Jonas Dahlberg, Invisible Cities and Safe Zones no.11
1 April - 22 October 2006
Today, we often speak of the new mega-cities that grow faster and faster. Sometimes we talk of rural areas and their depopulation. Very rarely we talk of the in-between cities, the ones that just exist, and keep on existing. There are more than 14 000 of them in the world. Cities that hardly anyone outside these cities knows about. Invisible cities populated by more than 550 million people.¹ - Jonas Dahlberg
All around the world there are cities that are big enough to spend your entire life in, but too small to draw the attention of the mass media. They are invisible to those who aren't living there. In Invisible Cities – a reference to the book Le città invisibili (1972) by Italo Calvino (1923-1985) – Jonas Dahlberg shows these cities. This work consists of wallpaper featuring 14,000 names of cities, a publication, a series of slides, and a film in which the cities are stripped of their landmarks and have become a uniform city.
His other work in this exhibition, Safe Zones no. 11, was made especially by Jonas Dahlberg for Museum De Paviljoens and is part of De Collectie Almere. Safety in public spaces and surveillance as a tool to limit the feeling of insecurity are current topics in the media and in society. With Safe Zones, Jonas Dahlberg makes tangible what a camera can mean for the perception of a space. Monitors show the museum's rest rooms; they seem to be under continuous surveillance. Even on the toilet, you can't seem to escape the eye of the camera. Apart from surveillance and seen and be seen, architecture and the representation of reality in a model play a part in this work as well.
Annick Kleizen
1. Göran Dahlberg & Jonas Dahlberg, Invisible Cities, FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon 2005. Also see: publications.
Jonas Dahlberg, Invisible Cities and Safe Zones no.11
Jonas Dahlberg, 1970, Uddevalla, Sweden
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