Schhh Residency 2025 - Borrby, Sweden
I'm back home in Canada now, still processing everything from my residency at Schhh Vardagsrummet in Borrby, Sweden (Österlen). It was an absolute blast. Looking back, I keep coming back to how a residency isn't just a project to complete set-out objectives, but a time to silence the mind and focus on art making as a general practice and lifestyle. For me, my particular practice is about listening, absorbing, and understanding. I want to build empathy for the world around me and connect deeper with things both human and more-than-human. I want to share sounds and moments that bridge experiences across oceans, land, and time, to familiarize the not-so-often-heard while also creating opportunity in abstraction.
All that aside, a residency is also an opportunity to connect with new people, and this one gave me so much of that. The residency hosts Ann Rosén and Sten-Olof Hellström were so kind to open the doors to their communities and home to host me. They fed me, drove me to the dentist, sat with me over tea and coffee, and helped facilitate the sound making I wanted to explore. I made a new friend in an artist from Berlin named Jorn Ebner, who treated me to wonderful conversation and idea exploration throughout our co-residency experience. My sweet friend Malte's mom Helena brought me to an apple festival (the fruit), welcomed me, and drove me around the countryside. It was wonderful to be exposed to so many wonderful folks.
Now that I'm home, I can say with certainty that this residency was already a success. It filled my soul with new friends and renewed inspiration, and that hasn't faded on the flight back. I'd encourage any art-making person I know to seek out residencies and engage in art-making communities like this one. It's truly life changing. Thanks, everyone.
This video is a reflection on my time at the Schhh residency in Borrby, Sweden, in September 2025. Throughout this residency I was exploring techniques in live sound spatialization for my project called Hum.
Hum:
Developed during a residency at Fredericton’s Charlotte Street Arts Centre, Hum is a soundscape performance that draws on months of field recording inside the 140-year-old building, documenting its creaking floorboards, resonant stairwells, rehearsal rhythms, and subtle seasonal shifts. These recordings are transformed live through real-time electronic processing into a sound collage that centres the abstracted, resonant stories embedded in this community hub. By treating the building as both instrument and archive, Hum seeks meaning in acts of attentive listening, revealing how place, memory, and community are inscribed in sound. The performance is meant to push beyond passive hearing, encouraging deep listening as a way of engaging with surroundings and the textures they hold. Hum opens a space for reflection on how sound can alter our understanding of where we are and where we’ve been.
Schhh Artist Residency
https://schhh.se/artist-residency/
https://schhh.se/event/schhh-residency-autumn-2025-1/
Schhh has done concerts, workshops, exhibitions, performances and short residencies for almost 10 years. They are now developing their activities further in order to better promote high-quality, innovative sound art and music production. For example, they are expanding their residency program with longer residencies. They want to encourage collaboration and exchange among innovative artists. Residents can now have access to a concert hall next door that can seat up to 100 guests. Another feature is their project room that can be configured as an acousmonium, loudspeaker orchestra and various surround systems. The project room is also great for collaboration projects, multi-channel immersive concerts and other public events. The studios can be set up according to resident request, and the bedrooms are also equipped with a small mixer, speakers and headphones.
Thanks Canada Council For The Arts, the Government of Canada, the New Brunswick Arts Board (artsnb), and the Government of New Brunswick for their generous support of this project. Thanks so much also to Ann and Sten-Olof at Schhh Vardagsrummet for hosting me at this residency!
