founded in 1968 in Stockholm
Gunilla Lundahl, Thomas Wieslander, Jujja Wieslander, Margit Schiött, Hjördis Nilsson, Rolf Olle Nilsson, Anders Svensson, and others
In the 1960s, the urban landscape of Stockholm undergoes radical changes. Cars become more and more dominant, affect the urban fabric, and the general life quality. Aktion Samtal challenges these changes and its impact on children.
In 1968 members of Stockholm Skotmanegruppen (Junk Moon Group), organize the building of a large playground out of junk at Vasa Park for the annual Children’s Day. It is an entirely new experience for all participants, highly visible, and so exciting that people wants to keep it.
Skotmanegruppen renames itself into Aktion Samtal and organizes a handful of guerilla urban actions in Stockholm to change the urban environment. In one action, they tear down the metallic fences closing off a courtyard in order to create one big space for playing and gathering. The practical and peaceful character of these actions is inspired by Danish activists, among them Palle Nielsen, member of Hovedstadsaktionen (Capital Action) in Copenhagen.
In the same year, artist and architect Palle Nielsen travels to Stockholm and meets the members of Aktion Samtal. Together, they come up with the idea of an action about the role of children in society at the Moderna Museet. They meet with Pontus Hultén, the director of Moderna Museet, and deputy director Carlo Derkert who is strongly committed to children’s involvement in art. Derkert endorses the idea, and a few weeks later the large hall of Moderna Museet is handed over to the group. Soon, conflicts among the group come up. Some reject Nielsen’s idea because it leaves the path of the grass-root action.
A large group of students, activists, journalists and children is involved into the project, and the building of the wooden play structure. The now legendary exhibition Modellen – en modell for ett kvalitativt sämhalle (A Model for a Qualitative Society) is a huge success, and becomes synonym for new form of art museum’s engagement with its audience.
Sources:
Helena Friman: Så började en folkrörelse för bättre barn- och stadsmiljö
Arvid Bengtsson: Environmental Planning for Children’s Play, Praeger Publishers New York, 1970
Mats Eriksson Dunér, Rolf Olle Nilsson: Aktion Samtal Aktionen som lekfull stadsaktivism (Action Dialogue, The action as playful urban activism), in: Ingelstedt, Katrin, Den fria leken. Modellen, Ballongen och konsten som aktion, Konstfrämjandet 2017
Gunilla Lundahl: Modellen, Aktion Samtal och ett samtal över tiden (The Model, Action Dialogue and a conversation over time), in: idem.
Lars Bang Larsen and Maria Lind: Interview with Gunilla Lundahl, in: The New Model: An Inquiry. Tensta Konsthall, ed. by Maria Lind and Lars Bang Larsen, Sternberg Press, 2020.
erstellt am 30.11.2021