"Att läsa plats och historia", Scener härifrån, Sebastian Dahlqvist

Essay for Sebastian Dahlqvist´s "Scenes, from here", Art Lab Gnesta

Sebastian Dahlqvist in collaboration with Kerstin Altåker, Inger Bergman, Benny Damgaard, Johanna Herman Lundberg, Dinis Machado and Lina Lundquist.

The exhibition Scenes, from here, highlight stories from Gnesta and investigate how local history can be formulated and illustrated in new ways. Since the first visit to Gnesta 2016, artist Sebastian Dahlqvist has worked to find stories from the site that illustrate major social transformations. Some of them come from different archives, others from the cityscape, again others are completely lost and have been mapped in meetings with people who have lived here for a long time.

Together with invited artists and individuals, Sebastian Dahlqvist has been working actively with the old soap factory, the now closed people’s park, Bryggeriholmen (where Art Lab Gnesta is located) and the former telephone station. In four parts, the project approaches questions about the means and technologies in which the history is written, in whose name and for what purpose. The parts and directions of the project together form a polyphonic voice – not searching for unified direction but for an uninterrupted movement.