Human Encounters - Futuro Berg on Capturing Instant Moments in The Malmö Library

Futuro Berg photographs human interaction within the Malmö library using the Lomo´Instant Wide. His project entitled Humans of Stadsbiblioteket, is about how people see, use and experience Stadsbiblioteket in Malmö as a public space and meeting point. The project is the first of its kind to document the Malmö library.

Futuro Berg is a photographer and filmmaker from Chile-based in Malmö, Sweden. For the last months, he has been working on a project, Humans of Stadsbiblioteket; Konsten att mötast(The Art of Meeting). The project was on display for a month in Malmö, December 2018. Humans of Stadsbiblioteket is about how people see, use and experience Stadsbiblioteket as a public space and meeting point where he emphasizes on the human interaction and uses photography to capture the Malmö Library from the visitors perspective.

Futuro Berg explains that the main aim behind the project was not meant to be a photo exhibition per se, and neither an art project for the sake of art itself. But instead it meant to provoke people by asking questions about the space itself, the use of it, and most importantly it was meant to be an opportunity to meet people, to create a moment of intimacy and openness that is not often created in the Swedish context.

“You should not be afraid. It's just to go out and move yourself. Or take a bike and cycle. Just do not be seated at home. But that's probably easily happening with computers and
everything. That you do not need to go anywhere. Just take your little backpack and then walk into a cafe, people always come. I am always looking for people who have an analog camera or with a Kafka book. Then "pop" you have two hours of interesting conversation" - Mats from Sweden

He says that things in the political spectrum of Sweden are changing fast and with them, social policies are also changing for better or worse. For him, the expectations of the future and the present of Malmö was one of the most relevant topics he brought up during this process.

“Konsten att Mötast” is a project where he documents and talks with people from all over the world about the art of meeting. Futuro Berg wanted a playful approach to this project and decided to use the Lomo´Instant Wide to accomplish this and the result was an exhibition he combined with enlarged Instant photos and extracts from the interviews with the different people he got in touch with.

“In other libraries, it may be difficult to find books with the mother tongue. Books that are in Somali can be hard to find. But here you can find it. There are also books in grammar that is translated into Somali. It is Swedish and also Somali. And here you can find it, that's nice.” - Aisha from Somalia

Humans of Stadsbiblioteket is part of a collaboration presented by Streetcorner, an urban art association based in Malmö. During the course of three weeks, the artist visited the library and conducted interviews with the assistance of Rikard Johansson from Streetcorner.

".. I made a library card in this library, one year ago, but I was just visiting Sweden, and I could make a card, and I could borrow books, its so amazing isn't it? Because how can
they trust me? I can bring the books to Japan, and I don't bring back, how can we borrow a book from here? (laughs) I mean of course they can contact me, but how can they trust me?" - Risa from Japan

During this experience, they were able to get to know a side of the library that the usual visitors might not know. They were also able to have the time to observe and understand a little bit closer what it means for a city to have such a quality space of free access for all citizens of Malmö.

Check out more of Futuro´s Berg work on his website

written by Ida Tangeraas on 2019-03-07 #gear #culture #places