the danger of a simple story — Mads Hvidkær Christoffersen

The Danger of a Simple Story ︎︎︎

Exhibition by Mads Christoffersen and Clara Diab. Umeå, 2024

We had just moved into the house on Lasarettbacken when we found our way down into the dark basement. It's large and cold, bearing the marks of its former belonging to the hospital. Here, we found mountains of abandoned items; from notebooks to municipal chairs. From forty bicycles to melted popsicles and an old piano. Together, we decided to "inherit" all the objects, which we later began to research in the radio programmes Kældersnack med Mads och Clara broadcasted on Umeå Studentradio in the autumn of 2023. This marked the beginning of the overarching project, which consists of a wide range of research displayed in an exhibition in the basement. Through an ongoing architectural archive, Mads Christoffersen (DK) have worked with the house's architectural history and proposed alternatives to its demolition. Clara Diab (SE) has worked on a poetry collection based on conversations with former residents – dating all the way back to the 1940s. The radio, the poems, the architectural archive, but above all, the performative and workshop-based exhibition, The Danger of a Simple Story, is exhibited in the basement until our house is eventually demolished.