“Spare Time”
Bildmuseet, Umeå
6.6 - 4.09 2011

“Spare Time: Utopias on the Verge of Commonness”
National Gallery, Prague
September 6 - November 13, 2011

“Survival Kit”
Latvian Centre of Contemporary Art, Riga
September 8 - 18, 2011

collaboration with Gerd Aurell.

The Ume River Delta covers an area of about 19 square kilometers just downstream the city of Umeå in northern Sweden. The river flows from west to east, arising in the mountains along the Norwegian border and ending in the Gulf of Bothnia. The Ume River Delta is best known for its abundance of birds and is one of the areas in Sweden included in the International Convention of Wetlands due to its major importance as a resting place for migrating birds. The Ume River Delta was designated a European Natura-2000 Reserve in 2008

The Delta project has developed and evolved through our work with an installation for Bildmuseet. During the initial part of the project we met and interviewed ice fishers, school children and cross country skiers – people who in their spare time take part in outdoor activities in the Ume Delta area. In the following parts we decided to focus on the connection between Delta and Utopia and the Death of Utopia.

The first exhibition “Spare Time”, was shown at Bildmuseet in Umeå (June 2011) and “Spare Time: Utopias on the Verge of Commonness” shown at the National Gallery in Prague (Sept 2011). We also made an exhibition for the Riga art festival “Survival Kit 3”, that we called “Delta Dreams” (Sept 2011). For the exhibition at Bildmuseet we built a green bird-hide as a room to contain a book. The inside of the bird-hide was papered with photo wallpaper from the Ume Delta, a photo of the tangled brownish-gray alden trees that are very typical for the Delta area. We turned the delta inside out, so that you could climb up in the bird-hide and enter into the delta in order to read the books. In the exhibition in Riga we made a picnic into the Daugava Delta where we met up with a local activist group.