During Slow Days, we tramped with a fellow group of artists, curators, and planners into the Ekeberg forest above Oslo to have a conversation about what a future public art programme for Bjørvika – the former container port area of the city of Oslo – might look like. Back then the Bar Code office buildings were rising up at the edge of the development and Bjørvika was becoming a contentious site in which to intervene. The waterfront public spaces were at once promoted as ‘common lands’ whilst being pre-planned and landscaped for leisure activities. We asked how artists might contribute to the conversation about the public spaces here in Oslo through projects that would create a set of gathering points or interventions which would ask, ‘how might we live here and imagine our future?’
This bulletin served as ‘Notes from the Field’ which tracked our thoughts and conversations with the artists and reflections on their projects by other observers. Here Slow Space curator, Claire Doherty and artist, Amy Franceschini look back on the past two years, and writer, Tara McDowell reflects on her observations during her time spent with Futurefarmers’ Flatbread Society in June 2013.
