The City that Never Sleeps...

Between October 2004 and March 2005 Drabble + Sachs worked with the students of the Art Academy in Umea, Northern Sweden.

Prompted by the teaching project ‘the ownership of culture’, four students: Aldis Ellertsdöttir, John Huntington, Mikael Näsström and Fanny Carinasdotter produced the work 'Nordic Light', which culminated with a public event on the 3rd of March. Following presentations and discussions about public and private space, and fieldwork around the city of Umea, the group decided to focus on a much-hyped development proposal by Umea's most powerful entrepreneur, Krister Olsson, as part of which he proposes a new high-rise hotel and conference center on the city's waterfront. Rather than openly attack this vision of an exclusive, executive Umea, they decided to dwarf it with a proposal of their own, which entertained and amplified the development logic and revealed some of the more extreme and problematic strategies inherent within the discourse of urban development and regeneration.

The students formed a fictional institute called Ny Stad (New City) and held a press-conference heralding a new development in which the whole of the centre of the city was to be turned into an ibiza-style party zone for 18-25 year olds. Under the tag-line 'the city that never sleeps' they produced a densely worded press-communique and commissioned actors to play the part of development specialists. The conference proposed the building of an enormous snowboard ramp down the central boulevard, the historic town-hall was to be removed to the museum district and replaced with a huge entertainment block in the shape of a water-molecule, complete with state of the art clubbing facilities, a 300 seat sauna and an Ice-Bar (refrigerated year-round of course).

Their research into the language of development, meant that for the most part, the press believed the theatre they were presented with was authentic, and Olsson (who was also at the press conference) embraced the idea as 'a great opportunity to integrate the students into the center of the city'. The actors (amongst them Hinrich Sachs playing the part of fictional architect Urs Klein) found themselves on local TV and radio and in the newspapers. A day later the students went public, explaining that the whole thing was a carefully crafted fiction aimed at raising debate about who has the right to decide the future of urban space, and on what terms the media report fiction as fact.

Press interest within Sweden since the revelation has been steady, with the students asked to defend their intervention at the time, and since then occasionally requested to give their opinion on related events.

Visit the websites and blogs of Aldis Ellertsdöttir, John Huntington, Mikael Näsström and Fanny Carinasdotter

Download the pamphlet made by the students for the press:

nordiclight.pdf

Or the reader Drabble + Sachs put together for the teaching project:

Umea reader.pdf