Fault Lines
A Nomadic Residency for Artists in Ecological Flux.
Core Team 2025-26
Core Team 2026
Susannah Mills, director of Fault Lines, trauma counselor, artist, based in LA and Joshua Tree, US.
NN, media ,based in NN.
NN, alumni network, based in NN.
NN, co-ordinator public outreach and events.
Each residency program has its dedicated team to ensure a stringent yet caring implementation..
About Curators Björkö Edition
Susannah is an artist, grief counselor and curator.
She is dedicated to set up programs lectures, exhibitions for artists in ecological flux. Susannah about her own practice “My work as a painter is a stream of consciousness process resulting in symbolic, semi abstract imagery populated by spirit beings in dream landscapes and cities. My art is directly connected to my work as a death doula and relates to the deep psychology of death and rebirth of life and spirit, and how human relationships make life come into existence.”
Prior to dedicating her time to help other artists and the making of her own art works she worked in the film industry.
@susannarama
www.susannahmills.com
Rick Gradone
Rick is the co-curator of the Los Angeles Wildfire Residency and a painter and sculptor. He holds a BA in Art History from Fairfield University where he studied painting independently with Peter Michael Gish. Over the years he has participated in residencies at Creekside Arts in Humboldt, CA, Belgrade Art Studio in Serbia, and La Wayaka in in Chile. Gradone was actively involved in relief efforts around the Eaton Fire in the days and months that followed and continues to support those efforts today.
Gradone’s work explores the recognition of the Earth as an all-powerful god figure and creates iconography for this based on rocks. As the slowest changing and most stable form of theplanet, rocks hold the history of the planet and reveal the tiny place that humans hold in its vast timeline.
Concerned with the spiritual aspects of our relationships to each other and the planet, he will address the precarious balance of these dynamics in an era of climate change in his work at this stay at BKN.
@rickgradoneprojects
Anna Viola Hallberg
Anna Viola is a multidisciplinary artist and curator whose work spans video, installation, photography, text, and socially engaged practices. Her research-driven approach explores themes of memory, public space, identity, and collective narratives—often at the intersection of private and public spheres. The interest has shifted from agency towards weak resistance and weak avant garde.
Hallberg works across disciplines and geographies, addressing social justice, migration, and governance through immersive and collaborative formats. Her practice extends beyond the studio into site-responsive interventions, residencies, and public programming. Her work emphasizes dialogue, process, and art as a space for critical reflection in later years she has embarked on exploring metaphysical aspects of space and body as a vessel for knowledge especially for walking as artform.
She holds a BA in Cinema and Curatorial Studies from Stockholm University and an MSc in International Museum Studies from the University of Gothenburg, Hallberg is the founding director /curator of BKN/Björkö Konstnod and co-founder of AiRS/Artist in Residence Skövde. Hallberg triangulates between Stockholm, Björkö and Mariestad, Sweden.
About Björkö and BKN
BKN is located on an island in Norrtälje municipality, Sweden. It’s a costal region covered with almost boreal forest. It’s a quiet place only some 350 people live across the island. It’s connected by a bridge to the mainland and is 2 hours north east of Stockholm. The public transportation for greater Stockholm area brings you to the doorstep. If you come directly from Arlanda Airport it takes about the same time. Björk in Swedish is birch and ö island, so yes you will see them every where along with aspen but more so you will encounter pine, heather and spruce. Moss and kitchen are much appreciated aspect of the nature here as well.
The darker half of the year you have a chance to see aurora borealis and from May the days are rapidly getting longer towards midsummer. It’s a four season climate with some snow in the winters and 15-20 degrees during the summer. In 2020 BKN was founded in two former school buildings, wooden structures that are over 100 years old. Resources include, in addition natures offerings, black and white darkroom, loom, sawing machine, wood shop, beamer, speakers etc. During the first five years BKN had over 200 artists. More from them >>>
Overview
Fault Lines is a nomadic art residency program based in Los Angeles that supports artists whose lives and practices have been disrupted by ecological tremors—whether literal (earthquakes, floods, fires) or metaphorical (climate crisis, displacement, environmental grief).
Rather than anchoring itself in a single site, the residency moves across the diverse ecological and cultural landscapes of Los Angeles County, tracing the invisible seams between stability and rupture.
Vision
In a time when environmental precarity is reshaping both the planet and creative practice, Fault Lines reimagines what an artist residency can be: adaptive, mobile, and responsive.
The residency provides space for experimentation, rest, and collective reflection for artists navigating the material and emotional aftershocks of ecological change.
Artists are invited to explore
– The poetics of repair and reconfiguration. The emotional and material impact of ecological disturbance
– Movement, instability, and adaptation in artistic practice
– Intersections between environmental justice and creative resilience
– The poetics of repair and reconfiguration
– Create new works of art in tandem with other participants and if inclined develop individual art works.
Structure
– Nomadic Model: Residencies unfold across multiple temporary host sites—community gardens, artist-run spaces, nature centers, and transitional urban spaces.
– Duration: 6–8 weeks, with micro-residencies of 1–2 weeks for emergent responses to ongoing crises.
– Support: Artists receive housing (where needed), production support, and access to studio, curatorial mentoring, trauma counceling, share sessions and resources.
– Community Engagement: Public gatherings bringing residents together with local communities to share works-in-progress, ecological stories, and resilience practices.
– Accommodation, travel, visas and stipend specified in each call.
Structure
– Nomadic Model: Residencies unfold across multiple temporary host sites—community gardens, artist-run spaces, nature centers, and transitional urban spaces.
– Duration: 6–8 weeks, with micro-residencies of 1–2 weeks for emergent responses to ongoing crises.
– Support: Artists receive housing (where needed), production support, and access to studio, curatorial mentoring, trauma counceling, share sessions and resources.
– Community Engagement: Public gatherings bringing residents together with local communities to share works-in-progress, ecological stories, and resilience practices.
– Accommodation, travel, visas and stipend specified in each call.
Historic View
– Fault Lines is a concept born in 2025 at the intersection of California based artist Susannah Mills and Swedish artist/curator Anna Viola Hallberg.
– The first Fault Lines residency “Los Angeles Wildfire Survivors Residency” curated by Susannah Mills and Rick Gradone (both LA), they made the selection of artists and Anna Viola Hallberg (Stockholm/Björkö) acted as local liaison and curator by folding the project into the existing project of BKN “Lucid Dreams”.
– A fully unique funding strategy was put in place in form of a collaboration with actors/comedians Brian Huskey (us), Björn Gustavsson (se) and Eric Stern (se), BKN and Kulturhuset Stadsteatern (Culture house and city theatre in Stockholm) where ticket sales went towards costs in addition to private donations and donated artworks that could be sold to support the program.
– The venue for the first Fault Lines Residency was BKN/ Björkö Konstnod a node for artists in the Northern Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden established in 2020.The venue is located in a rural context without light and sound pollution.
Post residency dissemination
– Exhibition in Los Angeles by the first 14 Fault Lines artists. The residency edition was focusing on artists who were Los Angeles Wildfire Survivors. They spent between 10 days and 8 weeks at BKN a node for the arts in Stockholm Northern Archipelago, Sweden. The exhibition takes place at – NAME OF GALLERY – in Los Angeles in 2026. Exhibition in proud partnership with – NAME OF PARTNERS .
– Fault Lines Alumni Network, this network is an extension of the residency program and forms a much needed new context for the individual artists to support each other’s practices.
transformative connections