Conversation as Public Decoration

For the dining hall of Tullingeberg School, the artist Jens Evaldsson created a relational work together with the school's pupils and staff. The work is about creating a conversation as public art — an artwork for pupils, by pupils, that illuminates human relationships and puts people at the centre. The work's first phase consisted of a four-part workshop on the theme "Food, health and art", using clay animation and photography. The pupils Emma, Albin, Felicia, Dalia, Carolina and Einar came from different year groups so they could meet across class boundaries and practise working together in a group. The permanent visible part of the work consists of 15 framed and glazed images edited on the computer according to the children's wishes. The frames hang where the children have the best chance to discuss them — at popular tables and at child height. The children made the clay figures, photographed backgrounds and figures, and decided the look of the images in digitally assembled collages. The invisible part of the work comes into being when the children interact with the images, and through the conversations and stories that can arise in and around the work over the years. What is said, and how, is hard to predict, but the work's ambition is to activate the children and inspire conversation and free creative thinking. A computer, cameras and advanced software for animation and digital image editing have been handed over to the school for creative activity. The idea is that the school itself can make new images and films with the children and update the visible part of the work in the dining hall — with other children, to create new conversations.