{"id":24451,"date":"2022-09-06T12:49:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T11:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonnierskonsthall.se\/?post_type=bonnier_exhibition&p=24451"},"modified":"2026-03-07T17:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T16:09:09","slug":"24451-2","status":"publish","type":"bonnier_exhibition","link":"https:\/\/bonnierskonsthall.se\/en\/utstallning\/cooking-sections-undamming-rivers\/24451-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Undamming Rivers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Undamming Rivers<\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Bonniers Konsthall is proud to present the newly produced installation Undamming Rivers<\/I> (2022), that provides the name for the exhibition. The work is Cooking Sections\u2019 call for action, a process of infrastructural removal that provides the name for this exhibition. Relating to the 50th anniversary of the landmark UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, this new piece delivers a proposition for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Hydropower dams are structures seen as a paradigm of modernity that, despite their aspiration to produce \u2018clean energy\u2019, needs to be reconsidered. Thousands of such concrete barriers are located all over Sweden but especially in S\u00e1pmi. And yet, most of the power produced is fed to the more densely populated areas in the south of the country. Many dams are nonetheless redundant, obsolete or produce very little electricity. Despite ongoing efforts by local residents and associations to unbuild them, they still have a harmful impact on human livelihoods and river ecologies. <\/span><\/p>\n

Following a long research process and a series of interviews with different stakeholders in Sweden and abroad, Undamming Rivers <\/i>is a vision to remove unnecessary barriers to enable salmon to fulfil their life cycle by swimming upstream. The piece uses the exhibition to amplify calls for removing such obstacles, or speed up ongoing legal efforts and campaigns to dismantle them. Departing from the recent consent to remove Hedn\u00e4s dam, depicted on the fa\u00e7ade of Bonniers Konsthall, the installation consists of a stylised map of Sweden\u2019s salmon rivers that are obstructed by concrete hydro-dams. <\/span><\/p>\n

The accompanying collages depict a series of cut-out dams that could be removed in what Cooking Sections refer to as a proposal for a major land-art project in the climate crisis. If land-art historically made additions to landscapes to highlight the temporalities between humans and the environment, Undamming Rivers <\/i>focuses on the potential of removing redundant infrastructure from the face of the Earth. In a time when dependencies on fossil fuels are under fire and the many cracks of nuclear energy are ignored, it pushes us to think critically about how \u2018renewable\u2019 our renewable future should be. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hydropower dams featured in the installation<\/h5>\n