What is common in Absolut Vodka and IKEA? Both are global acting Swedish companies. Absolut often works together with artists in its advertisements -who deal with the characteristic bottle-shape in different ways-, this time chose Ikea as a partner, to switch together the “Swedish” of the two firms in people’s minds. The result, an Absolut Vodka bottle form furnished with real Ikea furnitures appeared as a billboard in a New York street. Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol, Dutch artists, spending a year at the PS1 in New York City saw the billboard there, and took up this “Sweden-switch” in their show in Stockholm at the Moderna Museet Projekt. They re-imported the advertisement and reconstructed it at the Prastgarden, the exhibition place of the MM Projects. The life-size copy of the billboard filled a whole wall from bottom to top, giving a monumental impression to the viewer. The artists spraypainted “Stockholm” over the initial text “Absolut New York”.
The “home brought” ad was a starting point for events the artists organized in Stockholm through the two months of the exhibition. As suggested in the title of the show, the city was the subject of observation and functioned as a platform to open discussions. Lectures and guided tours intented to put forgotten, or disregarded places and buildings into the centrum of attention and as they formulated it, “lighten up them for a certain moment”. The events considered a wider public, specialists of various fields, but also not-specialised visitors. Inhabiting existing structures, the artists create the possibility for new relations in culture, as Nicoals Bourriaud, French art critic pointed out in his lecture “Relational aesthetics” in connection with the exhibition.
As reference points Bik Van der Pol selected places which are today representative for the modernistic idea of urban planning and architecture in Stockholm. To relate to modernistic ideology which was so omnipotent and the only truth for a long time, to see how the theories and ideas have been realized and how they function today is especially interesting in Sweden, where the social welfare state was based on these. The idea of the Kollektivhuset (1935) was to create a “service-house”, supporting the modern working woman. There was a child care in the ground-floor, personal working in the house taking care of the laundry, and the families could order dinner from the restaurant – based in the building – and get it through a food-elevator into their homes. As the flats were very small, most of the families with children moved out already in the 40’s, the services were closed down and the house became to decay. The building was restored for 10 years ago, but the original idea did not return, people moving into the house today have to pay high price to live in one of the modernistic monuments of Sweden. One of the “venues”, Arsta for example was one of the first built modern suburb centers in Stockholm (1953), where people could shop, go to the theatre or to the public library in a concentrated area. Today Arsta Centrum feels very small, the whole piazza could fit in a bigger shopping center. The public was invited to come to the seldom used nice cinema /theatre hall to see masterpieces of 20th century film. Some places were revealed for actual cultural debates. In the Sweden-House, which is the official Sweden information center since the 60’s, architects discussed the possibility of re-using modernistic architecture. The ABF-House, a building with several lecture halls and an exhibition space built in the late 50’s, gave place for the presentation of the young cooperative Uglycute, working between art, design and architecture.
In earlier projects Bik and van Pol presented subjectively selected cultural connections, for example in Norwich they rebuilt the space of the Konrad Fischer Gallery from Düsseldorf at a house entrance and it was open to use it by everybody. In the Museum Boymans von Beuningen in Rotterdam they reconstructed the bookshop of the ICA in London, and made possible for the visitors to buy from the exemplary accumulation of books. In other cases the public was invited to join offered “cultural passions”, so the public could watch or sleep under the film “Sleep” by Andy Warhol; in the show ‘On the sublime’ in the Rooseum in Malmö, people could borrow books on the sublime and read them in capsule hotel-like sleeping boxes.
With ‘Absolut Stockholm, Label or Life – City on a platform’ the artists opened the possibility for meetings which observed and used the local cultural background and activated people to relate to it.