Martin Karlsson: Old Stockholm

23 February–9 April 2006

Martin Karlsson’s exhibition is based upon pictures from the Stadsmuseum archive that show ‘Old Stockholm’: a part of the ‘Art and Industry Exposition in Stockholm 1897’. ‘Old Stockholm’ was an interpretive reconstruction of the, 16th century capital, the town of the Vasa Kings, where period buildings were constructed and complemented with period-costumed actors and medieval menus in the restaurants. Paradoxically, the medieval surroundings also provided the backdrop for a series of technological innovations. From the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images, the artist has retrieved a couple of the very first moving images to be made in Sweden, a consequence of the Lumières brothers’ visit to the Stockholm Exposition. The vintage material in the exhibition is set against contemporary documentation from ‘Stockholmsfänikan’, a historical re-enactment society that brings to life the same historical period as portrayed in ‘Old Stockholm’.

Thursday, 2 March 5-7pm
‘Walking in the past’ – History as a medium at the turn of two centuries.
Lotten Gustafsson Reinius, Ethnological Institute at Stockholm University, in conversation with Pelle Snickars, Head of Research at the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images. In Swedish.

This exhibition is shown in collaboration with the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images.
Our sincere thanks go to ‘Stockholmsfänikan’.