2011-2013 Lars Bang Larsen, Magnus Bärtås, Ane Hjorth Guttu, Dave Hullfish Bailey, Hito Steyerl
Started in 2011 at Tensta konsthall, over a period of two years, The New Model will investigate the heritage from The Model: A model for a qualitative society in a number of projects, seminars, workshops and exhibitions. Participants will include Lars Bang Larsen, Magnus Bärtås, Ane Hjorth Guttu, Dave Hullfish Bailey and Hito Steyerl.
The point of departure for The New Model is Palle Nielsen’s legendary project from 1968, Modellen. En modell för ett kvalitativt samhälle (The Model. A model for a qualitative society). By transforming Moderna Museet into an adventure playground Nielsen wanted to give children a chance to ”be themselves” and express their own reality. The children would be able to play in an environment that was free and separate from the adult world in general and from the urban milieu in particular, and in an environment adapted to their own energetic activities. In contrast, nowadays, more or less every aspect of our lives is capitalized and culture is dominated by entertainment. Our lives in 2011 do not share much in common with the social and cultural upheavals of 1968. Today, not even play is an unspoiled, intact freedom; it is in part a function of the creative industries. How can we re-articulate and renew the questions Nielsen posed with his Model? How can we create a qualitative society out of a totally other reality? During the course of two years, The New Model, will be investigating the heritage of the Model in a number of projects involving seminars, workshops and exhibitions.
The first seminar featuring lectures by the participants, took place at Blå huset in Tensta on Saturday, 8.10 featuring presentations by critic Lars Bang Larsen and artists Magnus Bärtås, Dave Hullfish Bailey and Hito Steyerl.
The second seminar took place on 11.3, 12:00-17:00. The Model and the City: A Seminar on Palle Nielsen’s project The Model (Moderna Museet 1968) and Tensta. With Palle Nielsen, Gunilla Lundahl, Erik Stenberg.
The exhibition The Society Without Qualities will take place from February-May 2013 with works by Søren Andreasen (Copenhagen), Archizoom (Milan), Ane Hjort Guttu (Oslo), Jakob Jakobsen (Copenhagen), Sture and Ann Charlotte Johannesson (Malmö), Learning Site (Copenhagen/Malmö), Sharon Lockhart (Los Angeles), Joanna Lombard (Stockholm), Palle Nielsen (Copenhagen). Curated by Lars Bang Larsen as part of The New Model.
The Society Without Qualities revisits some of the concerns of the 1960s, such as education, militancy, experimental urban planning, the child as an active historical subject, and the critical use of the art institution. The exhibition also deals with the representation of children in art and society. The Society Without Qualities is in part a historical exhibition that takes its point of departure around the time of the youth revolt in 1968, and works its way through positions in art and architecture of the 1970s and 1980s up till the present day. Unlike Palle Nielsen’s legendary Modellen at Moderna Museet in 1968, however, The Society Without Qualities asks what it would mean to proceed without a model or an image of the society to come; what it would mean to not project any figurative qualities onto the future. The notion of play—in so far as it is present at all—is here less of a promise to the future, but closer to the way that Roger Caillois defined it in terms of rupture and break: “a kind of spasm, seizure or shock which destroys reality with sovereign brusqueness” (Man, Play and Games, 1958).
Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian, curator and writer based in Kassel and Copenhagen. He has co-curated exhibitions such as Pyramids of Mars (2000—2001), Populism (2005) and A History of Irritated Material (2010). His books include the monograph Sture Johannesson (2002) and The Model. A Model for a Qualitative Society, 1968 (2010), about Palle Nielsen’s mass utopian adventure playgrounds for children. In Danish have appeared the booklets Kunst er Norm, Organisationsformer and Spredt væren (Art is Norm, Forms of Organisation and Dissipated being, 2008-2010), an attempt at writing a poetics against the experience economy. Lars wrote his PhD at the University of Copenhagen about psychedelic concepts in neo-avant-garde art. This autumn will appear the book The Critical Mass of Mediation, written with the artist Søren Andreasen.
Magnus Bärtås is an artist and writer. In his work he often usesconstructed narratives related to places and buildings. By employing literary modes and methods his works privilege the meaning of the local, the situated and the neglected detail. Fundamental to the works are meetings, conversations and storytelling—activities that are closely linked to the biographical genre, but also to the oral dissemination of artworks. His dissertation in artistic research You Told Me—work stories and video essays (2010) is an observation and analysis of certain functions and meanings of narration and narratives in contemporary art. You Told Me is also about the making of video essays—about listening and talking to images, and making transferences between the working instances of narrative video. Since 2008 Magnus Bärtås is professor of fine art at Konstfack in Stockholm. He has participated in Void of Memory/Platform—98, Seoul; Modernautställningen, Moderna Museet 2006 and 2010, Stockholm; the 4th Bucharest Biennial 2010; and Swedish Conceptual Art, Kalmar Konstmuseum 2010; among other group exhibitions. Gävle Konstcentrum made a solo presentation of his work in 2010. His video essay Madame & Little Boy won the first prize at Oberhausen International Film Festival 2010 and has since been screened at a number of film festivals. Together with Fredrik Ekman he has published three books of essays.
Ane Hjort Guttu. An artist and curator born in 1971, based in Oslo. Her artistic work investigates representation strategies and power structures—particularly within architecture and pedagogy—through analytical essays, image collections, video and photography. She has also created several projects where she examines specific historical works of art. Recent shows include Looking is political (Bergen Kunsthall 2009), Making is Thinking (Witte de With, Rotterdam 2011) and Genius without Knowledge (de Appel, Amsterdam 2011). Forthcoming shows and projects are, among others, Sunlight on the Upper Part of a House (Kunsthall Oslo 2012), Don´t Tell Me (Sic! Raum für Kunst, Luzern) and Learning for Life, Henie Onstad kunstsenter, Oslo. Guttu is currently a research fellow at the National Academy of the Arts, Oslo.
Dave Hullfish Bailey. Born 1963 in Denver; lives in Los Angeles. Bailey’s practice is research-based and takes form as site-based interventions, exhibitions, publications, expeditions and workshops. Recent presentations include For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there (Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, ICA London, De Appel, and other venues, 2009—10); Surrounded by Squares: Dave Hullfish Bailey and Nils Norman, Raven Row, London (2009); Biennale de Lyon (2007); What’s Left to its own Devices (On reclamation), Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht (2007); and CityCat Project, Brisbane (2006/ongoing). Published books include Elevator (Secession, Vienna: 2006), What’s Left (Casco/Sternberg Press, Utrecht/Berlin: 2009), and Union Pacific (Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin: 1999). Reviews of his work have appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Springerin, artext, Untitled, Nu: The Nordic Art Review, and other journals. Bailey is currently Adjunct Associate Professor in the Fine Art department at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and has guest-taught widely. He studied science, philosophy and theology at Carleton College and Harvard Divinity School, and received an MFA from Art Center College of Design. Grants include Durfee Foundation, California Community Foundation and Philip Morris Kunstförderung.
Gunilla Lundahl. Cultural journalist and author. Lundahl began her career at the daily newspaper, Arbetaren (The Worker) in 1955 and has since then been employed by Form at different times from 1965 to 1985. She was the editor for Arkitekttidningen for six years in the 1970s, guest editor and employee of the journal Arkitektur during the 1980s and columnist in Hemslöjden in the beginning of the 2000s. As a freelance writer she has written about design, art and architecture and contributed to more than 100 books, anthologies, catalogues and reports, working as writer, co-writer or editor. Gunilla Lundahl has been in charge of exhibitions such as Modellen (The Model) and Ararat at Moderna Museet; Den naturliga staden (The Natural City) and Kvinnorum (Women’s Space) at the Architecture Museum; Himla skönt (So terribly lovely) for Riksutställningar (the Swedish Travelling Exhibitions). Her research includes projects around collective living and arts and crafts. In the beginning of the 1970’s she was a teacher at the Royal Institute of Technology. Books include: Hus och rum för små barn (House and Space for Small Children), 1995; Karaktär och känsla (Character and Feeling), 1999; Kontinuitet och förändring (Continuity and Change), 2011.
Palle Nielsen was born in 1942 in Copenhagen. He studied painting at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1963 to 1967 and participated in several exhibitions while still a student. He concluded his education with employment with the municipal architects in a large suburb of Copenhagen where he designed and supervised the building of several playgrounds.
Nielsen participated in a series of urban actions in Copenhagen in the beginning of 1968 and later went to Stockholm to take part in the planning of Aktion Samtal (Action Talk). In July 1968 he received a grant from the Royal School of Architecture in Copenhagen to do research on the subject of “children and urban space” under the auspices of Professor Sven Ingvar Andersson in the department of Landscape Planning. This meant that, together with a group of friends in Stockholm, Nielsen could realize the exhibition Modellen. En modell for ett kvalitativt samhälle (The Model. A Model for a Qualitative Society) at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, October 1968.
In the beginning of 1969, ideas from the exhibition at Modern Museet were tested in a residential area in Västerås. The project was called Ballongen (The Balloon). Nielsen has done research on children’s play in urban space; he has studied pedagogy at the University of Copenhagen and taught the subject. He has been an architecture critic and has built playgrounds as an architect and designed ornamentation for public buildings. He has also worked for a long time as a supervisor for unemployed people in conjunction with large creative projects.
In 1998, Lars Bang Larsen brought to light documentation material from The Model (1968) which had been buried for 30 years in Nielsen’s home. Since then, this material has been shown in exhibitions in Europe and distributed through magazines and journals. In 2009 Nielsen donated the material to MACBA (Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum), where it was recreated visually and with sound; MACBA also published a book on The Model. The work was subsequently exhibited at the Biennial in Sao Paulo and in Paris. In 2009 Nielsen presented the piece, The Children’s Peace Square in Utrecht.
Erik Stenberg. Head of the Department of Architecture at KTH, has been engaged in the practice and politics of restructuring the large scale modernist housing areas in Sweden for the last decade. He has redesigned apartments, organized a housing fair, and started an introductory architecture school in Tensta—one of Stockholm’s largest modernist housing areas. Further, he has lectured extensively, led design studios, organized lecture series and held seminars focusing on interventions and strategies for repurposing the housing stock. He is currently in the early stages of planning an exhibit at the Swedish Museum of Architecture concerning the fourfold set of forces pressuring the Swedish post war housing areas: maintenance/renovation, integration/segregation, energy/sustainability and preservation/history.
Hito Steyerl. Filmmaker and writer. Written and visual essays about traveling images and their relation to spectacle, history and violence. Teaches New Media at University of Arts Berlin. Shows include dOKUMENTA 12, biennials in Shanghai, Gwangju, Taipeh, Berlin, Manifesta 5 and many other places. Steyerl has had solo shows at nbk Berlin and Henie Onstad Art Centre, Norway among many others. One of her favorite works is the thorough dismantling of the facade of the Linz Art School, a large Nazi building (2009) sitting on the city’s main square. Recent books include The Color of Truth 2008, Beyond Representation (forthcoming) and The Wretched of the Screen (forthcoming).
11.3, 12:00-17:00 Second Seminar
In 1968 artist and architect Palle Nielsen initiated The Model: A model for a qualitative society which was a playground for children installed at Moderna Museet as part of Action Talk, a series of urban events in Stockholm. Despite the fact that The Model became a legendary event at one of Sweden’s most prestigious museums, it has taken a long time for the project to find its way into the history books. The reasons for this delay is undoubtedly due to the project’s dual nature—a mix of artistic research and activism—as well as its collective character and deep roots inside Nielsen’s activist network.
With pivotal agents from The Model and Action Talk present, this seminar at Tensta konsthall will take up the project from the perspective of art and cultural history—looking at how as it was perceived at the time and in its historical context of 1968. The seminar also explores the question of how contemporary experience and theory can inform historical events, which are still important and timely for us today.
11.3 2012 Participants and program
12:00-12:30 Introduction by Maria Lind and Lars Bang Larsen
12:30-13:30 Palle Nielsen, initiator of The Model: A model for a qualitative society at Moderna Museet 1968. On The Model in his own words.
13:30-13:45 Coffee break
13:45-14:30 Gunilla Lundahl, co-organizer of The Model. On Action Talk and city activism in Stockholm.
14:30-15:15 Erik Stenberg, Dean of The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and resident of Tensta from 1999-2011. On Tensta, the “Million Dwelling Programme” and the new satellite towns.
15:15-15:30 Coffee break
15:30-16:30 Discussion
16:30-17:00 Visit to the “museum apartment” of Stockholm Stadsmuseum (The City Museum of Stockholm) furnished like when the first family lived here in 1969.
The Model and the City: A Seminar on Palle Nielsen’s project The Model (Moderna Museet, 1968) and Tensta is a collaboration between Tensta konsthall and The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. It is part of The New Model and The Million Program c/o The Royal Institute of Technology.
With its starting point in this seminar, the project The Million Program c/o The Royal Institute of Technology will explore The Million Dwelling Programme from an architectural and historical as well as its current and future status.
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The New Model
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Lars Bang Larsen, The New Model, 2011
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Dave Hullfish Bailey, The New Model, 2011
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The New Model, 2011
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Magnus Bärtås, The New Model, 2011
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The Model and the City: A Seminar on Palle Nielsen´s project The Model (Moderna Museet 1968) and Tensta: Palle Nielsen, 2012
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The New Model: meeting in Tensta´s museum dwelling, 2012
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Seminar: The Model and the City: A Seminar on Palle Nielsen´s project The Model (Moderna Museet 1968) and Tensta: Gunilla Lundahl, 2012
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The Model and the City: A Seminar on Palle Nielsen´s project The Model (Moderna Museet 1968) and Tensta, 2012
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The Model and the City: A Seminar on Palle Nielsen´s project The Model (Moderna Museet 1968) and Tensta: Lars Bang Larsen, 2012
Jakob Jakobsen & Anders Remmer, Byggeren will never surrender: a radio play on street fights and the right to the city, 2011/2013
