In connection with Julstaden Göteborg 2013 (the City of Gothenburg's official Christmas celebrations), Creativity Unlimited produced an installation in the cityscape based on Canadian artist Max Streicher's famous inflatables – in this case, suspended inflatable shapes and figures that hover in the air above people in streets and open spaces. Using Streicher's ideas, CU in cooperation with the artist Pecka Söderberg and students at Chalmers University of Technology, created a number of inflatable clouds that were suspended between the roof tops in Harry Hjörnes plats in the heart of historic Gothenburg. During a few weeks before Christmas, they hung there, unconcered about the busy Christmas shoppers below.
The purpose of the installation was to give the cityscape a unique aesthetic form and feel, while also raising questions about the cityscape itself. Clouds aimed at visualising the interstitial space between bulidings and other structures that is often forgotten in the day to day discussions about urban design. The clouds with which we, for a short moment, filled a small part of the cityscape, depended on these empty spaces – the empty spaces that make room for thought and creativity. Similar empty spaces occur in all forms of art: between the various objects of a picture, you find the intermediate space; in books and poems, much is said between the lines; silence gives life to music. The interstitial space is where people can meet, talk to each other, and make new aquaintances as well as experiences. It is where the unexpected can happen. The space beween buildings and structures is what gives life to a city. Clouds created a space for tranquillity and contemplation during what is arguably the most hectic, and possibly stressful, time of the year. Furthermore, they moved heaven a bit closer to earth. Or was it the other way around?
Clouds was produced in cooperation with:
Chalmers University of Technology Pecka Söderberg Göteborg & Co
