Haga–DK51, 2015

Walk-performance

Description:

The title refers to the origin and the ending of the walk-performance. The starting porint, Haga, is part of the Djurgården park (Stockholm). Djurgården represents one of the biggest green areas of the city as well as a place that, during the XX century, established a turning point on the conception of leisure-in-nature (from its use as a recreational area for the royal family to its touristic exploitation). The ending location of the performance was the address Drottning Kristinas 51, a subterranean hall that used to host the first nuclear reactor of Sweden, under the KTH —Polythechnic University. The space was intervened with a sound and light installation.

Conceived as a walk, it was organized in two sessions for groups of fifteen people. The groups crossed the wooded areas of the park, progressively heading to the urban surroundings of the University Campus, where the hall of the old nuclear reactor is located. Using the industrial crane of the hall, the space was acoustically modulated and activated through its machinery. The route proposed a transition between two locations that, in different ways, alluded to dominated and commodified "Historical Natures". The first one being a turning point in the understanding of social and cultural constructions of landscape as a reified object for leisure. The second one, alluding to nuclear research as a technoscientific milestone of progress.

R1, first nuclear reactor in Sweden, 1970. KTH, Royal Institute of Technology; Control Room of the R1, 1970, KTH, Royal Institute of Technology. A numbered grid was used to measure the levels of radiation of the space after the dismantlement of the reactor, as can be seen in the photographic documentation below.

Nature: An Exhibitionary Complex in Djurgården consisted of a series of works that sat within the encompassing analysis of the concept of 'nature' from the context of Djurgården. How is the term used and how does it affect how we view the world? Assuming that the term serves as a metonymic list where very diverse concepts are included, —even more so since its exploitation in marketing— such as greenery and concentrated juice, Djurgården and Mount Everest, the works within the series explore the relationships we establish with nature, perhaps offering alternatives that could be more beneficial to the environment and social relations than the current ones.

Photographs: