Rusl Fest - sustainable design festival

RUSL is a sustainable design festival focusing on circular thinking and its application within art, design and culture, with a special emphasis on the building industry. The festival will take place from June 27th to July 2nd. A week-long event with workshops, lectures, exhibitions, dinners and social gatherings. 

The festival is hosted by the Fúsk project space which is an independent ideal-driven laboratory for urban experiments and culture. The studio is a 1200m² warehouse consisting of smaller studio units for creatives and entrepreneurs. 

Our goal is to enhance cultural activities and inforce a public debate as well as education. The whole project is socially driven and is already collaborating with the city of Reykjavík, Young Environmentalists, Reykjavík Tool Library, The Design Center and Nordic Culture Fund, the group was also granted the title of “The Artist Group of the Year” by the city of Reykjavík.

The area is run through a non-profit organization and has solely been built by volunteers. We strive for expanding the cultural grassroots in this new creative neighborhood of Gufunes and look forward to making our mark on the future development in Gufunes.

“The Intelligent Instruments Lab presents Trash Sounds, a week-long intensive workshop on designing and performing with intelligent musical instruments made from discarded materials.

In this workshop, you will gain hands-on experience with the cutting edge of musical instrument design, learning from scratch techniques for real-time audio programming, creative AI for gesture-sound mapping, sonic interaction design, physical instrument craft, and speculative design.

Each day you will receive direct instruction in one of the topics above, using your new skills to rehabilitate waste materials into living musical objects, and to collectively improvise music daily at one of the many unique sites at FÚSK Gufunes.

We welcome beginners, musicians, makers and everyone in between, and especially those who are not well represented in music technology today. Together we will cultivate a friendly environment where everyone listens to and learns from each other.“

“During this workshop we’ll cook with ingredients saved from the dumpster, as a way to give back value to food considered “waste”. We’ll learn about the abundance of wild food available in Iceland (think foraging for wild herbs and greens, seaweed, and city crops) and different ways of food preservation (fermentation, pickling, drying). We'll also touch topics such as composting, permaculture and urban gardening.

Together we’ll look into our possibilities, think about our specific local situation and what we can do, as individuals and as a society to prevent food waste, achieve a more sustainable food future and more food sovereignty for Iceland.

Workshop is going to take place in a professional kitchen on site,  as well as the beautiful area surrounding FÚSK Gufunes and is intended for everyone interested in the topics, regardless of profession and experience. We will work and learn together, in a respectful, judgment free environment. We want participants to have an active impact on the program of the workshops, so it is prone to changes.“

“Architectural collective Slökkvistöðin invites everyone interested in architecture and sustainability to join for a creative and hands-on workshop during Rusl Festival.

Each participant or team will develop their own unique design. They will build a physical model for material reuse in full scale (a floor or ceiling system, a chair or a facade). By creating valuables from materials otherwise discarded as trash, participants will leave the workshop with a concept ready for application in future projects, complete with documentation and carbon footprint comparison to conventional methods.“

“The workshop revolves around building, using hands-on solutions whilst repurposing materials from the building- and film industry for changing our local area of Gufunes. With focus on the building industry being the cause of one of the biggest carbon footprint in the world. The workshop is held in collaboration with the cultural platforms Institut for X (DK) and Blivande (SE).

“Don’t accept the city as it is. Create your own spaces and environments and make the city your own” (This is X, 2015: 387).“

“RUSL fest invites you to a 5 day workshop where the focus is traditional sign painting and mural art techniques. 

Each participant designs their own sign whilst getting to know the basis of this traditional craft; different brushes, brush strokes, color mixing, upscaling and lettering. 
Participants will learn the process of transferring a sketch to a fully painted mural on a wall. Going over techniques step by step and painting a collaborative mural in the area.

The workshop focuses on found materials, discarded paint and wood. Ending with the final result and exhibition of an outdoor mural in the Gufunes area. The mural is a communal art piece that sends a strong message to the community. Everyone is free to participate in the workshop, regardless of their level of experience.“