Installation: Jennifer Rainsford – Stråltid
Admission fee to the museum.
Free admission for students, young people under 25 as well as employees at Lund University.
Artist Jennifer Rainsford has created Stråltid (Beamtime) for Skissernas Museum, a temporary installation constructed from materials borrowed from the MAX IV research facility in Lund, in collaboration with the laboratory’s technicians and engineers. The work draws on principles employed at the research facility, but replaces synchrotron light with laser light in order to reveal life forms present in water samples collected and brought to the museum by visitors themselves. The images that emerge are captured on visitors’ mobile phones as photographs or videos and subsequently shared online.
During the weekend of 26–27 September, visitors are invited to bring water from a puddle, a stream, a flowerpot, or any other place where life may be found, and to take part in the creation of an artwork at a beam sculpture in the museum. The water is prepared for Stråltid, and with the aid of the beam, what would otherwise remain invisible to the naked eye becomes visible. Visitors photograph or film their irradiated drop of water, carrying the artwork away with them on their phones. When the laser beam is switched off, the installation is dismantled and the materials are returned to MAX IV.
About the Work
In Stråltid, Jennifer Rainsford engages with the ephemeral both as a theme and as a method. Water is a constantly shifting material, carrying life and organisms across time and space, while the borrowed materials from MAX IV bring part of the facility’s physical presence into the museum. Just as photons produce a fleeting light, a simplified version of the synchrotron’s function and the researchers’ processes is transferred into a new context, with the same purpose: to make the invisible visible. The work’s complete existence is dispersed across visitors’ mobile phones, forming a transient and decentralised entity.
In Stråltid, Rainsford returns to a recurring strand in her practice: storytelling as a cohesive force. The installation is a material retelling of the research facility, created with the assistance of its technicians and engineers. At the same time, the collection of visitors’ stories about the origins of their water samples becomes both a form of mapping and a narrative shaped by the audience itself: the story of an artwork that exists across many different devices.
The programme forms part of Jennifer Rainsford’s artist residency at MAX IV in Lund.
About the residency
The artist residency is made possible by a donation from the Gyllenstiernska Krapperup Foundation and is part of Lund University’s long-term efforts to strengthen the convergence of art and science. By making room for dialogue between scientists, artists, and finally the public, the residency aims to enrich and expand perspectives and understanding of the groundbreaking research conducted at MAX IV.
About MAX IV
MAX IV is a research infrastructure within Lund University which generates highly focused X-ray light, illuminating materials at the molecular scale. MAX IV is the first 4th generation lightsource in the world. Researchers use MAX IV to study their samples’ structure and composition in meticulous detail, as part of their search for solutions to society’s biggest challenges.
About the artist
Jennifer Rainsford is based in Stockholm and works at the interface between art, film and science. Her artistic practice includes film, installations and interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers and activists, in which she investigates the relationship between people, technology and nature. She currently teaches at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in film, where she works with the Center for Art and Digitality exploring expanding formats and new technologies. She was chosen from among 68 applicants for the inaugural artist in residence.
