Public Enquiries : Park Lek and the Scandinavian Social Turn

Public Enquiries is the culmination of a multidisciplinary research project that operated through a series of public hearings in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Gothenburg (2015-2016). The hearings focused on Kerstin Bergendal’s Park Lek (2010-2014), which was described at the time as “a utopian art project and a concrete intervention in the urban planning process”.
Public Enquiries maps how Bergendal’s extraordinary art project contested and ultimately transformed the local government processes used to shape a segregated urban area of Stockholm. Though Park Lek is primarily examined within the context of Scandinavian society, the writers additionally go on to outline how the project can function as a blueprint for how artistic practice can act as an agent in reconstructing local democracy worldwide, making Public Enquiries a must-read for anyone with an interest in the current state of socially engaged art practice anywhere.
This title is co-published with Valand Academy, a school for film, photography, literary composition and fine art at the University of Gothenburg in Gothenburg, Sweden