Peter Haakon Thompson

Peter's Arts on Chicago Projects: The Mobile Sign Shop and PPPP/TTTT

Peter Haakon Thompson is an artist based in Minneapolis, MN, whose primary mediums are participation, interaction and conversation. He believes in expanding the idea of what art can be through the blurring of art and life. Some of his works include: The A Project, an effort to create solidarity among artists in their neighborhoods with the use of window signs with a large red ‘A’ indicating a household of artists/artist supporters. In 2004, he co-founded a participatory, temporary community called The Art Shanty Projects, existing every winter for five weeks on frozen Medicine Lake in suburban Minneapolis. Teach Me Your Language, is a work designed to ask passers-by to teach the artist their language with the aid of a chalkboard-sidewalk sign. Tent Services, a free service providing Expeditionary Conversation Tents for use outside the museum, showed at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, June to October 2010. In Summer of 2012 he created the Phillips West Sign Shop, a pop-up mobile sign making shop to engage neighbors in making, conversing and connecting. Thompson will continue the Mobile Sign Shop with Arts on Chicago in 2013. He is also part of an artist team commissioned to create a musical, participatory ping pong table for Union Depot in St Paul. He earned a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts and completed his MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2010.

He is a past recipient of a Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship, McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Photographers, MSAB Artist Initiative Grant, Neighborhood Partnership Initiative from the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, Forecast Public Projects grant, artist-in-residence at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder in Trondheim, Norway and with the Walker Art Center’s Teen Arts Council. In his spare time Thompson ties knots, sails and plays table tennis.

Artist Statement

I consider my mediums to be participation, interaction, and conversation. I use my art as a method and means for pursuing my curiosity about the world and interest in people. I am inspired by Allan Kaprow’s idea of a “lifelike art” over an “artlike art”. Some consistent themes to what I explore: language, overlooked places, creating place, conversations with people I don’t normally get to talk to and the expansion of what art can be. I believe that art can provide a service and can function as a possible guide for how to live in the world.

The materials I use are simply those that seem most suited to the question or problem that I wish to explore. I make objects (signs, tents, sleds, shanties) that serve as tools or prompts to facilitate interaction and dialogue. It is the actual use of these objects that becomes the art. These tools primarily function in unexpected places and locations.

peterhaakonthompson.com