The New Model: An Inquiry

Revisiting a project that concatenated art, research, and urban activism into a visionary hybrid framework.

For three weeks in October 1968, Stockholm's Moderna Museet was transformed into a sprawling adventure playground that was free to access for all of the city's children. It concatenated art, research, and urban activism into a visionary hybrid framework.

Half a century later, through a series of seminars, exhibitions, and new artworks, The New Model revisits this utopian intervention, reviving discussions of public participation, children's agency, and shifting ideals of collective being. Curated by Lars Bang Larsen and Maria Lind, these inquiries took place from 2011 to 2015 at and around Tensta konsthall, in one of Stockholm's late-modernist suburbs. Through essays, exhibition documentation, and dialogues with the participating artists—among them Palle Nielsen, Magnus Bärtås, Hito Steyerl, Ane Hjort Guttu, and Dave Hullfish Bailey—this volume charts the evolution of two artistic, curatorial, and institutional experiments.

Contributions by

Dave Hullfish Bailey, Magnus Bärtås, Jessica Gogan, Ane Hjort Guttu, Lars Bang Larsen, Gunilla Lundahl, Palle Nielsen, and Hito Steyerl, with an artistic intervention from Metahaven

Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian and curator. He is coeditor of several volumes published by Sternberg Press, including Fundamentalisms of the New Order and The Phantom of Liberty.

Maria Lind is Director of the Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, and former Director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. In 2010, Selected Maria Lind Writing was published by Sternberg Press.