Art Is Happening by Statens konstråd

CIVIC SOCIETY AS AN INITIATOR. ARTISTIC PRODUCTIONS OF SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART BY PUBLIC ART AGENCY SWEDEN.

ART IS HAPPENING 1

All the artworks that have been produced within the framework of Art Is Happening were developed locally; in a specific context, in a specific place, and in dialogue with several parties. It’s all about stories. About the residents’ stories of their area and about the stories that have been developed and formed into the artists’ works. Many of the artworks redirect the viewer’s gaze and overturn the rigid spatial hierarchies between center and periphery. They highlight different forms of publicness and complicate the clearcut division between private and public by creating other forms of community and spatiality. What is heard and which nuances can be perceived is influenced by the position of the listener. In this publication, we at the Public Art Agency present how the works that came out of Art Is Happening appear to us. The governmental initiative Art Is Happening took place between 2016 and 2018. The Public Art Agency Sweden’s task was to work together with civil society and the local inhabitants of ”Million Program” housing neighborhoods across the country to produce inspiring and innovative examples of public art, and create meeting places through artistic production.

CONTENTS

40–45

KULTURHUSET MITT FRAMFÖR NÄSAN, MUF ARCHITECTURE/ART AND ALONDRA, WOJCIECH PINDUR Jordbro, Stockholm

46–51

KOLLEKTIVA KROPPEN, JOHANNA GUSTAFSSON FÜRST Kungsmarken/Mellanstaden, Karlskrona

52–56

JAGUARS CAN’T BE HEARD, AND YET THEY SING, CARLA ZACCAGNINI Lindängen, Malmö

57–60

AL MADAFEH/THE LIVING ROOM, SANDI HILAL Prästholmen, Boden

61–65

RÅBY PLANET, MICHAEL BEUTLER Råby, Västerås

66–71

KEPSEN, MYCKET AND IN PURPLE, JOHANNA BILLING Råslätt, Jönköping

5–9

INTRODUCTION

12–14

DE SOM SÅR, SAGA GÄRDE, ATHENA FARROKHZAD AND DAVID GÜLICH Amiralsstaden, Malmö

15–19

FÖRHANDLINGEN AND MARMORLINJEN JOHAN TIRÉN AND ANNA HÖGBERG Gamlegården, Kristianstad

20–24

MIRAKEL, SANTIAGO MOSTYN AND GÄRDEÅSENS SJU UNDERVERK, KALLE LANDEGREN Gärdeåsen, Ljusdal

25–27

PAVILJONG, MAP13 BARCELONA Hageby, Norrköping

28–31

MOVING PLANTS, MAIDER LÓPEZ Hammarkullen, Göteborg

72–74

32–35

HUR, ROXY FARHAT Holma, Malmö

GUL, LINA SOFIA LUNDIN Tjärna ängar, Borlänge

75–79

36–39

ŞANEŞÎN, NASIM AGHILI AND BJÖRN KARLSSON Hässelby, Stockholm

LJUSLINJE FÖR TYROLEN, ALEKSANDRA STRATIMIROVIC Tynnered, Göteborg

81–83

BACKGROUND

INTRODUCTION

In an apartment, the kitchen light is on. Every time someone in the family switches it on, two other lights are also illuminated: one in the center of Gamlegården in Kristianstad in the south of Sweden, and another outside the Swedish Government offices in Stockholm. The little gesture of a switch that is turned on or off creates both concrete and symbolic illumination. The lamps that are switched on, illuminate a room, an entrance, and a facade or, to put it differently, a home, a public space, and a symbolic place for decision-making. The work illuminates its surroundings, highlights the issue of the location of power, and opens up for possible enlightenment in terms of greater knowledge and understanding. The work Förhandlingen (The Negotiation) by Anna Högberg and Johan Tirén was produced as part of the Public Art Agency’s public commission Konst händer (Art Is Happening, 2016–18) and can also be said to include its central parts. The task was to produce examples of what public art can be, develop methods for the agency of citizens, and spread knowledge of the project’s results—all these elements are set in motion in this work. Art in the public sphere is always in dialogue with the people who live and frequent the place, but here there was also a fundamental precondition that inhabitants and local stakeholders would participate in the processes leading up to the works. The project has led to permanent and temporary artworks and the procedure has been based on initiatives by and collaborations with different organizations in civil society. An open 6

Multiple readings of works are always possible but in relation to the works that were produced within the framework of Art Is Happening they are often inevitable. The works, and the processes that have led to them, are unified in their relation to different parameters that enable and limit, highlight and inform, that intervene and change—albeit at times only in a minimal way. Certain works transform a place, give it a new situation and meaning and others bring to light something that has been occurring in obscurity and bring about change by giving it the attention it deserves.

call generated 153 proposals from all over Sweden, of which 15 were chosen by the Public Art Agency. From Boden in the north to Malmö in the south, in places that have been defined within the framework of the commission as “areas with poor voter attendance.” The basic method in every location has been to meet the local residents, civil society, and business owners and try to find out what the most interesting issue to address artistically would be in their specific area. Thereafter, the process was developed further together, step by step, by the residents, associations, artists, the Public Art Agency, and—frequently—the civil servants working in the local municipalities and housing companies. The artworks were preceded by longer processes that influenced the aesthetic choices or interventions. The processes encompass issues such as methodology, grassroots support, and the development of the artistic work.

The stories are bound up with the physical places, but they can also create links to other spatialities. With the flick of a switch, Förhandlingen links three places in a direct causality and gets, if only for a moment, a kitchen light to challenge the center of democracy. The stories that emerge from the works are also narratives that have preceded them but have now become something else. They have been given shape, body, and space. Perhaps they haven’t always been understood exactly the way they were intended but that is of course also a part of the listening and processes such as these—misunderstandings emerge, what is heard is never exactly the same as what the speaker thinks they are saying. Projects such as Art Is Happening consist of many negotiations and relations, of issues of power, position, and economics. But listening isn’t only actual “hearing”—it is also a matter of taking in the speaker, the speaking becoming a voice and traveling from one body to another. And this speech being received and taken care of. And that the Public Art Agency, as a public authority, has tried to take responsibility and tried to hear, in earnest.

In this publication, we would like to highlight the artworks that were produced and reflect on what they do. All the works that were produced within Art Is Happening were developed in a specific context, in a certain place and time, and in dialogue with several parties. On one level they are about stories, about the residents’ stories about their area and about the story that the artist has used as a starting point. Place as a significant marker of home and belonging becomes the foundation that articulates the residents’ relationship with broader societal structures. The lack of light and visibility has been a recurring theme that has been formulated and worked with both by the local associations and the participating artists. In the work Förhandlingen this is staged in a particularly concrete way, but the topic recurs in several works and processes. In the condemned cultural center in Jordbro, a nose shines brightly (illuminating what is right under our noses), on Johanna Gustavsson Fürst’s tall sculpture the word “HÄR” (HERE) has been written in neon lights 36 meters up in the air, and Aleksandra Stratimirović has created a 45-metre-long light work. Light is both a symbolic and a real power working towards change. 8

When the work Jaguars Can’t Be Heard, and Yet They Sing by Carla Zaccagnini is finished, two roundabouts will together play the antifascist song “Red Rooster, Black Rooster,” but only if the children spin them both together so that the sound is synchronized. If not, the song will be cut up and the content that the whole will communicate will just be meaningless 9

fragments. And even if the song’s melody is heard, not everyone will understand its historical sounds. Furthermore, other sounds now also fill the space. The work was initiated by Gatukraft (Street Power in English), which is a local group that has long been dedicated to creating a better maintained central square. In collaboration with Gatukraft, the carousels have become a stopover on the way to school or the shops. The possibility of play becomes the answer to a local desire to take control of one’s central square and have an impact on the spaces that one’s children pass daily. Through a performative gesture, the work creates new narratives on the square that shift a spatial dynamic.

talked about as “Gastarbeiter” (guest workers). Concretely, Hilal along with Yasmeen Mahmoud and Ibrahim Muhammad Haj Abdullah, two newly arrived inhabitants of Boden, has created a kind of semi-public living room that acknowledges the importance of hosting, and that by creating accessibility to a physical space opens up for new roles. Al Madafeh is neither a public nor a private space, but a space in constant renegotiation, a kind of commons where responsibility and authority lie with the host, i.e. the person who has the key for the time being. Hilal initiated the artwork/ commons along with the Public Art Agency and it is now being developed further, used, and programmed by a large group of dedicated hosts.

What you hear is never the same. All listening is based on context, built on experiences and knowledge. The notion of listening is thus always linked to a position and an implicit question about the limits of one’s own listening. There are things that a public authority probably cannot hear and in Art Is Happening there was also a framework set out by the state directive. The Agency’s collaboration with artists also entails a further link in the chain, where the artist cannot be reduced to a listening party, but is also active and creates a work. The positions cannot be described via a division between artist and audience, but are colored by many different levels of participation, collaboration, and engagement.

Like the majority of the other artworks in Art Is Happening, Al Madafeh doesn’t only stress how power over physical spaces changes roles, but also how vital symbolic accessibility is. Who feels invited, who feels belonging in these spaces? How do thresholds, names, and aesthetic choices signal belonging to a place? The works interweave new narratives about the places. Many of them redirect the viewer’s gaze and disrupt the stiff spatial hierarchies between center and periphery. They highlight different forms of publicness and complicate the sharp distinction of private and public by creating new forms of community and spatiality. What you hear is influenced by which position you are listening from. Our own position colors what we perceive. In this publication, we at Public Art Agency Sweden present how the works appear to us.

Sandi Hilal’s Al Madafeh/The Living Room is an example of a work that is directly based on the notion of position, but in a more existential meaning of the word. It started as an investigation into how refugees have been relegated to always being guests and what happens when someone from that perspective asserts the right to be a host. Can the right to host enable one to step out of the role of gratefulness and instead become a subject with the power of inviting others and setting the agenda? Conceptually there is a long history of discourse regarding when one stops being a “guest” somewhere—like in Germany, for example, where the Turkish labor migrants of the 1960s are still 10

DE SOM SÅR (Those Who Sow) SAGA GÄRDE, ATHENA FARROKHZAD AND DAVID GÜLICH AMIRALSSTADEN, MALMÖ TITLE:

ARTISTS:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: The Urban Planning Office of Malmö, which wanted to develop new methods to involve inhabitants in city development processes around Amiralsstaden. PARTNER: The City of Malmö

Whose voices are not heard or easily forgotten when cities change? With the work De som sår, Saga Gärde, Athena Farrokhzad, and David Gülich draw attention to existing narratives and grassroots initiatives in Amiralsstaden—a neighborhood that doesn’t exist yet, but will be built via densification along the street Amiralsgatan in Malmö. The sound piece De som sår has its starting point in the allotment gardens next to the train tracks in southern Rosengård, where an elderly woman by the name of Ćamila spends her days. Ćamila’s stories of cultivation, displacement, and growing roots are interwoven with Athena Farrokhzad’s poetry and David Gülich’s soundscape. 15

The choice to base their work on Navet’s allotment gardens and Ćamila’s story was guided by the social function that this space has for people in the area. Saga Gärde, Athena Farrokhzad, and David Gülich have worked together before, for example creating radio plays based on Athena Farrokhzad’s poetic and dramatic texts. All three have been based in Malmö for a long time, and Saga Gärde had her studio on Norra Grängesberg Street, in the middle of the future development area. De som sår weaves documentary voices, newly written poetry, and music into a sitespecific radio play. In times like these when many urban development processes are governed by grand visions and aggressive exploitation, this story of soil, flight, and laying down roots is a reminder of the life conditions of humans and the entire planet. Ćamila’s voice is like a sound piece in itself, while Athena’s verses succeed in clothing a political issue in cultivation. The piece is based on an application submitted by the Urban Planning Office of Malmö to Art Is Happening, in which the city expressed its desire to develop methods to involve the inhabitants in the processes behind the creation of Amiralsstaden, one of the City of Malmö’s largest urban development projects. The area that is to become Amiralsstaden today consists mainly of small industries, associations, and local organizations. The collaboration between the City of Malmö and the Public Art Agency aimed to give current citizens and business owners a voice ahead of the changes. The work will be installed in 2020 in Rosengårds Centrum outside the public library.

DE SOM SÅR

FÖRHANDLINGEN (The Negotiation) AND MARMORLINJEN (The Marble Line) JOHAN TIRÉN AND ANNA HÖGBERG GAMLEGÅRDEN, KRISTIANSTAD TITLE:

ARTISTS:

LOCATION:

APPLICANTS: Kristianstad’s Art Museum, AB Kristianstadsbyggen, and Urbana Hembygdsgården, which wanted to strengthen the link between the residential area Gamlegården and its surrounds. PARTNERS: The housing company AB Kristianstadsbyggen, Kristianstad’s Art Museum, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts

In the artwork Förhandlingen, a light in a rental apartment has been connected to two other lights. One of them is in central Stockholm, outside Rosenbad where the Government Offices are located, and the other is on the political and geographic periphery, in Gamlegården Center, an economically impoverished suburb of coastal Kristianstad, some 500 kilometers south of Stockholm. Every time the tenant switches their light on or off, the light outside the Government Offices and the one in Gamlegården Center are also switched on or off. In its poetic and playful reversal 17

of hierarchies of power, Förhandlingen makes the relationship between the periphery and the center visible. Whoever lives in the apartment becomes the bearer of the artwork, but the artwork belongs to the apartment. The everyday life that is lived in the apartment is connected to another daily life in which decisions are made—decisions that also have a potential effect on Gamlegården. The personal is linked to the political. Impacting and being impacted. Seeing and being seen. The second artwork, Marmorlinjen, is a line of marble that connects the single-family homes in the residential area Näsby with the neighboring low-income Million Program housing estates in Gamlegården. Set into the ground it connects a park with its round shape with the entrance to Gamlegården’s park area and playgrounds. Marmorlinjen oscillates between the monumental—the idea of a landmark—and the unassuming. A line to cross or balance on. The work is based on conversations and discussions that the artists had with locals about their view of Gamlegården and its identity. The starting point for the work at Gamlegården was two temporary art projects, created by the artist Myriam Lefkowitz: Walk, Hands, Eyes (Gamlegården) and What Can We Know in Such Darkness?. When they were realized in the spring of 2016 they highlighted new perspectives on and approaches to the place. Part of the art project was a walk with a personal guide, in which participants were guided around the area with their eyes closed. Every so often the participants were asked to open their eyes for a few seconds while the guide directed their gaze towards a selected view. Different excerpts of Gamlegården were presented to them like postcards of the area. The ten snapshots created a spatial representation of Gamlegården based on tactility, movement, and care, while the guided walk allowed the participants to enter the area with senses other than sight. These experiences formed the basis for the permanent artwork to be created by the artists Anna Högberg and Johan Tirén. One of the initial challenges for the artists was finding ways of getting in contact and interacting with the locals. In the summer of 2016, 20

the artists realized a series of small archeological digs as well as a fairly extensive geographic mapping of the area together with some locals. The method created a dialogue with the people and the place that led to two starting points for the up-coming work. Based on the area as a specific place and situation, two ideas have crystalized: one is about visibility, recognition, and the other is about how Gamlegården relates to its surroundings—and vice versa: the relationship of the surroundings with Gamlegården—which resulted in the two artworks Förhandlingen and Marmorlinjen.

FÖRHANDLINGEN AND MARMORLINJEN

MIRAKEL (Miracle) SANTIAGO MOSTYN GÄRDEÅSENS SJU UNDERVERK (The Seven Wonders of Gärdeåsen) KALLE LANDEGREN GÄRDEÅSEN, LJUSDAL

The artist Santiago Mostyn’s eight-meter-high light sculpture Mirakel is both a statement and a question. The miracle is here, but what do miracles signify? The facades of the apartment buildings bear images by the illustrator and comic book author Kalle Landegren that interprete some of the locals’ stories of what a miracle is for them and give each apartment block an identity of its own. Santiago Mostyn’s Mirakel was chosen for its form and sculptural expression which makes it visible from far away, as well for its multitude of possible meanings. The word miracle is similar in many different languages, based on the Latin miraculum (object of wonder), miror (to marvel at), mirus (wonderful), and from proto-Indo-European roots smei-, mei- (to smile, to be surprised). Miracles encompass surprise, promise, hope, and expectation, but are also marked by impossibility. The work harbors this opposition and becomes a metaphor for all the people and events that take place all around it.

TITLE:

ARTIST:

TITLE:

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: Ljusdal municipality, which wanted to make Gärdesåsen a place of multigenerational intercultural encounters through artistic processes. PARTNERS: The international woman’s association, the housing company Ljusdalshem, Ljusdal municipality

Mirakel was installed temporarily in the winter of 2016 at Gärdeåsen in Ljusdal, a central town of the municipality by the same name, with 6,000 inhabitants. In 2019 it got a permanent placement. This was the result of the circumstances around the project changing dramatically several times, amongst other things due to a potential sale of the entire residential area, and it meant that different artistic approaches could be tested resulting in two different works that are united by a common theme: miracles. The second work is Gärdeåsens sju underwerk by Kalle Landegren, which was developed in collaboration with Ljusdal’s international women’s organization. The collaboration culminated in an educational, artistic project aimed at making a coloring book for the neighborhood’s children, based on the artist’s interpretations of the women’s stories. When circumstances changed again—the sale didn’t go through after all—it became possible to take Landegren’s interpretations to another level by painting them on the facades of the buildings. Inspirational tours of other residential areas that have art incorporated into their architecture led to the desire to have art help with orientating oneself in the area and giving the different housing blocks their own identity.

PAVILJONG (The Pavilion) MAP13 BARCELONA HAGEBY, NORRKÖPING TITLE:

ARCHITECTS:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: Portalen’s application was submitted by asylum-seeking architects and engineers who wanted to support Portalen in Hageby as a meeting place. PARTNERS: The organization Portalen, the housing company Hyresbostäder, Norrköping’s Museum of Art, Norrköping municipality

This project had a bumpy start. Contaminated ground made it difficult to build and different regulations stopped amateurs and professionals from working together but the vision of using art to lay the groundwork for a local gathering place was achieved. An innovative wooden pavilion has taken shape next to Portalen in Hageby. Portalen is an organization based in central Hageby, traditionally a working-class residential area in the industrial town of Norrköping. Its primary function is to support its participants in finding 26

MIRAKEL, GÄRDEÅSENS SJU UNDERVERK

employment or an education and it has become an important point of interaction in the area. At the moment, it is located in a former laundry, but since the number of participants is increasing there is a major need for more space. The collaboration with the Public Art Agency was initiated by a group of newly arrived immigrant architects and engineers who wanted to expand Portalen and design a pavilion together with local stakeholders in Hageby. Early on in the project, brick constructions were mentioned as a way of building on Norrköping’s brick heritage. In the summer of 2016 the Spanish architect collective Map13 Barcelona was invited to lead the explorative phase. Map13 Barcelona has many years of experience in erecting brick pavilions with the help of digital technology and collective building processes. Together with the group of applicants they carried out a building workshop to test what a meeting place in Hageby could be. Two relatively small brick arches were erected and sketches for a pavilion next to Portalen started taking shape. When the ground was found to be contaminated, the brick pavilion proved too heavy and it was redrafted as a wooden pavilion. It became a sculptural shell in which the roof’s curves consist of a so-called grid shell—a technique in which wooden lattices are bowed from the ground using moisture and fixed when they have reached the desired shape. The technique is based on the intrinsic flexibility of the wood, a potential that is only rarely used in contemporary building with wood. Paviljong was constructed in the fall of 2019, and is used by Portalen in collaboration with several cultural organizations in Norrköping. From an urban development perspective this process examines how a grassroots building initiative can work and how the skills and dedication of asylum-seeking architects can be harnessed and have direct influence on the shaping of public space.

PAVILJONG

MOVING PLANTS MAIDER LÓPEZ HAMMARKULLEN, GÖTEBORG TITLE:

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: The City of Gothenburg via SDF Angered, who wanted to increase the participation of organized and unorganized women in processes that concern the development of the neighborhood. PARTNERS: Local women, the housing company GöteborgsLokaler, the City of Gothenburg

Maider López’s artwork Moving Plants consist of 150 movable green pot plants in different sizes that have been hung from the roof and installed on benches that run along the panoramic windows at the indoor swimming pool in Hammarkullen, some ten kilometers northeast of central Gothenburg. The plants can be grouped in different ways. The leaves can completely obscure parts of the public swimming pool’s windows or open it up to the surroundings. It is an interactive work that invites participation. A group of women has saved the public indoor swimming pool from demolition. Together with the artist Maider López, they initiated the artistic design process as part of the building’s renovation before any architects or planners were involved, thus succeeding in getting their collaboration with a specific artist written into the procurement documents by the architect and contractor, who then had to base their work on a specific artistic vision. Using color and playfulness, Maider López has often worked performatively in creating temporary communities, and has thus 30

made visible and questioned our view of what the norm is. This was precisely what the women in Hammarkullen wanted to get at. For them the public pool was a place where they could meet and socialize in a secure environment. They wanted to make sure that that would stay the same after the renovations were completed. With her artwork, Maider López harnesses the women’s stories about the public pool as an important part of their everyday lives, as well as their reflections on transparency, insight and outlooks, on what creates a safe space, and their desire to introduce more greenery into the building from the nature outside. For the women who saved their pool from demolition, as well as for the neighborhood, the property owner, the organization, the Public Art Agency, and—not least—the artist, the project has been about finding a way for social values and artistic integrity to be ensured in, and coexist with, a building project that has to happen quickly, economically, and in accordance with the modern regulations and demands of accessibility that are involved in adapting a public indoor swimming pool from the 1960s into a modern establishment.

TITLE:

HUR (How) ROXY FARHAT HOLMA, MALMÖ

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: HUR—the social entrepreneur (Hyllie Ungdomsråd Samhällsentreprenören), which wanted to support the voices of young people and their possibilities to influence a number of ongoing development projects in their neighborhood. PARTNER: HUR—the social entrepreneur

Roxy Farhat, artist, filmmaker, and music video director, has collaborated with HUR, a group of 16- to 25-year-olds who have worked actively to create a better society by trying to set a good example—for themselves, for other youths, and for everyone else who lives in Holma, in southern Malmö, and the rest of the world. HUR made it clear from the beginning that it was crucial to them that they themselves were in charge of the process. In collaboration with Farhat, they have created an artistic documentary about their everyday lives, what drives them, and their conviction that everyone is a star—it’s just a matter of finding out in which aspect. They agreed on the format early on: an artistic documentary film by, about, and in collaboration with the youths and their families. What form the process should take and the decisions on who should participate, which stories were most important, and how they should be depicted was discussed continuously throughout the entire process. The result is a film that portrays a day in the life of Holma in a straightforward and tender way, marked by the love that permeates HUR’s work, whose fundamental view is that all children and youths are have immense optional that just needs to be realized. Yehia “Zako” 34

Zakaria’s love of words has led him to poetry and in one scene he recites “Do you remember when we were small, when we believed that yellow and blue were colors for two. When we believed that everyone had the right to be Swedish, regardless whether your mom or dad were foreign.” (Rhymed in Swedish, “Kom du ihåg den där tiden när vi var små, när vi trodde att gul och blå, var färger för två. När vi trodde att vem som helst hade rätt att vara svensk, oavsett om din mor eller far var utländsk.”) The style is documentary but it also leaves space for dreams, imagination, and poetry. The film had its world premiere in September 2017 when it was shown at the Nordic Matters festival in London. Screenings of the film were also held for school classes from all of Malmö at the Malmö Art Museum in the fall and winter of 2017/2018.

ŞANEŞÎN NASIM AGHILI AND BJÖRN KARLSSON HÄSSELBY, STOCKHOLM TITLE:

ARTISTS:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: The network Council of Unified Creoles (Rådet av Enade Kreoler) which wanted to build an outdoor meeting place in the form of an amphitheater; a stage to house their own narratives. PARTNERS: The Council of Unified Creoles (Rådet av enade kreoler), the City of Stockholm’s Traffic Office

Which bodies are allowed to leave traces in the urban landscape? This question became a starting point for Nasim Aghili and Björn Karlsson, whose work Şaneşîn in Hässelby has realized the original vision of the Council of United Creoles (Rådet av Enade Kreolers— REK): an amphitheater. At the heart of the work is a stage, or rather a ring of travertine stone that encloses a part of the lawn. Next to the stage there is a rough wooden pillar with engraved inscriptions and spacious benches made of stone, like cutouts from one and the same amphitheater. On the days when the sun is strong enough, Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise is audible 39

Ny lekplats

kola

scenring

mullbär bänkar ljudpelare

from the top of the pillar—a triumphant tribute to hope and the struggle against oppression. Şaneşîn means a “verdant, sunny place” in Kurdish. Here in Hässelby, Şaneşîn is a permanent stage that reminds of the Creole experience, existence, and traces. The artwork Şaneşîn spreads out the remains of an amphitheater over Hässelby, like excavations of an era long before modern urban planning. Travertine, Öland limestone, and mulberry bushes create a Creole background to Maya Angelou’s words. REK applied to Art Is Happening to build a platform for their own stories in Hässelby, a suburb in northern Stockholm built in the 1950s. They wanted their own art, music, and theater stage that reflects the experiences of an identity that emerges in the postcolonial intersection of languages, cultures, and people—an identity that instead of being neither/nor is both the one and the other. The work process was initiated together with the artists Nasim Aghili and Björn Karlsson by discussing and trying out what Creole places in the public space can be, and how one can build a stage based on the wishes of the youths. The question how we are reflected in and represented by the urban environment around us proved central. Which bodies are allowed to leave traces in the public space? Which aesthetic references create a sense of comfort, and which signal that the space belongs to Loviselundskolan someone else? The traces that are visible today in the Hässelby–Vällingby neighborhood are characterized by ideals from the 1950s when the working-class inhabitants of the area were more homogenous. The work of the artists and REK was based on the question how one can make other bodies visible that have lived and worked in the area.

ŞANEŞÎN

KULTURHUSET MITT FRAMFÖR NÄSAN (The Cultural House Under Your Nose) MUF ARCHITECTURE/ART AND ALONDRA WOJCIECH PINDUR JORDBRO, STOCKHOLM TITLE:

ARTIST:

TITLE:

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

Jordbro’s cultural center will be demolished. When Art Is Happening started, this hadn’t been decided yet and the threat of demolition led to immense frustration for the organizations using the building. At the same time, the municipality promised to build a new cultural center. The question remains: will there be enough space for everyone in the new place? Will they be able to afford it? The strategy was to use art to show the politicians that what they promised them already existed: a cultural center right under their noses. The local group and the British art and architecture collective muf architecture/art decided to make the cultural center more visible through temporary installations and a local festival in which some of the organizations active in the center were moved outside into the public eye. The festival, in the form of a month’s programming,

APPLICANT: Jordbro World Orchestra and the youth centrer Ung 137, applied to raise awareness and support the local cultural center in Jordbro, which was threatened with demolition. PARTNERS: Jordbro World Orchestra, the company Blå Vägen, the youth center Ung 137, Haninge municipality

took place in the fall of 2017, and the installations were built by the local associations, with the exception of a large nose, a light sculpture produced by muf architecture/art. The nose was mounted on a lamppost in front of the cultural center, which has not been illuminated for years, and whose owner is still unknown despite repeated inquiries. The nose symbolizes what is “right under our noses”—what we don’t see because we are too busy looking for something new. The nose also came to symbolize the fact that a long-term process of change is in progress. In their application to Art Is Happening, the local stakeholders expressed their wish to work with processes which provide time and resources for networking on the ground in order to mobilize local participation in the project. The first expression for this was a self-initiated workshop in which local participants and Wojciech Pindur, an artist active in the center, built a sculpture in the shape of a wood grouse on the cultural center’s roof. This fighting bird, which also happens to be the symbol of the municipality, watched over the center and illuminated its entrance. In parallel, a collaboration was initiated with muf architecture/art, a central actor within feminist architecture with many years of experience in collaborating with grassroots initiatives, from small performances to large urban transformation projects. The collaboration between the artist and the cultural center continued after the festival. When muf architecture/art was asked to exhibit the project at ArkDes’s exhibition Public Luxury in 2018, they invited the associations in the center to contribute to it and work with muf architecture/art around these contributions. Jordbro, a suburb twenty kilometers south of central Stockholm, has succeeded in maintaining an active center of cultural production up until now. The decision to demolish it shows that existing values and social networks can easily be shattered in the ongoing expansive densification of Sweden’s urban areas. One can ask oneself, what can public art add in such circumstances? Can it uphold existing qualities and highlight the importance of social structures that 46

already exist locally? With Kulturhuset mitt framför näsan muf architecture/art and the participants from Jordbro cultural center illustrate the importance of places like the center in Jordbro, a unique place in the Swedish context. The nose in Jordbro still lights up, like a reminder of the hopes that the promised new cultural center will have enough space for existing grassroot initiatives.

KULTURHUSET MITT FRAMFÖR NÄSAN

KOLLEKTIVA KROPPEN (The Collective Body) JOHANNA GUSTAFSSON FÜRST, KUNGSMARKEN/ MELLANSTADEN, KARLSKRONA

and inhabitants, the artist Johanna Gustafsson Fürst created a site-specific work that manages to be both monumental and vulnerable. Kollektiva kroppen creates an entrance to the residential area Kungsmarken, a hint of a central square, as well as a signal to the world around it. In a larger perspective the work has had an impact on the area by demonstrating the lack of common public spaces and by supporting local attempts at having them created. Johanna Gustafsson Fürst’s work in Kungsmarken/Mellanstaden has led to both structural and visual changes in the residential areas’ public spaces. Local knowledge of the place was decisive to the process, which is symbolically summarized in the light installation Kollektiva kroppen. The starting point for the artist’s work was a submission from Mellanstaden’s newly established association within Folkets Hus och Parker, a countrywide Swedish community center and park association. It had been given access to a derelict boiler room that they wanted to turn into a cultural center. They wanted to establish a public place next to the new premises in collaboration with an artist. The artist worked on site for two years, during which she lived in the area for certain periods of time in order to better understand the context and get to know the place. Her work took the form of two parallel processes: firstly, her own concrete drafting of a sitespecific work, and secondly, a supportive process that looked at existing public spaces in Kungsmarken, and the need for new ones. The project has led to both structural and aesthetic proposals aiming to invigorate Kungsmarken’s common spaces. The physical artwork Kollektiva kroppen does this on a symbolic level while the structural work has found other forms of expression: besides a direct engagement in supporting the work of the new community center such as by helping with funding applications to enable the renovation of the premises, the artist has run a number of workshops and discussions of pressing local issues. Lowering the speed limit on the street outside the premises is one such example. After frequent suggestions from the group, the municipality

TITLE:

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: The association Folkets hus och parker, which wanted to create a local meeting place. PARTNERS: Mellanstaden’s Folkets Hus och Parker Association, the housing company AB Karlskronahem, Karlskrona municipality

Thirty-six meters up in the air over the roofs of Kungsmarken you can see the word HÄR (HERE) illuminated. It is visible from far away, not least from the entrance to the world heritage city Karlskrona. Facing the other direction, southwards, hovers a map of Mellanstaden with Kungsmarken’s, Gullaberg’s and Marieberg’s residential areas seen from above. The work Kollektiva kroppen is a tall yet sheer monument of Mellanstaden. HÄR is here. After spending a lot of time there and working closely with local associations 48

installed a temporary speed bump in connection with a local festival that the artist, amongst others, organized together with schools in the area. When the speed limit was lowered, it became possible to use the space in front of the premises as a public square. Ahead of the installation of the artwork Kollektiva kroppen, the speed bump has been made permanent. The work took place in close collaboration with a group of people who live and work in the area, whom Johanna Gustafsson Fürst brought together early on in the process. Everyone who participated in the project came with their own specific interests and knowledge. Like in several of the Art Is Happening projects, all the participants have been paid, which is something that is very important to the artist. The shape that this collaboration took has also been decisive: who participated, how the groups were formed, and how it was a learning process for all involved—the Public Art Agency and the artist included—have been central throughout the entire project. This is what puts the collective in the collective body.

KOLLEKTIVA KROPPEN

JAGUARS CAN’T BE HEARD, AND YET THEY SING CARLA ZACCAGNINI LINDÄNGEN, MALMÖ TITLE:

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: The network Gatukraft Lindängen applied to contribute towards Lindängen’s center becoming a more welcoming place. PARTNERS: Gatukraft Lindängen, the City of Malmö

Two merry-go-rounds have been placed next to Lindängen’s central square in the Lindängen neighborhood, south of central Malmö. When in use, a polyphonic sound can be heard. Yet when the two merry-go-rounds turn in time with each other, starting at the exact same time, the melody of Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio’s Los dos gallos (“Red Rooster, Black Rooster”) is played in harmony, with the different verses divided between the merry-go-rounds like a dialogue. It becomes an interplay between following the rhythm and melody and trying to steer it. The initiative for the work came from Gatukraft (which means “power of the streets”), a network of local citizens who are dedicated to making Lindängen’s central square into a more well-maintained 54

and welcoming place, especially for children. It was very important to Gatukraft that they themselves would be allowed to ask their neighbors what their view of Lindängen’s future was and how they imagined an artwork in the neighborhood’s center could take shape. At the beginning of the collaboration, the artist Carla Zaccagnini gave a presentation of one of her early works, Museum of Views, in which she worked with a forensic artist in trying to draw places based on people’s dreams. Museum of Views became an inspiration for the drawing workshops that Gatukraft, the artist, and two illustrators held together with the citizens of Lindängen in 2017. Instead of talking of the place of their dreams, Gatukraft asked the question: “What would make you spend 30 more minutes in Lindängen’s center?” Lindängen School’s third-graders were also given a drawing assignment—to draw the central square of their dreams. The drawings were part of a discussion with pupils about how our common spaces are created and they were submitted to the planning authorities of the City of Malmö ahead of their planning of the transformation of the square. The drawings have also been the basis of Carla Zaccagnini’s artwork. Lindängen is faced with comprehensive urban development. Its central square will be a construction site for years to come, and already now the neighborhood’s new school is being built right next to the merry-go-rounds. The lack of public spaces for the neighborhood’s children and youths during the building phase was one of the reasons why the Public Art Agency initiated this collaboration with Lindängen. Jaguars can’t be heard, and yet they sing bridges the gap between current dreams in Lindängen and the upcoming renovation of Lindängen’s center. The work builds a part of the up-coming square in advance, like a full-scale test of a possible future.

JAGUARS CAN’T BE HEARD, AND YET THEY SING

AL MADAFEH /THE LIVING ROOM SANDI HILAL PRÄSTHOLMEN, BODEN TITLE:

ARCHITECT:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: The non-profit regional art gallery Havremagasinet, the housing company BodenBo and Försvarsmuseum Boden, who applied in order to raise awareness of the residential area Prästholmen. PARTNERS: The non-profit regional art gallery Havremagasinet, the housing company BodenBo, the Military Museum of Boden, Boden’s municipality

As a refugee, you are deprived of the possibility of being a host, often because you lack the space to invite people home. This realization is the basis for architect Sandi Hilal’s work in the so-called Yellow House—a refugee accommodation in Prästholmen, Boden, which has now acquired its own shared living room in the form of the work Al Madafeh. The town of Boden has undergone radical change in the last decades. From being a protected military area, which foreign visitors were forced to obtain special permission to enter, Boden has become a central place of arrival for refugees to Sweden. Based on the history of Boden, Sandi Hilal has investigated refugeedom and the roles of host and visitor. She stresses how refugees risk being trapped in the role of guests in a state of permanent temporariness, and asks on whose terms integration is supposed to work. 59

How can refugees exercise their right to host and what is the symbolic and practical role of the living room? Having a living room enables one to be a host, to invite others and set the agenda oneself. Perhaps a living room holds the potential to bring about change in society. The Yellow House in Boden is a multi-story apartment building surrounded by open lawn. In the 1960s there were several identical buildings in the area, but they have all been demolished. In collaboration with Bodenbo, Havremagasinet, the Military Museum of Boden, and the Public Art Agency, Sandi Hilal has adapted one of the apartments in the Yellow House into a semi-public living room for the refugees living there: Al Madafeh. The use of the living room is reliant on a specific hosting process where one or several people act as hosts and invite others to attend events such as dinners, musical evenings, or playdates. In this way, the hitherto impossible hosting process is activated, and asylum-seekers can invite people on their own terms and enable a space for the exchange of knowledge and ideas as well as social mobilization. The potential of the living room became clear to Sandi Hilal during an encounter with the then newly arrived Boden citizens Yasmeen Mahmoud and Ibrahim Muhammad Haj Abdullah. Lacking a social context, they had opened the doors of their own home and regularly invited guests. By inviting people over they counteracted the prevailing dynamic in the relationship between new arrivals and locals. Yasmeen Mahmoud and Ibrahim Muhammad Haj Abdullah have played a pivotal part in Al Madafeh. They collaborated in the development of the project and are two of the most important hosts who carry the work further but using the living room in the Yellow House and arranging its programing. Al Madafeh in Boden has led Sand Hilal to establishing a number of living rooms in other parts of the world, with a focus on the rights of refugees to be hosts. Right now, there are further living rooms in Stockholm, Eindhoven, and on the West Bank, as well as one being planned for Alaska. 60

TITLE:

RÅBY PLANET MICHAEL BEUTLER RÅBY, VÄSTERÅS

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: Västerås Art Museum, which wanted to stress the importance and development of public art in the city through an artistic collaboration. PARTNERS: Konstfrämjandet Västmanland and Västerås Art Museum

Michael Beutler’s three-part work brings together Råby’s old and new cultural heritage, both physically and socially. Part one is a workshop, part two the wooden sculpture The Shrine, and part three is Råby Planet Festival, in which a large ball is rolled around a specially carved course in Råby Forest. In 1968–69 an innovative art event took place in Råby. That was the year that The Model by the artist Palle Nielsen, by now a legendary art project in the form of a building playground, was moved from Moderna Museet in Stockholm to what is now Råby North a couple of kilometers west of central Västerås. The residential area was newly built in 1968 and an adaptation of the project—The Balloon—was erected on a sports ground, thanks to the great commitment of the inhabitants of the area and the local housing company. The Balloon came to Råby on the initiative of civil society and was a great experience for children 62

AL MADAFEH/THE LIVING ROOM

FOTO: RICARD ESTAY

of all ages, inviting them to participate in a creative, playful way. The art event became the starting point for numerous discussions about places for play and children in cities—locally, nationally, and internationally—and many years later became the basis for the artist Michael Beutler’s commission to create a permanent artwork for Råby in collaboration with its citizens. In January 2017 Beutler started a practice-based process together with youths, children, parents, and the local clubs and associations. Through a series of practically oriented, participant-based workshops and experiments, methods were developed to take advantage of the experiences and skills that are available in Råby. In the starting phase of the project, a fire razed the meeting place Knytpunkten and Råby swimming pool—which were supposed to become the creative hub of the project—to the ground. Through the project, a temporary outdoor carpentry workshop was reconstructed in the same place. The result of this entire project was the artwork Råby Planet, which took the shape of a large sculpture that was activated through a local festival, a collective game called Råby Planet Festival. The festival revolved around this sculpture by Michael Beutler, an enormous white air-filled ball, five meters in diameter, that was rolled through the streets, on gigantic tracks, and over obstacles in Råby Forest. A range of groups and associations were involved in creating the festival and the rules of the game. Dedicated football teams, musicians, parents, and craftsmen contributed in a variety of ways to activating the sculpture, festival, and game. The aim is to establish Råby Planet Festival as a yearly local tradition. When the festival was over on September 8, 2018 all the material from the outdoor workshop was reused and transformed into The Shrine, a Falu-red wooden sculpture, placed on the outskirts of Råby Forest. The Shrine is a permanent domicile for the globe. It contains all the parts and instructions to reactivate the game and the festival. The Shrine is a magic container that functions both as a bearer of memory, and a marker and call to uphold Råby Planet Festival. 66

RÅBY PLANET

KEPSEN (The Cap) MYCKET AND IN PURPLE JOHANNA BILLING RÅSLÄTT, JÖNKÖPING TITLE:

ARTIST:

TITLE:

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: Jönköping’s municipality, who through art and culture wanted to boost the residential area Råslätt. PARTNER: Mix dancers, the housing company Vätterhem, the local recreation center Stadsgården Råslätt

Mix Dancers Academy is a dance company and school run by local youths in Råslätt, just south of central Jönköping, the county seat. Mix Dancers started as a reaction to a lack of leisure activities for girls in the area, and has grown into an important organization. At the moment their premises are in the basement of Stadsgården, Råslätt’s recreation center. A central theme in the process of working with them has been their longing for a more public independent space for Mix Dancers: a place where their work can be seen and resonate. The artist Johanna Billing has also collaborated with the group in creating the video piece In Purple. The art and architecture group MYCKET has since joined Mix Dancers in designing the physical outdoor dance space Kepsen, outside the basement’s walls. 68

KEPSEN MYCKET collaborated with Mix Dancers, the public housing property owner Vätterhem, and the local recreation center. By developing a physical outdoor dance space, they wanted to support and provide space for the existing yet not always visible dance activities in the area. The dance space Kepsen is specifically adapted to dancing but also makes space for other fitness activities, hanging out with family, and barbeques. In MYCKET’s work, the processes behind the design and building are as important as the what is actually built in the end. In Råslätt, several of Mix Dancers’ members have played a pivotal part in the development of the proposal, through the full-scale test on site in the form of dance, building, and painting workshops, as well as through their participation in the actual drafting process. An important element that was part of Mix Dancers’ proposal from the beginning was a reference to R&B aesthetics. The collaboration in Råslätt developed slowly, allowing time to engage several local stakeholders. MYCKET has repeatedly presented the proposal’s development at local gatherings, and the project has grown into a hub for a more extensive collaboration with local actors. The work on the dance space that was built during spring of 2020, is currently being used as inspiration for the municipal neighborhood development projects. IN PURPLE The artist Johanna Billing and Mix Dancers collaborated on the making of a film that symbolically captures the generational shift that is currently occurring in the group, where a number of younger girls will take over the responsibility of running the organization from the founders who are young adults now. Johanna Billing could identify with the experiences and issues facing Mix Dancers. Together they created a choreographed event, which moved through the neighborhood with music, dance, movement, and sculptural elements. The event was documented and has been kept for posterity in the form of three surviving traces: the art film, a film for Mix Dancers’ 70

YouTube channel, and objects from the event that have been included in the municipality’s collection of public art. In a choreographed parade, the group moves slowly through the residential area carrying heavy sheets of purple glass. The area’s sounds of lawnmowers, birds, and street maintenance follows them. They move slowly—the slightest mistake and could make them break the glass. The surrounding concrete façades in pink, green, and purple, by the artists Jon Pärson and Lennart Joanson, are mirrored in the purple glass. The façade paintings whose purpose was to humanize the brutalist architecture when they were added in the 1980s, are now captured in the movements of the parade. The music for Mix Dancers’ choreography was produced in collaboration with the musician and producer Neva Deelay. The film project was the result of a long collaborative process between the group and the artist. Together they explored the color purple and the glass as a symbolic material to emphasize the vulnerability and invisibility that the dance troupe has in the area and the importance of handing over the platform that they have created to a younger generation. The physical act of handing over the sheets of glass and the weight that the group carries on its shoulders, embodies the responsibility and unpaid work that a commitment such as this requires.

KEPSEN AND IN PURPLE

GUL (Yellow) LINA SOFIA LUNDIN TJÄRNA ÄNGAR, BORLÄNGE TITLE:

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANTS: Borlänge municipality and the association Tjärnkraft, wanting to strengthen the participation of the residents of the area to shape and create their own neighborhood. PARTNERS: The association Tjärnkraft, Borlänge Energy, Borlänge municipality

Using her knowledge of the power of textiles, the artist Lina Sofia Lundin has created a robust outdoor area, integrated into a new park in the Tjärna Ängar housing area of the mining and steel producing town of Borlänge. A permanent table for plant coloring and cooking has been placed on a surface of concrete paving stones that specify the following recipe: 1tbsp turmeric, 1 used teabag, 2 handfuls of birch leaves, 1 cotton fabric, 4 liters of water. On the paving, a table resembling an outdoor kitchen has been placed, to be used by locals and visitors to the area. The place is surrounded by edible plants, which can be used for dyeing and cooking. A fireplace is provided next to it. The work was created in close collaboration with the relevant bodies in charge of parks and landscaping in the municipality. Lina Sofia Lundin’s artwork is not just a physical design but also includes the long process leading up to it and what will happen afterwards. The horseshoe-shaped table designed to embrace a variety of 74

activities such as dyeing and cooking in the neighborhood’s new park is part of something bigger. The actual doing, accessibility, and proximity have been key aspects throughout the entire process, which thus also raises questions of trust and belonging, of cultural and social sustainability. Successively more and more people became involved. The table, for example, was made by students and teachers at the technical college, where many of the local inhabitants are trained in various trades. The artist’s dialogue- and participation-based methodology brought together locals from all around in a joint project based at the association network Tjärnkraft’s premises. The artist established a studio there, and participants gathered there for various workshops. Given Lina Sofia Lundin’s background in textiles, a common interest quickly emerged in working with textile traditions—long-established local traditions as well as new ones arriving to Sweden through immigration from other countries. Both have a tradition of coloring yarn and cloth with vegetable dyes. Lundin started with an artistic preparatory study focusing on creating a dialogue and textile meeting points for women. The work was based on a meal. The participants shared recipes and gave each other tips about spices and other food products that could be used for dyeing. Different color baths were tested trying to create shifts in color and patterns in the textiles. The ingredients had to be cheap and easily accessible—available in the kitchen at home or just around the corner. The result was meals, clothes, and, not least, community. Through the municipality’s and Borlänge Energy’s urban environment unit, the work could be included in the planning of the new city park, where the notion of a permanent place for vegetable dyeing and cooking was established with the large-scale Color Festival for the entire neighborhood in September 2017. The piece was permanently installed in 2020.

GUL

LJUSLINJE FÖR TYROLEN (Light Line For Tyrolen) ALEKSANDRA STRATIMIROVIC TYNNERED, GÖTEBORG

TITLE:

ARTIST:

LOCATION:

APPLICANT: The City of Gothenburg via SDF Western Gothenburg, wanting to harness the activism of youths in respect to democracy issues, support informal learning, and the organizational structures of the youths themselves. PARTNERS: The youth center Tyrolen and Trygg Vacker Stad Gothenburg

Aleksandra Stratimirovic’s forty-five-meter-long light artwork Ljuslinje för Tyrolen in Tynnered, twenty kilometers south of central Gothenburg, runs the length of the red brick facade of Tynnered Middle School. Visible from almost the entire neighborhood, it’s like a rainbow-colored beacon for the youth center Tyrolen, which is housed there. With a strong focus on cultural activities, 10- to 16-year-olds have a space to express themselves through dance, music, art, and poetry. The purpose is to actively support and enable the children’s 77

right to self-expression through different art forms in order to build self-esteem and confidence. Color was important to the youths, as well as the artist who wanted to reflect the activities, creativity, and sense of community among the youths. The artist’s work was preceded by a long process in which the different parties collaborating in the project tried to find common ground. It was clear from the beginning that the youths thought light was a central element, a material that Aleksandra Stratimirovic has a lot of experience working with as an artist. When she was brought into the project, she immediate used the youths’ analysis of the needs of the area as a springboard for her work. The choice of site fell on the recreation center’s completely unilluminated and thus unsafe entrance area. The municipality had written a very committed application to Art Is Happening about harnessing the youths’ commitment to issues of democracy and social equity. Initially, the youths weren’t interested, even reluctant to participate at all, 80

since they felt that the municipality had let them down several times before. For many years they had worked to change things in their district—classed as “especially vulnerable”—raised awareness of the increasing drug trade, pointed out the faulty lighting, organized their own safety patrols and marked areas that need improvement. To top it all, the politicians had just decided to close down the school. This changed, when after a series of meetings the youths started to trust the Public Art Agency could – and would – give them direct mandate to govern the process and decision making. Over a series of workshops that the youths arranged and hosted, experiments were conducted— how different color and light effects can be created, what the different color temperatures are, the differences between natural and artificial light and its impact on color—that functioned as a guideline for the work. In parallel, things also started happening outside the artistic process. The municipal real-estate management company GöteborgsLokaler became increasingly involved and provided the youths with materials to both renovate their run-down premises superficially and fix up the courtyard. New furniture was acquired through sponsorship. The city contacted the youths, asking whether they were interested in directly participating in the impending development of safety measures and the construction of a park in the area. The youths wanted to take “their” artist along in the process. The City chose to concentrate its efforts and commissioned the artist to collaborate on the redesign of the 500-meter-long pedestrian walkway and cycle path between the youth center and the closest tram stop. The method of linking the art project with the youths’ reality and their experiences of their home district created a topicality that strengthened both the art and the youths’ interest and commitment. It made it possible to explore formats, processes, and results in which youths initiate and run projects in shared spaces, not just for those who are already involved but for a larger group that is affected. 81

LJUSLINJE FÖR TYROLEN

BACKGROUND

What forms can contemporary public art take? This publication includes nineteen different suggestions, taken from fifteen different neighborhoods from all over Sweden. The artistic formats range from drawing, sound, film, and textile, to sculpture, architectural installation, and a pinball machine the size of an entire neighboring. All of the artworks have come about as a result of close collaboration between artists and local civil society including a variety of backgrounds, languages, and identities. All the works have been made possible through a Swedish governmental initiative—Konst händer/Art Is Happening—which took place between 2016 and 2018 and was part of a wider governmental investment in art and culture in certain neighborhoods called Äga Rum/Taking Place. Art Is Happening was carried out by the Public Art Agency Sweden, which was founded in 1937, at the time of the emergence of the Swedish Welfare System. A series of political reforms were enacted with the purpose of strengthening democracy, society, and its citizens. As important as equal rights to education, housing, and healthcare, was the right to literature and art. Since then the core mandate has been to bring art into state-run workplaces and create inspiring examples of contemporary public art in connection with state-commissioned building projects. This also has the effect of creating work opportunities for artists. This mandate has been continually broadened, developed, and refined over the decades. Broadly, the changes have reflected changes in society and the art 82

field, but they have also been born out of an interplay between political intentions and the agency’s own striving to develop public art, its possibilities to interact with and involve different audiences and engage artists in different ways.

an investigative phase of half a year, we chose 15 of them and worked with them for the rest of the commission period. As stressed in the introduction to this publication, the basic method in every location has been to meet the local residents and business owners and try to find out what the most interesting issue to address artistically would be in their specific area. The most important aspect has been to listen carefully in each and every place in order to decode what the most important and urgent issues are to relate and respond to in working with art and artistic methods. Thereafter, the process was developed further together, step by step, by the residents, associations, artists, the Public Art Agency, and—frequently—the civil servants working in the local municipalities and landlords.

The governmental initiative Art Is Happening can be understood against the backdrop of this history. In practical terms, the initiative entails producing examples for what forms public art can take in the late modernist housing estates and develop methods for citizen participation and agency in the processes leading up to the creation of public art. Spreading knowledge about the results of the initiative is another aspect of the mandate. The Public Art Agency quickly realized that in order to be able to fulfill its task, we also had to change our own methods and ways of working. As mentioned above, our work with public art is usually linked to a state-run commissioner that is remodeling, adding on, or building something entirely new. This is a situation that routinely involves representatives of the commissioning party and the end users in the process of creating, for example, new campus grounds, train stations, or court rooms. In Art Is Happening one of the aims was to involve a broad section of the heterogenous civil society around the ”Million Program” housing areas specifically: areas with small houses, townhouses, and apartment buildings constructed between 1965 and 1974 when the governmental goal was to build new housing for a million households. In many of these places, no work with contemporary public art has occurred since then. Several of these neighborhoods also face massive socioeconomic challenges that no art project can meet on its own. The projects can, however, still contribute to change, as many examples included in this publication prove.

The work has been collective, both on site and within the Public Art Agency, where the curators have worked in teams, including a range of competencies such as pedagogy, journalism, communication, and administration. The Public Art Agency carries the experiences and lessons learnt from Art Is Happening into the Agency’s work in a new political area for Sweden, replacing the former national architecture policy. Designed Living Environment refers to both a physical environment and a perspective in which architecture, design, public art, and cultural heritage together contribute to a society that is sustainable in the long term, not least from a social perspective.

We started by asking those living and working in the ”Million Program” areas which situation or place was most important to address with a work of art. We received 153 proposals from all over the country. After 84

Photographers: Amiralsstaden: Carl Hjelte Jordbro: Elias Arvidsson Råslätt film stills: Johanna Billing Hageby: Joanna Zawieja Holma film stills: Roxy Farhat Hässelby architectural drawing: Karavan landskapsarkitekter, Joanna Zawieja Lindängen: Lotten Pålsson Tjärna Ängar sketch: Mikael Johansson Tjärna Ängar photo: Lina Sofia Lundin Gamlegården/Marmorlinjen photo: Malin Lobell Gamlegården/Marmorlinjen architectural drawing: Anna Högberg, Johan Tirén Prästholmen: Andreas Fernandez Others: Ricard Estay The photographs have been cropped to fit the format of the publication. The organizational group behind Art Is Happening consisted of Inger Höjer Aspemyr, education; Emma Engström, administration; Lena From, Project Manager; Peter Hagdahl, artist and curator for permanent projects; Magdalena Malm, Director of the Public Art Agency (2012–19); Marti Manen, curator for temporary projects (2016–17), and Joanna Zawieja, architect and curator for city development. The titles of the art works are literal translations from Swedish, with the exemptions for Moving Plants, In Purple, Råby Planet and Jaguars Can’t Be Heard, And Yet They Sing where the title originally is in English. Al Madafeh (The Living Room) is a translation from Arabic, and Şaneşîn which is in Kurdish. Editors: Rebecka Katz Thor and Joanna Zawieja Texts and copyediting: Rebecka Katz Thor, Joanna Zawieja, Lena From and Peter Hagdahl Translation: Bettina Schultz Graphic design: Sakaria Studio Visual identity Konst händer: House of Hosseini/Sakaria Studio Map: Sweden – Single Color by FreeVectorMaps.com