Gävle, Sweden, 2003
In 2002 Esther Shalev-Gerz was invited to realize a project in Gävle, Sweden. “What is the portrait of a city? Is it the city today or is it both what it is today and what it could have been?
When I first visited Gavle I was struck by how recent the architecture seemed for a city that is very old. I later learned that, although the city has never been bombed, a fire devastated its centre in 1869. On my second visit, while investigating the civic archives, I discovered drawings of the buildings destroyed by fire at that time. I decided to search for other buildings that do not exist today but had been imagined on drawings and were never built or buildings that existed and had been destroyed for different reasons. These drawings represent a lost architecture as well as the possibility of an alternative architectural reality. Within the archives there lives another city, the presence of which can shed light on the city's present and future, providing a reflection of that which is as well as another perspective, another reality, another imaginary civic and architectural vision.
My work aims to challenge the parameters of history and memory, to recall the processes of imagination in seeking to contrast present realities with the possibility of others that exist “in posse”.
I propose an eclosion of the architectural memory of Gavle in apposition with its architectural history. Giving a three-dimensional reality to the flat, archived drawings and thereby offering a contrast to the flat reality of the existing city helps to fill the gaps between what has been dreamed and what now exists. In exploring Gavle I felt a necessity to give a concrete form to the possible and the lost, to make it a potential being in the ineluctable face of the now.”
Gävle, Sweden, 2003
In 2002 Esther Shalev-Gerz was invited to realize a project in Gävle, Sweden. “What is the portrait of a city? Is it the city today or is it both what it is today and what it could have been?
When I first visited Gavle I was struck by how recent the architecture seemed for a city that is very old. I later learned that, although the city has never been bombed, a fire devastated its centre in 1869. On my second visit, while investigating the civic archives, I discovered drawings of the buildings destroyed by fire at that time. I decided to search for other buildings that do not exist today but had been imagined on drawings and were never built or buildings that existed and had been destroyed for different reasons. These drawings represent a lost architecture as well as the possibility of an alternative architectural reality. Within the archives there lives another city, the presence of which can shed light on the city's present and future, providing a reflection of that which is as well as another perspective, another reality, another imaginary civic and architectural vision.
My work aims to challenge the parameters of history and memory, to recall the processes of imagination in seeking to contrast present realities with the possibility of others that exist “in posse”.
I propose an eclosion of the architectural memory of Gavle in apposition with its architectural history. Giving a three-dimensional reality to the flat, archived drawings and thereby offering a contrast to the flat reality of the existing city helps to fill the gaps between what has been dreamed and what now exists. In exploring Gavle I felt a necessity to give a concrete form to the possible and the lost, to make it a potential being in the ineluctable face of the now.”