Oslo B - Helge Hiram Jensen

The Model - Palle Nielsen’s
Model for a Qualitative Society
Av Rachel Dagnall
The Model was a fantastic «adventure-playground»,
built by Palle Nielsen in the Moderna
Museum, Stockholm, 1968. This functional installation
made space for kid’s activity within the Art
Institution – and within adult consciousness, as
the exhibition’s Manifesto calls for ‘Children’s
Power’ within town planning.
My interest in the project now, is more about the influence of
an Artist working on the periphery of the Art community with a
socially engaged practice, being engaged within the Museum
to make a functional structure: Functional for play and as an
illustrative vehicle, communicating the needs and visions of
children, in the city, within the museum «There is no exhibition,
It is only an exhibition because the kids are playing in a Museum»
(Arbetsgruppen)
It was dangerous and developed organically. It broke the
moulds of the child-parent relationship, opening the possibility
for a «child inspired» structure. Nielsen played with that dichotomy
present in urban development: the real/ present versus
the ideal/absent. He approached a utopia of alternative living.
The Model cried for a dramatic change in consciousness and
town planning. After The Model the artist dropped out of the
Art World. (He had always been critical to the «museum», calling
himself «the Working Group»). But he continued to make
playgrounds in the «slums» of Copenhagen.
Byggelekeplass // Foto: DogA / Annichen Hauan
Nielsen’s Model is a natural inspiration for this exhibition
/ publication: What kind of town do we want? One of the
main issues is the temporality of the event – a few days with
workshops and activities, no resilient stunts, which re-occur
relentlessly and spontaneously in the city streets. We build visions
of a better place, and find functions for existing places
as a stunt. We hope to highlight these issues around urban
development: cities without kids, monotone culture, corporate
architecture, institutional & consumerist museum culture…
whilst we know we are a part of it, and there is now getting
around it.
Rachel Dagnall, Oslo, 40 years later.
Credits
Palle Nielsen: Modellen: .En model för ett kvalitativt samhälle
Moderna Museet 1968 Bonniers tr. Stockholm
Lars Bang Larsen: True Rulers of Their Own Realm: Political
Subjectivation in Palle Nielsen’s The Model, Afterall Autumn/
Winter 2007
Groundation // Oslo 2004 // Rachel Dagnall // Foto: Tom Hansen
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