Streetlight Harvesters Artist Talk
Date: March 20
Time: 18.00–19.00
Place: Humans since 1982, Slakthusgatan 9, Slakthusområdet
Closest subway: Globen, exit towards Slakthusområdet
Language: The talk will be in Swedish
OSA: osa.stockholmkonst@stockholm.se (registration appreciated but not required)
On Thursday, Stockholm Konst is arranging an artist talk about Streetlight Harvesters, our latest collaboration with Lundahl & Seitl. We will be joined by the biologist and Sweden’s foremost bat expert Johan Eklöf, author of the book The Darkness Manifesto - a call to embrace darkness for environmental and social reasons, and the architect and writer Malin Zimm, who has written extensively about the relationship between architecture and artificial light.
Departing from the work, we will have a free-ranging conversation about everything from the influence of our systems on the lives of other beings, our estranged relationship to the numerous invisible systems that underpin modern life, to why we are so afraid of the dark.
Streetlight Harvesters is somewhat unusual as a public artwork, as it hijacks existing urban infrastructure and repurposes it as a materiality to create something different from its original purpose. Art, especially in public spaces, is often clearly separated from the systems surrounding it, which neutralises the art and makes the infrastructure of the city invisible.
In a recent essay series for The New Atlantic, Charles C. Mann explores the invisible systems that underpin modern life, the power grid, the public water supply, the sewage treatment plants. He frames these systems as the unsung cathedrals of our secular era, vast projects sustained by the work of thousands of people, but about which little art is made.
Streetlight Harvesters is a work for one of these cathedrals, that questions how it's built exclusively for us humans. How can we create streetlight systems adapted to the lives of bats, moths and other nocturnal animals? How can we build our future cathedrals to accommodate more species than ours?
We look forward to seeing you on Thursday. After the talk, we will go and experience the work together.
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