Jonas Johansson is an anywhere-based artist, educator, and designer from Glommen, Halland. His work explores light and technology through play, community, and (un)human intervention.
Since 2024 Jonas plans courses for Svenska Tecknare, taught Visual Communication at Beckmans (2017–2025), served as Industry Leader at Hyper Island (2014–2022), and have lectured at Aalto University, Konstfack, School of Machines, Berghs, Nyckelviken, Futuregames, to name a few.
Jonas's professional experience includes KRAM/WEISSHAAR (SE/DE), FIELD (UK) and Moment Factory (CA). He interned at W+K Tokyo (JP) and UltraSuperNew (JP).
Under the moniker Scenic Route, he has performed for artists such as La Fleur, Kornel Kovacs, Gesafellstein, Yuksek and all time idol, The Field.
Today, Jonas runs the artist residency Visualia, produces the fulldome film festival Dome Dreaming, co-creates events with PLX, collaborates with the lighting collective Svartljus, and co-founded Nordic Audiovisual Artists. He shares a studio in Stockholm with SMASH and Rose Hallgren.
Tufting Ex Machina
A collaborative tufting workshop using the exquisite corpse technique, turning cultural patterns into tufted textiles.
Tufting Ex Machina was a two-day workshop at Aavistus, an audiovisual festival in Helsinki that I have been part of since its start in 2022, as both an artist and collaborator through Nordic Audiovisual Artists. Created together with Rose Hallgren, the workshop invited 10 participants to explore their cultural canon through tufting. I had myself been exploring tufting during a residency at Konvent Zero in Spain.
The method drew on the exquisite corpse technique, a collaborative approach originating from the Surrealists where each participant contributes to a composition without seeing the full picture, responding only to what came before.
Two groups of four each designed and tufted a square, then passed it on for the next group to respond to, reacting to each other's cultural shapes, colours, and patterns, resulting in 24 tufted squares covering 140 x 210 cm.
For the project, Rose designed a custom modular tufting frame that could expand to 2 x 4 metres yet fold down to fit in a sports bag.
The finished piece was exhibited at the festival, with conductive thread added to make it interactive using Circuit Playground. I also produced a music track to accompany the work.
