UPHEAVAL

scenario

This webpage is the home of an art project by visual artist Kerstin Bergendal.

The artist will add a new artwork to Götaplatsen—a very large square in the heart of Gothenburg (SE). This is a public commission from the City of Gothenburg in 2024.

The physical addition will be elaborated through an extended durational and public dialogue, exploring different aspects of the site from 2024 to 2028.

This website will let you to follow this gradually growing exploration:To the right, you’ll find two rows of images. Click on any image to open it and read a short text by the artist about what you see.

The top row shows fragments from archives, books, and research.
The bottom row follows the artist as she moves through the city—including short videos about people she has met along the way.

UPHEAVAL

scenario

This webpage is the home of an art project by visual artist Kerstin Bergendal.

The artist will add a new artwork to Götaplatsen—a very large square in the heart of Gothenburg (SE). This is a public commission from the City of Gothenburg in 2024.

The physical addition will be elaborated through an extended durational and public dialogue, exploring different aspects of the site from 2024 to 2028.

The top row shows fragments from archives, books, and research.
The bottom row follows the artist as she moves through the city—including short videos about people she has met along the way.

A forest in the clay

I happened to stumble upon a lecture on YouTube: archaeologist Christina Rosén talks about the living conditions of the farmers who lived in the surrounding countryside, during the time when the City was being built.

Having gone to school in the City, I was well aware that it was built on clay. But it wasn’t until now, when Christina Rosén showed this particular image, that I fully grasped what it means to build a city-on clay.

What you are looking at, is a construction. It was designed to make it possible to build large and heavy structures on soft clay. What looks like stones, are actually the bottom of tree trunks. Whole trees, driven head first into the clay and then locked in place by the wooden grid you see in the photo.

Behind the staggering number of tree trunks that must have been used to build the City back then, you can sense a banal yet equally staggering manual labour effort. This came particularly from the farmers of the City’s surrounding countryside - and without using any machines. First, they felled the trees. Then, they stripped off the branches and bark. Next, they loaded them onto horse-drawn carts. Still, no machines. Then, they transported them into the city. Unloaded them again. And perhaps they also performed the process of pounding them into the earth and securing them with beams?

The farmers and their products were, in many ways, the concrete prerequisite for the city’s foundation on the stretch of land where it now stands. But, as Christina Rosén explains, their work was taxed as an extra levy. Ironically, this additional tax was called " Göteborgs-hjälpen" (The Gothenburg Aid).

Ironic, because at the same time, the City was actively working to attract foreign enterprising businessmen by offering them lower taxes.

The City rests on its opposite. There is a forest, standing upside down in the clay.

Archeologist Christina Rosén, documentation of lecture entitled Historien om Göteborg - Bönder i stadens skugga. ( the history of Gothenburg - Farmers in the shadow of the City) Stadsbiblioteket i Göteborg 5 februari 2024.