already weary skin, bark, bones and feathers.
In a darkening world, this third tree comes with
a painful awareness of its privileges, which its own siblings don’t have and yet they all have similar Immortelle and Linden roots,
Why me and not you, sister?
Our roots speak to each other, and constantly intertwine and intermingle, spreading out to all corners of the world like a web, constantly adapting and learning in communication with other roots who are in turn constantly adapting and learning in communication with other roots, who are in turn...
Hybridizing
A new world
Shooting out to the side, implanting new roots,
branching out slowly, imperceptibly, invisibly.
But it’s coming
Because at my feet I can see
the snake’s new skin born out of the old one,
the cigale singing in the ants’ nest,
visions of parakeets dancing in the cold winter trees.
And I know then,
that the divide and rule boxes
are dying out.
My roots speak to the new hybrids of the future:
To them I say I am and was and will be the third tree,
And the trees before me are sharing roots with the trees after me:
To you I pass on my unfolded knowledge.
To you my own, I share my roots with you,
I make you aware of your history and inheritance.
To you my own, you whose father was a Scottish Oak tree,
his mother a Hawthorn and own father an Ash, to you I say:
Keep betweening and unfolding,
for you are another hybrid
rhyzome-tree, like me.
Test- breaking the paper (1st practice of performance)
paper-making
TENTATIVE FLOORPLAN IN SEILDUKEN 1
NOTES FROM MEETINGS WITH SARA ON COLLABORATIVE WORKSHOP TOGETHER
- Conversation w/ material : listen and watch + be present to remember the knowledge (the same can be applied to spirits. Based on refusing to accept that some things will be lost)
- DOING W/ YOUR HANDS IS TO REMEMBER THE KNOWLEDGE (finding your way of interacting with clay). The clay likes to be organic- able to be straight but lean again. Continuous dividing out and in.
- Knowledge of the clay: the clay as a body. NOT using clay as therapy.
- What the clay tells us + what we discuss:
- What knowledge does the clay have
- Sensing, tactility as a common ground
- How the clay talks
- Better community in doing something all together
- (being an artist means you are exempt from Janteloven)
- Start-up exercise of making a vessel through pinching, to be aware of what the clay is telling you (the clay’s language as direction)
- Meditative aspect of the clay
- Sara knows the clay so well that she can communicate with it.
- OR talking while playing with a thing of clay then talking about the clay and remembering ‘what-we-discussed-when-this-happened’: at which point of the conversation was that shape made.
- 40 mins clay + talking
- 40 mins without clay (break)
- 40 mins carving and talking
- 40 mins glittring + talking
- AND SWITCHING? Passing on of the clay
- FIRING?
- (glittring= making clay ‘shiny’ with a spoon)
- Clay as a way of shifting focus of meditating
- How involving your hands frees up your mind
- Muscle memory as knowledge= information stored in your hands. Clay is a great way of being present w your hands, a way of becoming aware of your body’s knowledge (hands having knowledge)
- Working with hands has become a way of understanding your knowledge better, and respecting the knowledge you have, and don’t rush to bring it out.
- Personification of the clay ?
- Clay and storytelling?
- The object made of clay is the ‘gift’ to the person of the past and from future. The thanks are in clay? (in relation to Liz past and future ancestors workshop)
- Making a shape out of clay to thank the past lives of that clay. The clay sculpture becomes a timelapse of the conversation.
- By not cracking, the clay is agreeing to the shape.
- Clay + time + knowledge it has.
- Past ancestors of the clay - thanking the past ancestors of the clay.
- Clay is made from all these stories + past lives + blend of everything but it is still something new (like I’m related to my roots but I am new), the clay that we’re claying with as opposed to the clay outside in the ground:
- Information from clay: the clay gives out information based on how it is interacted with.
- Carving: knowing when to stop (instinct + intuition, based on experience and knowledge)
- clay and decoloniality?
- NOT more than 10 people - 7 people + us two.
- documenting- notes and feedback form.
- Communication with the non-human: how do you know when you’re communicating with non-humans? What do you do to communicate and do you notice that you’re doing it with your surroundings?
- Mini interactions with the non-human, between you and the other (for example working with dough, or Sara’s example of old man talking to his boat)
- In the workshop: take it in turns to name or describe what we’re aware of when working with clay.
- It becomes a recipe for sensory awareness of your movements/interactions with clay
- Awareness of you and the clay, but also you and the clay and the space you’re in (installation).
- 10 mins, set the tone to introduce the workshop: Sara’s story. As a kind of short guided meditation opening with poem or fairytale explaining what we’re going to do with clay.
- Short rounds of clay-making and talking then throwing the work on floor or wall- release and to remind yourself not to get caught up in what you’re making.
- They get to keep one of them at the end, one that they can fire. If there’s one that they want to keep throughout the rounds but realise they want to keep another one then they have to pick one, only space for one firing.
- 15-20mins (see as we go along if we need more or less time)
- Practicing on your clay, the techniques on sensing to think about (squeezing and feeling), and what happens if you do this and that.
- 10 mins
- Same thing but participants practice saying it outloud: what they notice in this round and in the past round, etc…
- End with smashing
- 15-25 mins
- Repetition of pinching technique but adding the coiling technique. Saying it outloud: what do they notice now, and last round.
- End with smashing
- Carving of the smashed thing? The starting point isn’t completely yours?
- Add another layer of seeing how the clay communicates
- Carve by making indents with fingers, nails or simple wooden tools (flow of movement, choreography of hands awareness: trust your hands (its even more than intuitive, let your hands do the work, and let your brain understand as it goes). It’s a method that can’t be understood in conscious thoughts but it is still understood, can be meditative.
- English but some norwegian can be spoken
- Recordings are transcribed and formatted into a book that participants can pick up together with their fired clay. The descriptions of sensing are made into a proper recipe book (hard cover).
- Sunday 8th, early afternoon 13-15. We have to get their contact info (this we can do in the workshop sign up).
- Firing is week 24 so pick up on 14-15th, last weekend of exhibition.
STORYTELLING EVENT: open to the rest of the school, not just Arts and Craft.
TUTORIAL NIKHIL 27.02.25
- in relation to exhibition: don’t give yourself too much to deal with. don’t give too much already now.
- which concepts do I want to stay with.
- only present the bits I can close my eyes and be comfortable with but can also be a testing ground.
- what information needs to be communicated (set an arbitrary date for the performance)
- check ‘reading the contemporary’ + ‘the location of culture’: justify the workshop as opposed to the conversation.
- agency of collage process rather than speaking.
UPDATES FEB
-library booked by design so can’t use it, looking for other spaces.
- blackbox could have worked but after meetings with Cole + Thisbe it’s a bit small (also there was a fear of merging staged artwork, mine, with not staged, theirs).
- cathedral but Terje, Johanne and Vilma’s works are all quite big.
- placed in Seilduken 1 (more-than-human aspect, archiving aspect, links well to those parts of my work)
Model-making
- stream of consciousness ‘book’ from Seilduken 2 exhibition, but sewn together as a sail.
- yarn criss-crossing
- pidestals on which books are placed
- ‘theory’ bookshelf from Forest Library installation seilduken 2 exhibition
- hanging branches, from which collages of new workshops are hanging from.
- made site-specific to the library space.
Master Project Description- SEE LINK
The Collective Tree-Ship Rituals is a series of workshops and artworks centered on letter-writing and discussion as a ritual for decolonizing the experiences of a mixed person of colour, through an ecological perspective. It is a physical manifestation of the current phase of the research project RITUALS TALKING DECOLOGY which looks at the workshop as a specific participatory and ritual practice and how this can bring about emancipatory healing processes to and for racially and culturally mixed people (hybrids). This decolonial approach will be looked at through an ecological lens, likening human decolonial processes with decolonizing the physical ecology of the planet we live on, and towards a sustainable future of climate justice and political justice, social justice and economical justice.
The workshops in The Collective Tree-Ship Rituals are rituals: flat-structured knowledge sharing spaces for grounding, through a collective action that recurs in time. This knowledge comes from the participants but also the non-human surroundings, man-made and natural, that are within these spaces, and moves towards a collective knowledge unique to that space.
The main workshop ritual that will be focused on will be letter-writing as ritual. Participants are invited to write a letter to a person in the past who has made a positive impact on them, thanking them for the knowledge they have imparted/shared with them. Participants are then invited to write a second letter, this time from the perspective of a person in the future, writing to the participant, thanking them for the knowledge they have imparted/shared with them. A discussion facilitated by myself (and potential collaborators) will follow.
The documentation from the workshops, together with my research and own thoughts will create the artworks that are the Collective Tree-Ship Rituals. These will involve two locations: Linderud Gård and the KHIO Library.
see project description for further details.
Site for the KHIO Exhibition:
own pictures of the site
NEW FOLLOW-UP MOODBOARD (older moodboard further down) november 24- inspiration from artists
HØST SEMESTER REVIEW - ARTIST BOOK
tentative digital collage testing with text and pictures
MA Final - spring 2025 - inside KHIO exhibition - november 24
- communication capsules of the ‘Tree-ship rituals’ and RITUALS TALKING DECOLOGY research project.
artworks - ideas
-roll of scroll/parchment with drawings/sketches/text of the rituals (and an empty part that’s only for children to fill in? also as a way to keep them distracted??)
- interactive ‘stream of consciousness book’ like in the Seilduken exhibition (but with pages that people can ‘turn’, they just rotate on themselves)
- film based on constellation 1 rituals
- artist book from year 1
- artist book of collection of thoughts (høst semester 24) with soundwork and short animated test
- collection of thoughts publication (which will also be in the ‘stream of consciousness in bookform’ artwork
should the collectivity be emphasized?
MA Final - spring 2025 - outside KHIO exhibition - oct/nov 24
The Tree-Ship Collective Rituals is a physical manifestation of the current phase of the research project RITUALS TALKING DECOLOGY, I have defined this particular ecological approach to decoloniality as ‘decology’ which speaks about decolonizing from an ecological context but more importantly incorporates an active movement towards sustainable futures exemplified in Donna Haraway’s Chtulucene and Malcom Ferdinand’s World-Ship. Both proposed movements speak to interconnectivity across species through becoming-with, grounding with the other and our surroundings while accounting for racial, class, gender discrimination (and acknowledging that that interconnectivity across species was also there before the ongoing colonial project).
I want to explore together with other hybrids how discussion practiced on a ritual basis can achieve ‘decology’: I want to make the point that communicating and sharing knowledge on a ritual basis within our human species, across species and together with other bodies (man-made and natural), situated on this planet, is one way to move towards sustainable futures that encompasses social, economical, political and environmental equity, justice and spirituality. Lastly, I want to explore what that communication and knowledge-sharing entails.
How do hybrids, human and non-human, living bodies and not, experience colonialism? How can we heal from this and how can we decologise our thought and behavioural patterns towards each other (human, non-human, inert bodies) and our surroundings, through communication and knowledge-sharing rituals?
The term the workshop is defined as a space for lateral-structured knowledge sharing with other human and non-human bodies, and a space of rituals where the workshop exists in relation to time. I define rituals as actions that are done with awareness (grounding) repeated in a cyclical time-frame.
This project aims to explore the emancipatory processes involved in healing the experiences of a specific demographic using the workshop as a specific participatory and ritual practice, from an ecological perspective.
This specific demographic will entail the following constellations:
- Constellation 1
- Constellation 2
- Constellation 3
tentative artwork ideas - september 24
- connecting knowledge of trees (or knowledge of forests) with knowledge in libraries, and with knowledge of visitors, spectators, performers (?): ELABORATE ON THIS!
- work with an existing library regarding this (Nesodden library?)? or botanical gardens? ‘Botanical gardens’ library’?Linderud Gård?
- a space for performances, workshops, readings
- installation element: take the library to the forest. a library under a very old tree. work with urtealliansen and their ‘what can we learn from trees’ ethos and visualise it?
- learning collectively through exchange and discussion, collective reading, collective writing, can we do this on a cyclical basis? how would that shape our understanding of yesterday, today and tomorrow, as individuals and as communities?
- why we make art and why we share it? (learning mind experience into art, mary jane jacobs + jacquelynn baas)
- Forest Library, what’s the link between forests and libraries (paper, imagination growing and developing, planting a seed for an idea to germinate, knowledge in libraries and knowledge in forests)
- INSIDE KHIO EXHIBITION: communication capsules, films, publications still within a created/scenographised space (maybe a repeat of the Seilduken forest library as a communication space for the outside khio exhibition?)
BEGINNING OF MOODBOARD september 24
‘The Dream’ artist Frances Goodman