The life we live outside the home, regardless of whether we live in the countryside or in the big city, is often described as characterized by increased insecurity and polarization. In recent years, a perception of public space as dangerous and filled with conflict has gained ground. It is a space described as somewhere where we have to overcome different obstacles, from the loss privatization of non-commercial spaces, to austerity-stricken public services, to different types of dangers when we move to and from school, the grocery store, the pharmacy, or the gas station. But isn’t it also precisely here, on the street, on the playground, or in the park that we meet people that are outside of our own social constellations of friendship and family? It is in the public space that we have an opportunity to see each other. How can we, in this ever-changing place, maintain our curiosity, joy, and willingness to rediscover the familiar together with others?

Woven Places wants to invite artists to explore the potential of AR technology to bring together different places, feelings, voices, and shared desires. Streets, parking lots, benches, squares, bus stops, parks, and bike racks are places that we constantly interact with in our daily lives and form strong connections to and deep relationships with a place. Our streets, the air we breathe, and our emotional lives already mix the local, national and global in the same breath. The relational aspects of public space affect how we meet each other in everyday life. It is the simple interplay that unites us, from how we relate to the people we encounter in our everyday lives, to how we behave in our relationships, that create the patterns that make up the social fabric that builds our shared interwoven lives.

Through your own smartphone, new perspectives, new worlds, aesthetic experiences and not least new forms of collaboration are discovered. The aesthetic experience opens up new ways of looking at life and creates a space for the meeting of one's own voice with the voices of others, releasing their transformative power. Our hope is that the artworks in Vävda rum will enable participation for both old and young to fantasize about new common horizons linked by joy and the desire to try see the familiar in new ways.