Is it possible to make an ecosystem visible to itself and its inhabitants? Are we survivors or fossils in the journey of tomorrow?

The bronze statue in the middle of kungsträdgården depicts Karl XIII in his royal dress, with pantaloons, tights, and a thigh-length coat buttoned all the way down. You can see these kinds of statues all over Sweden. Statues of men in bronze on their high plinths, as monuments of war, blood and death. If we look for figurative public artworks in our cities today, they almost always depict men and are made by men. But instead of an attempt to correct the gender gap in historic sculptures the approach here is to turn our focus from an outdated way of binary thinking to a rhizomatic perspective linked to issues of “time”. And thus raise the question: Is it possible to make an ecosystem visible to itself and its inhabitants by literally revealing the complexity of time and transformation?

This bronze statue has been standing there for so long that it might have lost its meaning. How would it be if we made it come alive again by adding a “bio-systems'' to it? Will people start to see it again when it slowly, slowly, changes its character? And could we through this system move the sculpture in time?

If we compose a bed for a new beginning and let nature be the instigator of an unpredictable transformation, would this sculpture be reactivated and start to speak with us now? The status quo is not to overthrow but to overgrow.

My proposition is to cultivate a bio-system of limewater filled with bacterias and spores of algae, moss, fungi and grass on top of the statue of Karl XIII in Kungsträdgården. This will be the product of a "bacterial flow” and a built-in watering system of oozing drops that flow down the statue. Like ancient fountains in Rome where, for millennia, limewater has sculpted fascinating coatings and organisms. To create this setup, the bio-system will be integrated, seeds will be planted. Nature will then decide the outcome. The shape will change uncontrollably during time and by the environmental and atmospheric impact.

Everyone has a right to public spaces, this is where people meet and where you go to get in contact with the unexpected. Mosses, fungi, insects and other small plants are frequent colonisers of any new territory, including human-built structures. While ecology exists within a city, large parts of these ecosystems and our interdependency with these microorganisms; how they clean our close environment and us over time, remain unnoticed to the general public.

Some call this “biodiversity blindness”.  While biodiversity may impact people’s attitudes subconsciously, the sad fact is that most folks don’t know much about the other organisms with whom they share their cities. To a lot of eyes, vegetation is just an undifferentiated mass of green and all those critters with six legs are just anonymous pests.

Bronze as a material together with polymers is the few materials that lasts as long as we have an earth left. The choice of materials for a public sculpture, a material that endure forever or not, can thus subconsciously influence how we relate to each other in agreement like ethnicity and gender inequality. May the choice of material then also affect people's relationship with nature in a long-term perspective?

Kungsträdgården is a site where many people pass daily, and usually they may not reflect on their surroundings. But one day they may look up and discover that the statue of the king has been transformed. This work intends to lift up a fragment of the urban ecosystem to make a shift in time and history visible. The king's statue will remain protected, as a layer in human history, embedded under a constantly shapeshifting form.

 Another Nature means a new way of perceiving what is natural. In other words a new norm or a new topology for a given site condition.

Public proposition by Tove Kjellmark, Spring 2020.

“Negotiating artistic values – Art and Architecture in the Public Sphere”, The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.