A Live Interior

Ulrika Karlsson, Ceclia Lundbäck, Daniel Norell, Einar Rodhe, Veronica Skeppe

December 10-18, 2023

Set in an apartment in a 1960s building on Södermalm in Stockholm, the exhibition A Live Interior explores shifting notions of the architectural interior and its objects, representations, and narratives. The exhibition takes the visitor through an environment that layers traces of previous occupants, remote domestic scenes, and furniture pieces based on recovered material. It positions the interior as an unstable condition, constantly in production through reuse and arrangements of fixtures, furniture, and belongings with varying temporality.

A Live Interior explores the dynamics between domestic spaces, objects, and their representations. Several inhabited apartments have been studied by capturing them with laser scanning. A series of drawings and animations based on the scans reveal adjacencies and dependencies between the vast number of objects in our homes. Projections and overlays of points obtained in the process of scanning leave imprints on surfaces and furniture pieces in the exhibition and make them sit ambiguously between material reality and drawing, between intimacy and measurability.

Stories told through representations are layered with the apartment in which the exhibition is set and the objects that dwell in it. At the scale of the city block, there is the history of the building, its construction, its inhabitants, and local businesses. Due to a coming renovation and addition of two floors, the building is currently being evacuated, small businesses are moving out, and rents are to be raised. At the scale of the apartment, there are the marks and traces that past occupants have left, such as wear and tear and layers of installations, wallpaper, and paint. And there is the hidden life of furniture and belongings that circulate through apartments, online markets, and recycling centres.

The exhibition considers stuff – fixtures, furniture, objects, belongings – as a resource and as an architectural entity with an impact that may exceed that of its rigid framework of floor, walls, and ceiling. Several furniture pieces are constructed by locating, selecting, and assembling such stuff in ways that go beyond intended use. These pieces are a play on the intimacies of domestic life – producing or altering relations between items and habits. Together, they cultivate a practice of reuse that intercepts used items as they flow through various knots in the city.

Interiors Matter: A Live Interior is a three-year practice-based research project funded by The Swedish Research Council and hosted by the KTH School of Architecture in collaboration with Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design.

Exhibition at Torkel Knuttsonsgatan 16, 3rd floor, Stockholm.