SIMKA is the project name for the visual artists Simon Häggblom’s and Karin Lind’s shared artistic activities since 2003. Through SIMKA they combine their knowledge and skill from visual art, set design-scenography and landscape architecture.

The core of SIMKA’s work is the investigation and formation of different spaces and sites for human interaction. Informed by the tensions between urbanity and nature, as well as the fictional and the habitual world. Their pieces are more or less permanent, located in the gaps, the solitary or disintegrated spaces of the public or private sphere.

During SIMKA’s and Godzilla’s shared time together in the island of Björkö (and Vitören), Häggblom and Lind started to reconnect with their past project “Floating Trunks” that they had 10 years ago.

“The Baltic Sea – a continent in itself

flight across the Baltic for generations

then as now across the Mediterranean

flight dreams

a human being who flees from war – poverty

dreams of something new

then as now

listen to the stories

across the Atlantic

put your ear to the sea

hear the dream

where is the shoreline

Floating Trunks is an art project stretching across the sea which was initiated by us in the artist duo SIMKA in 2013 after an invitation from Umeå2014 to participate in an art installation in Umeå and Riga in connection with the two cities’ role as European Capital of Culture in 2014. A political art project with social dimensions. The core of the project is migration, the mouths of the rivers, the Baltic Sea and the interaction between the three Baltic Sea cities Umeå, Riga and Pori. Carried out by us in SIMKA, Karin Lind and Simon Häggblom, together with our assistant Sofia Romberg, together with 21 young adults from the three cities creating an artistic project in the conjunction between the individual, the sea and trees. Our idea was to let Floating Trunks change location between the three cities which all have important river mouths where the rivers’ fresh water meets the salty sea.

The river mouths have gained their significance and wealth precisely from being meeting points for all sorts of trading, transportation and cultural exchange. The word trunk encompasses associations to safety, the family and travel. The trees, Umeå’s birches, Pori’s spruces and Riga’s pines, were placed in twentyfive colourful buoys that floated in the river mouths. Each installation was given its own expression. Some of the life buoys remained empty, however, to symbolise those migrants who never arrived. Some of the trees wilted, lost in the foreign element. By letting the trees change location and form we wanted to create new encounters and contexts in the different places. Floating Trunks is a metaphor for flight across the Baltic Sea and dreams of another life.

Our partner in Umeå was Norrlandsoperan’s project Riverstories with programmes in various places along the rivers of the region Västerbotten. Floating Trunks became the link that took the stories via the Ume River’s mouth out to the sea and into an international dimension.

In Riga the project was tested first on a small scale with younger children before we went on to assemble our group. We invited the Umeå Legends kick boxing club, Rozentāls Art High School in Riga, Mikaelsgården gymnasium in Pori and Kankaanpää Art School. 21 interested people were selected, seven from each country, Sweden, Latvia and Finland. In each city we in SIMKA were on location to plan and examine the place as well as to take care of practical matters concerning travels, living quarters and meals. In Umeå the participants worked in groups of three, with paint, on the quay outside Hamnmagasinet under the bridge that leads E4 into town.

In Pori at Kumo River we worked in pairs mixing cement with the sand of the shore outside the art museum to sculpt the trees’ base. At the art gallery Noass floating on the river Daugava in Riga the participants worked independently in textile materials to clothe the trees. Expectations were high before the arrival of the participants. Each time our anxiety consisted of concern that someone might not show up and how our instructions and the artistic work would go and excitement about the piece. The days consisted of instruction and conversation about art with our point of departure in theoretical texts and artistic creativity.

The conversations revolved around identity, class, travel, the nature of trees and about art. Thus by observing the Baltic Sea together, new questions and thoughts were raised that made us analytical, touched and conscious of ourselves and each other as we were confronted with questions about immigration/emigration across the Baltic Sea, and the question: How do I think and how do I see? The biggest political tension occurred in Riga. Near our worksite an Israeli festival sponsored by the state of Israel was ongoing, while at the same time Israel was bombing the Gaza strip from which one of the participants had fled several years earlier. At Noass there was a reunion conference with people who had fled from Latvia due to war and occupation.

The question of migration was brought to a head while at the same time Ukraine was being invaded and reports of boat refugees on the Mediterranean were intensifying. From beginning to end the character of Floating Trunks has comprised great complexity through workshops as method and through art and the social aspects that made the work difficult to grasp, the results impossible to foresee, but perhaps also gave the project its dynamics and its explosive force. As a conclusion to the project in the fall the trees were taken up from the rivers and planted permanently in each city and a final seminar was held in Umeå.

In the spring of 2015 we travelled the same route to check on how the trees had taken root. Now birches, spruces and pines with life buoys around their trunks are growing in Oscar Loncochinos’ glade by the Tavel creek in Umeå’s Erspark. In Riga they are planted in a central location in the city park next to Noass. In Pori the trees are growing at the artist collective T.E.H.D.A.S. in the park with the defunct short-wave radio station. The trees, with their colourful life buoys, now have new plots of soil in the cities around the Baltic Sea and a rich network of contacts was established among us who participated and with local actors.

We want to direct our warmest thanks to everyone who believed in and helped to realise this far-reaching project. Umeå municipality with Umeå2014 European Capital of Culture and Riverstories. Riga2014 European Capital of Culture and Gallery Noass. Pori’s Cultural Director and Pori Art Museum, as well as the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Pori. Without your support and commitment Floating Trunks would not have been possible. We hope that the trees can continue to grow as a remembrance and bring the story of migration and the influence of art on our lives to future generations.”