Layers creating works of art

The origins of Making the Immortal can be traced to Hallberg’s residency in Mariestad, Sweden, in 2010–11, where he developed a large-scale contemporary art project exploring public space and social imagination. The project expanded into a temporary kunsthalle, a university summer program, and an extensive series of workshops and public talks.

During this period, Hallberg encountered the work of Bror Kronstrand, an artist who had once enjoyed considerable recognition and travelled extensively across the world but whose work has since fallen into near obscurity. Returning to Mariestad, Hallberg invited the contemporary artist Björn Perborg to develop a collaborative project that placed their own artistic practices in dialogue with Kronstrand’s life and archive.

The result was Making the Immortal (2011–2013), comprising two video works and a total installation of variable scale. Rather than reconstructing a biography, the project approaches the archive as a living and unstable field in which memory, authorship, and historical narrative are continually renegotiated.

Built predominantly from archival material, Making the Immortal reformats and recontextualises Kronstrand’s private photographs, newspaper clippings, correspondence, objects, and 16 mm and 35 mm films. Through video, photography, slide projections, facsimiles, and enlarged fragments of letters and images, the work transforms documentary evidence into a layered reflection on absence, remembrance, and artistic legacy.

The project continued beyond the installation itself. In 2014, Hallberg travelled to sites associated with Kronstrand’s life, including Småland, where Kronstrand’s second wife had lived. The property, now maintained by relatives, still preserves parts of the artist’s collection. Later that year, Hallberg retraced Kronstrand’s journey through Mexico, travelling from Veracruz to Mexico City. Central to this research was an experimental pilgrimage to locate a bridge depicted in one of Kronstrand’s private photographs.

The field work in Mexico was realized with the assistance of Åsa Öhrn (Sweden) and Karina Ocaña (Mexico). Through extensive local research, Ocaña succeeded in identifying the bridge, which spans a ravine between two municipalities in the state of Veracruz. The discovery transformed an anonymous image from a private archive into a specific geographical site, collapsing the distance between document and landscape, memory and place. The search itself became an extension of the artwork, demonstrating how archival fragments can continue to generate new encounters, narratives, and acts of imagination decades after their creation.

The field research undertaken in Småland and Mexico extended the conceptual trajectory of Making the Immortal. During a five-week residency at Vandalorum, Hallberg developed Accumulation, a work shaped through conversations with Kronstrand’s relatives and their reflections on the artist’s enduring presence and legacy. The research journey through Mexico resulted in the two-channel video installation Reminiscence, which revisits Kronstrand’s travels through the lens of contemporary experience and political conditions, allowing the memory noted in Kronstrands book about himself Painter and traveler to unfold within the landscape itself.

Both Accumulation and Reminiscence were presented as part of Hallberg’s solo exhibition Tipologías del Silencio (Typologies of Silence) at Museo de la Ciudad, Querétaro, Mexico, in March–April 2014. Together, the works extend the investigation initiated by Making the Immortal, shifting the emphasis from the archive as historical record to the archive as a site of lived experience, where memory is activated through movement, encounter, and acts of retracing.

Below brief introduction to the gallery based work. For the experimental pilgrimage use link at bottom of page.

Making The Immortal

Artists: Anna Viola Hallberg & Björn Perborg
Title: Making The Immortal
Installation based on archival material on the artist Bror Kronstrand (1875-1950) from the city museum and public library in Mariestad, Sweden
The installation varies in size from 1-200 sqm.
Medium: Archive photographs, 16 and 35 mm film transferred and edited to new works, such as swivel frames, book, trunk, wallpaper, slide projections.

Making The Immortal discusses aspects of being an artist and the intricate relation to cultural policy, politics and the market. It also grasps on to the context of authenticity.

Exhibitions

– Supermarket 2013 at Kulturhuset/Supermarket Independent Art Fair, Stockholm, Sweden. Installed as a cabinet of curiosity in a trunk. Featuring a speculative travel trunk of Bror Kronstrand. A a shrine with Kronstrands photographic and film based self-portraits. Feb 2013
– Galleri Konstepidemin , Gothenburg, Sweden (total installation with essay film on Kronstrand), October 2013

Screenings

– Essay film at Gothenburg International Film Festival, Feb 2013
– Uppsala Short Film festival, Uppsala Sweden, 2014
– Vandalorum Museum for Art and Design, Värnamo, Sweden, 5 week screening in open studio during art residency for Region Jönköpings län, 2014

The three videos in the installation

Year: 2014
Duration: 9 min
Camera: Bror Kronstrand et al
Based on footage from the image archive in Mariestad, the Bror Kronstrand collection
Scanning 16 and 35 mm: SVT
Theatrical mix: Gustaf Berger, Auditory

Essay film: Making the Immortal is a poetical/political non-fiction film and installation by Anna Viola Hallberg and Björn Perborg exploring man’s quest to be remembered. This is made via the life and work of a portrait painter who passed away half a decade ago, Bror Kronstrand. Once an acclaimed artist who travelled the world extensively, today he is almost completely forgotten. For access to full film email: info @ annaviolahallberg.com (remove gaps)

Video sculpture: The text based-video from Kronstrands book Painter and Traveller projected onto the book. The excerpts were projected onto the book, placed as film subtitles on to the white cover. (see installation documentation below, Swedish version)

Title: Balkongen/The Balcony
Performance infront of camera by Bror Kronstrand (1875-1950) most likely made pre 1920. Footage is from Mariestad and Kronstrand is showcasing some of his medals and interacting with a maid.
Medium: 16 mm black and white, silent transferred and cleaned by Swedish television Lab in 2013 on behalf of Hallberg & Perborg.
Comment: Hallberg & Perborg discoved this scene on a reel holding various other sequences of travel reels.

Documentation

Documentation rom Kulturhuset (Stockholm), Galleri Konstepedemin (Gothenburg) and City Museum (Queretaro).