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Jonas Dahlberg: "Loss as project" (Jan 29)

The Spring term's first Thursday event is a guest lecture by the artist Jonas Dahlberg. He has been invited to the KTH School of Architecture go give an in-depth account of his winning proposal for a memorial of the July 22nd massacre on Utøya. As part of our lecture series "…as project", Dahlberg's lecture will present the concepts of cuts, voids and spatial sequences in the design of the memorial and also how these themes have been developed throughout his previous work. The event is free and open to the public, and the student-run Thursday's bar will be open for the occasion – welcome!

Time: Thu 2015-01-29 18.00

Location: Triangeln (entrance foyer), KTH Arkitekturskolan, Östermalmsgatan 26

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Jonas Dahlberg's winning proposal for the memorial of the July 22nd massacre on Utøya.

Jonas Dahlberg 's lecture will be centered around  his winning proposal for a memorial site for the  July 22nd massacre on Utøya. The concept for the Memorial Sørbråten proposes a wound or a cut within nature itself. It reproduces the physical experience of taking away, reflecting the abrupt and permanent loss of those who died. The cut will be a three-and-a-half-meters-wide excavation. It slices from the top of the headland at the Sørbråten site, to below the water line and extends to each side. This void in the landscape makes it impossible to reach the end of the headland.

Visitors begin their experience guided along a wooden pathway through the forest. This creates a five to ten minute contemplative journey leading to the cut. Then the pathway will flow briefly into a tunnel. This tunnel leads visitors inside of the landscape and to the dramatic edge of the cut itself. Visitors will be on one side of a channel of water created by the cut. Across this channel, on the flat vertical stone surface of the other side, the names of those who died will be visibly inscribed in the stone.

The names will be close enough to see and read clearly – yet ultimately out of reach. The cut is an acknowledgment of what is forever irreplaceable. This experience hopes to bring visitors to a state of reflection through a poetic rupture or interruption. It should be difficult to see the beauty of the natural setting, without also experiencing a sense of loss. It is this sense of loss that will physically activate the site. People will find their way around the landscape surrounding the cut, looking down at the channel and to the names from a higher perspective, or looking out to Utøya, establishing their own private ways of seeing and remembering.

JONAS DAHLBERG
lives and works in Stockholm Sweden. He studied architecture at Lunds Technical University from 1993 to 1995. From 1995 to 2000 he studied art at Malmö Art Academy where he received his M.F.A. in 2000. Since 2000 he has developed a series of videos that primarily consist of slow movements through architectural spaces. The videos are created by building miniaturized architectural sets that are filmed through experimental methods.

In addition to video and video installation, his practice includes public art works, sculptures, commissions, book projects and photography. In June 2012, Dahlberg's concept and set design for an opera production of Guiseppe Verdi's Macbeth debuted at the Grand Theatre in Geneva.

Through his installations, be they video or otherwise, Jonas Dahlberg works with space. Architecture is addressed as a political place that influences how we understand ourselves, and how the body and mind experience the outside world. 

This event is the third installment of the lecture series "...as project" at the KTH School of Architecture, preceded by "Perimiter as project" by Jing Liu of SO-IL and "Intervention as project" by Brynony Roberts, in which the speakers are invited to present one specific project in great depth and detail. The aim of the series is twofold. Firstly, rather than rushing through a practice's complete ouevre, the ambition is to provide an apportunity for a closer look at, and a deeper understanding of, a single work of architecture. Secondly, the series as a whole is an attempt at instigating a wider conversation on the notion of "the project" in architecture. Throughout the series, we will be opening inquiries into design and construction processes, contextual settings, singularity vs continuity of practice, client relations, post-occupancy, and so forth.

Hosted by the KTH School of Architecture. See the event posted  on facebook  for additional information on this and coming events.
The student-run  Thursday's bar  will be open for the occasion. Welcome!