Sweden | Outsider

As creators, Martinka Bobrikova and Oscar de Carmen saw this event as a unique opportunity to develop a piece that explored the concept of Outsider in relation to urban transformation processes. The Triennale took place in an English park in the Hyllie district, an area rapidly growing due to the real estate boom driven by speculation and gentrification. Observing this environment, we understood that the landscape itself provided an ideal discursive framework to investigate the tensions between natural space, urban peripheries, and the construction of new territories.

The work was structured through the creation of a sculptural installation and a performative action. In this way, the work was composed of two components that coexisted as layers within the same space. First, we created a sculptural installation that functioned as a base camp, a refuge from which to observe the park and its dynamics. This camp was strategically located at the top of one of the park’s most prominent hills, allowing the two structures of the work to become an observatory from which to contemplate the environment.

The camp, constructed with discarded materials found in the park, was composed of two overlapping spaces. The main structure, shaped like a tipi, served as a meeting point where visitors could gather, light a fire, and cook. Inside it, a conventional tent, equipped with mats and sleeping bags, evoked the idea of temporary housing and survival. In this way, the installation highlighted the contrast between the romanticized concept of the natural landscape and the realities of urban peripheries. Hyllie, located on the outskirts of Malmö, became the central stage and theme of the work, revealing the tension between nature as an abstract ideal and its transformation into a commodified territory.

The second component of the work was a performative action that emerged from the very process of building the camp. While gathering materials in the park, we found two objects that defined the intervention: a flag and a flagpole.

The flag, belonging to the construction companies operating in the area, was abandoned, dirty, and deteriorated, but still retained part of its logo, revealing its origin. We decided to intervene with black adhesive tape, creating the word Outsider on it. Shortly after, at the other end of the park, we found an unused flagpole, clearly part of the same signage infrastructure used by the developers. Looking at the landscape, we could see other identical flagpoles in the distance, flying flags with the logos of the companies marking the land for new developments.

This discovery led us to conceive a performative action at the base camp: we tied the found flag to the flagpole and, using our own bodies, we erected the structure vertically, keeping it upright for several minutes. With this symbolic gesture, we made the first marking on a public territory that did not belong to any real estate corporation. The action not only signaled the intervention space but also posed a reflection on the appropriation of land and resistance to urbanization dynamics and exclusion.

In this way, Outsider presented itself as a critical intervention addressing the transformations of the urban landscape and the policies of space occupation, inviting reflection on the relationships between community, territory, and belonging.