Johanna Tysk: KOKO Labs

During the course of her studies in “Organizing Discourse”, Johanna aims to establish and develop KOKO Labs – a transdisciplinary conjunction point of art, design and the social sphere, centered around her own practice. Her aim is to grow KOKO Labs into a broader platform for knowledge exchange and reflection in relation to the meeting between art, design and the social and political sphere. The platform will be launched as a website collecting and presenting her work, as well as a publication, inviting a range of professionals within these fields to reflect on the need for cross-disciplinary conversation when addressing complex social challenges.

Johanna Tysk, based in Stockholm, operates within and across the fields of art, design and social work.

Johanna received her B.F.A. in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta in 2007. Her early professional career includes digital advertising and design for ad agency Publicis Modem in New York, as well as art direction, branding, graphic design and illustrations for a wide range of freelance clients in Stockholm. Clients ranging from national media companies to independent artists and start-up children´s brand Tröstisar, that today sells their first invention Cuddly band-aids in fourteen countries, and has received numerous awards in the US. Since her return to Stockholm in 2008, Johanna has had a strong engagement in grass roots social movements like Love Tensta and StreetGäris, where she has explored strategies for social transformation through new forms of organization and communication.

In recent years, Johanna´s practice has moved to encompass art and social work, with an expanded notion of design as a process, an approach and a frame work for participation and project management. In 2012, she organized the week-long festival Creative Call, where she connected local suburban groups and established institutions like Moderna Museet and Kulturhuset, to a multidisciplinary group of artists representing the urban creative culture of Atlanta. She has also initiated an on-going project using theatre and theatrical exercises to explore structures and relations connected to issues of immigration and integration, and has lead a number of collective mural paintings with children and youth in collaboration with social practitioners Stadsmissionen and Folkets Hus Fisksätra.