Focusing on masks considered complex artefacts, Det dolda sets out to engage critically and creatively with the discursive and socio-material histories of masks as well as with the collaborative making of masks, and the performativity masks open up to. It is our contention that such engagement with a specific artefact will allow us to broach a series of broader questions regarding the complexity and multi-dimensionality of sustainability.

In its current instantiation, Det dolda works specifically with the material glass, attempting to make masks of glass. Using auto-ethnographic reflection and collaborative writing to document and reflect on this process, Det dolda seeks to explore the interconnectedness of material- and making-based knowledge and the development of creative and critical perspectives and concepts relevant to our understanding and practice of sustainability. 

More concretely, and in the long term, Det dolda sets out to:

• Construct an archive / museum / taxonomy of masks and commentary on masks, fictions about masks, myths about masks, both virtual and physical.
• Explore the production of actual masks and wearables, artefacts, in different materials, exploring also the relationship between the discursive notions of masks, their functionalities, socio-material aspects and the collaborative learning that comes from the process of making masks in different materials.
• Explore the performative and ritual aspects of how masks have been and more importantly perhaps, can be used to create spaces and actions of e.g. intimacy, other forms of relationality between humans and humans, humans and other co-species, and indeed humans and other forms of materiality (i.e. objects).

Det dolda on a research retreat at Mundekulla in rural Småland: