The Hamrin Foundation, which has distributed more than SEK 350 million to individuals, research groups, institutions and projects since 1985, has chosen to provide financial support for research infrastructure linked to the Of Public Interest (OPI) platform.
The platform, founded and led by KKH professor and visual artist Jonas Dahlberg, aims to initiate and realize projects grounded in artistic values within our living environment.
Lovisa Hamrin, chair of the Hamrin Foundation, says that the support is the beginning of something that has the potential to grow beyond what we see and know today.
– Finding projects where shared purpose, person and ongoing dialogue results in energy and curiosity is what we strive for, and this fits very well! Our last project with Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm took place in Ljungby, now we go for Gröndal. And who knows, maybe those places will meet?
The work is carried out at OPI Lab, a research environment and advanced course at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Here, methodologies are developed to connect and sustain continuous dialogue between education, experimental artistic research, industry, city developers, and publics.
Of Public Interest (OPI) is located in a storefront in the residential area of Gröndal in Stockholm. This neighborhood, together with an ongoing zoning plan aimed at transforming the nearby industrial waterfront into housing, forms the context in which the research is developed.
Jonas Dahlberg:
– The storefront in which we operate is absolutely essentialal, and functions as a form of spatial publication — a public(loc)ation — where multifaceted artistic languages are tested, developed, and experimented with through 1:1 scale prototyping. The collaboration with the Hamrin Foundation gives us fantastic opportunities to develop and continue our research.
– Through spatial, architectural, sculptural and conceptual interventions, performative interactions and programmed public events, the neighbourhood itself becomes our studio space. This locality and its proximity to different publics form a foundation for developing methodologies and projects in relation to place — approaches applicable to future projects beyond this specific location.
Jonas Dahlberg states that Of Public Interestis not a specific agenda, but rather the insistence that our living environments are places where a polyphony of voices, and often conflicting interests, should be able to co-exist.
– Today, as the conditions that shape how we live together rapidly shift and polarization deepens, so do attempts to direct, censor, and contain what can be said or done.
Read more here.
Read more about Of Public Interest (OPI) here.
