Måns Wrange: Magic Bureaucracy
Erik Stenberg, Helena Westerlind, Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Hugo Palmarola, and José Hernández: Welfare Panels
October 11, 2017–January 14, 2018
Taxingegränd 10
SE-163 04 Tensta
Sweden
New Eelam: Tensta by Christopher Kulendran Thomas
New Eelam is an exploration into the future of housing and citizenship. Conceived by the artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas, in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann, this long-term artwork takes the form of a real estate technology company founded to develop a flexible, global subscription housing service that aims to make homes as streamable as music or movies. Based on collective access rather than individual ownership, the post-capitalist startup intends to rewire property relations through the luxury of communalism rather than private property.
New Eelam engages with the universal problem of citizenship whereby the right to belong somewhere is bound to specific nations. In Kulendran Thomas’s case this is understood through the lens of the unsuccessful Tamil struggle for independence from what is now Sri Lanka. But what would happen if, rather than attempting self-governance by force, technology instead enabled a more liquid form of citizenship beyond borders? A scifi documentary, that introduces the political and historical context for this venture, plays within New Eelam’s prototype live/work space, whilst functional aquaponic homefarming ecosystems automate agriculture on a personal scale. Tensta konsthall’s multifunctional classroom is incorporated into the ‘concept space’ with modular furniture designed and fabricated by students at Interior Architecture & Furniture Design (Konstfack). This collaborative learning environment provides a space in which to speculate on the future of citizenship in an age of technologically accelerated dislocation.
Magic Bureaucracy by Måns Wrange
Curated by Nina Möntmann
The exhibition Magic Bureaucracy by Måns Wrange deals with utopian bureaucracy, magical realism, and immateriality. It centers around a selection of Wrange’s projects from the 1980s and ‘90s where he combined and often cross-fertilized art practice with curatorial work, including the project The Aerial Kit (1984–89) by the curatorial group VAVD Editions of which he was a member. These works include a yellow metal box similar to the artist Marcel Duchamp’s mini museum “Boîte a Valise,” which contains a portable mini exhibition with objects, documents, sounds, images, film, and printed matter, and “The Stockholm Syndrome” (1997–98). The latter was a curatorial project involving thirteen international artists, structured as a computer game with several layers, and based on the 1973 hostage drama at Stockholm’s Norrmalmstorg which gave rise to the psychological concept of the same name.
Welfare Panels: The Pre-Fabricated Structural Systems of the Swedish Million Program Era in an International Context by Erik Stenberg, Helena Westerlind, Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Hugo Palmarola, and José Hernández
As a part of Tensta Museum Continues
What were the ideas behind one of Sweden’s most extensive housing projects, and what kind of policy is required today for the suburbs of the future? Welfare Panels draws on the architect Erik Stenberg’s many years of research on the history of the Million Program Era (1965–1974), during which a million homes were built in Sweden. Three of the Swedish pre-fabricated concrete panel systems will be analyzed together with Helena Westerlind. The exhibition comprises both architectural models and archive material, including the acclaimed research by architects and designers Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Hugo Palmorola, and José Hernández (Santiago) into systems for pre-fabricated concrete panels, which were developed in France in the 40s then ended up in other countries—for example the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Chile—with radically different living and production conditions.
Fall projects at Tensta konsthall also include the exhibition My Green Dream is Red: Helga Henschen 100 years, and The Migration Course: Histories and politics of migration with Petra Bauer, Håkan Blomqvist, Alessandro Petti, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Eyal Weizman, and Stefan Jonsson, among others. The language cafés in Swedish and Arabic are now extended to a weekly English class organized as part of The Silent University, initiated by the artist Ahmet Öğüt. The Women’s Café is now open three days a week for handicraft workshops.
For press enquiries:
Asrin Haidari
asrin [at] tenstakonsthall.se / T +46 (0) 70 454 7898
