PUBLIC LANDSCAPE
a work in process since 2006 —
In February 2006, we were invited by Joanna Sandell, the new manager of Botkyrka Konsthall, to create opportunities for new encounters between the audience and the activities in different disciplines – music, text, form and art. From the analysis of the space and the situation and an expressed desire from various people working in the kunsthalle for it to take a new direction, we have focused on keywords like wild growth, multifunctionality, how to make people stop to meet and visibility.
It has become a kind of public landscape with various small changes in order to strengthen the visibility and presence of the place itself, in a mall with shopping and commuting, education and municipal services. In conversation with and inspired by the others involved: artists, designers, educators, hosts, assistants, politicians, employees, the landscape and the changes grows. Not as a fixed structure but as useful suggestions and opportunities to explore and test the site and how it communicates with its surroundings. Useful elements can be moved and combined from the needs of the moment and from what the situation requires. Relatively unobtrusive but still with some kind of soul. Hopefully, a landscape which one can feel a desire to reside in and on. For different types of people, of different ages, with various references.
How can a new art space grow on different parallel timelines, during a relatively limited time span? It is supposed to grow fast and slow at the same time, it is supposed to work with an already planned program and the new activity should be presented as soon as possible. How will the inhabitants of Botkyrka municipality, the inhabitants of Tumba and Stockholmers find their way to the new activity of the kunsthalle? Here at the Botkyrka konsthall, you cannot be really sure of what will happen next. It is a space with an open investigation of what we can do together. We take off on a journey that we do not really know the objective of, but that surely will mean something special to us who go onboard.
Mobile furniture
* Instead of building new chairs /places to sit on with a little higher seat height the many blue and red school chairs of the Kunsthalle where revarnished. Of these, 10 chairs got covers in colored and patterned furniture textile.
* The office chairs have been recycled and are now covered in the same fabric as the chairs for the new workplaces to correspond with the whole.
* We drew three soft puffs of sacco type, in the form of an orange flower, a blue stream and a black stone, as a feature of the new public landscape.
* Two small rolling tables, one with a praise for those who need a higher table.
* Two mobile workplaces, including one with a cutout text and lighting. The later functioning as a lighted sign saying ”Botkyrka Kunsthalle” in Matilda Ruta´s birch/magnolia-fonts.
* A box in a box in a box – a few small cubes with multifunction.
Mocca Bar
* A small mobile bar that can be used for different needs at different locations in the room, as in the first exhibition it was used as a moccabar here served with Turkish coffee.
* Two tables on wheels with different height for a moment with coffee.
All newly produced furniture is built in the new material Valchromat which is an ecologically produced wooden composite. Green for the wall structure, brown for the coffee bar and yellow for workstations.
Entrances
* Steps leading up from the mall to the art gallery / library painted from blue to white.
* External wall at the glass box at the entrance painted from gray to white.
* Lights outside and above the glass box desk, repaired.
* The desk that faced into the kunstalle from the glass box was removed, to create a greater sense of openness instead of the monitoring function.
* The entrance in the workshop is tested as a possible main entrance when time comes.
* The lamp and the painting in the workshop signals activities outwards.
The work with the new content in the kunsthalle and it’s appearance has been ongoing since February 2006 and is a work in constant development. Supplement will gradually be made and others may be removed. What is important is that all parts have a correspondence with the activities that are emerging over time. Use it! Use it!
All parts have been produced with the help of Kaspar Druml, Makbule Bulduk, Pia Sandström, Matilda Ruta, Joanna Sandell, Caroline Malmström, Tommy Pettersson, Selda Asal, Frida Navlét, Siv Forge, Kerstin Adamsson.
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