Book Launch! Model Archive – A Witness to the City

Friday 8 December, 5.30pm–7.30pm
Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Kungsbro strand 19, Stockholm

Model Archive – A Witness to the City explores Stockholm’s urban design and planning based on a model archive kept at the City Planning Department of Stockholm. It takes as its starting points a film by artist Malin Pettersson Öberg commissioned by Index in 2017 and shot in the archive, as well as an exhibition curated in 2018 by Mikaela Steby Stenfalk at ArkDes – Sweden’s National Centre for Architecture and Design.

In essays and conversations, a dozen authors and dialogue partners reflect on the relationship between model and city, complexities of the urban planning process, housing issues, and more. Who builds the city and for whom? How does the shape of the city relate to the shape of its inhabitants’ lives? And can the archive’s models serve as tools for memory and historiography, as well as for reflecting and challenging the city we now have?

This anthology is the result of a multi-year collaboration between Malin Pettersson Öberg and Mikaela Steby Stenfalk. Contributors are Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Harri Anttila, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Olivia Eriksson, Magnus Florin, Kristian Rosengren, Secretary (Helen Runting, Karin Matz & Rutger Sjögrim), Axel Wieder and Malin Zimm.

Welcome to the release of Model Archive at Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, on Friday December 8 at 5.30pm–7.30pm. The film will be screened at the release and there will also be a conversation between Malin Pettersson Öberg, Mikaela Steby Stenfalk, Harri Anttila, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Magnus Florin, Helen Runting and Malin Zimm.

Published by Arvinius + Orfeus and available in Swedish and English.

More about the speakers:

Malin Pettersson Öberg is the artist behind the film and exhibition The Model Archive (2017–2018) and the initiator of this book. She is trained as a visual artist and explores in her practice narrative formats, site-specific processes, and multi-disciplinary knowledge exchanges.

Mikaela Steby Stenfalk is an artist and coeditor of this book with Malin Pettersson Öberg. She curated the exhibition The Model Archive at ArkDes in 2018. In fragmented sculptural works, texts and spaces, she moves between the concepts of cultural heritage, representation and belonging.

Harri Anttila worked as a modeler at the City Planning Department of Stockholm between 1990 and 2019, and was central to the creation of the film The Model Archive in 2017.

Carlos Mínguez Carrasco is an architect and curator based in Stockholm. He is Chief Curator at ArkDes. Between 2012 and 2017 he was Associate Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York.

Magnus Florin is an author, literary critic and dramaturg. He made his debut in 1989 with Berättelsens gång (How the Tale Goes) and was nominated for the literary August Prize for his works Trädgården (The Garden, 1995), Syskonen (Siblings, 1998) and Ränderna (The Stripes, 2010).

Helen Runting is a member of Secretary, an architecture practice in Stockholm run by Karin Matz, Rutger Sjögrim and herself. She is an urban planner, urban designer and architectural theorist who has worked with master planning projects in Australia, Vietnam, Finland and Sweden, as well as published widely in journals and anthologies.

Malin Zimm is an architect, researcher and writer. She was the Chief Editor of the architecture magazine Arkitektur (2019–2022) and of Rum magazine (2007–2009), as well as Director of Research, manager of ARQ research fund and Research strategist at White Arkitekter (2014–2019).

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