Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Who builds the city and for whom? How do we organize our lives together? Modellarkivet portrays the archive of architecture models at Stockholm’s Urban Planning Department, as a departure point for a tentative reflection on what it means to build a city. Through slow takes along the shelves of the archive we are confronted with stacked models and cast miniature buildings, fabricated and named according to a system envisioned in the 1960s, but never completed. The camera closeups reveal the room bit by bit, contributing to a confusion of scale and offering a possibility to imagine the city anew. A constantly moving camera forms the backdrop of a narrative, where questions, fragments and references are woven together. It touches upon diverse themes such as the city as a political space, the idea of utopia, archives and collecting, artefacts, language and words. The film was conceived for the exhibition The Promise at Index, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, in 2017. It is distributed by Filmform and has so far only been screened in Stockholm.

Malin Pettersson Öberg (b. Falun, 1979) is a Swedish visual artist and filmmaker working in a variety of media. She holds a master’s degree in Fine art from Konstfack University in Stockholm (2007) and has studied video art and experimental film at ENSAD in Paris and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (2011). Pettersson Öberguses essayist formats to explore how we perceive time and describe places and cultural or national identity. Through meditative and intimate works she sets focus on forgotten and overlooked aspects of our built environments, in order to open for new interpretations and evaluations of our surroundings. Since 2007, Pettersson Öberg has taken part in screenings and exhibitions in Sweden and abroad, a.o. at ArkDes (upcoming 2018), Index- The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation (2017), Kalmar konstmuseum (2016), Iaspis (2015) and Bonniers Konsthall (2011, 2007) in Sweden and JD Centre of Art, India (2017), International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2016, 2014) and the Swedish Institute in Paris (2012). Her films are distributed by Filmform - The Art Film & Video Archive. She is a teacher and co-organiser of the studio space Slakthusateljéerna since 2010 and a board member of the Nordic Art Association.