Skulle motstånd fortfarande kunna uppstå här? (2025)

Commissioned by Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden. Curated by Anca Rujoiu.

Skulle motstånd fortfarande kunna uppstå här? [Would resistance still be possible here?] was a performative collective walk through central Umeå. Developed in connection with the exhibition The View from Above, by artist Aseel AlYaqoub in Bildmuseet, the work moved through a series of sites where heritage, public space, surveillance, hospitality and political imagination could be approached through shared movement, attention and small actions.

Participants gathered as temporary co-readers of the city. The route moved between eight planned stops, including a heritage-protected home, public artworks, protected buildings, a CCTV camera, Rådhustorget and Renmarkstorget. At each location, short introductions, questions, gestures, periods of silence and timed walks invited participants to notice what the city makes visible, protects, celebrates, forgets or controls.

The score did not ask participants to arrive at a common interpretation. Instead, it created a structure through which different experiences of the city could be brought into relation. Participants introduced themselves to someone they did not know, touched a protected façade, posed together in view of a police surveillance camera, walked silently through the square, paused in prayer, and reflected together on what should be remembered, resisted or transformed.

Walking was approached here both as a way of moving through the city and a method for reading it. The work considered how monuments, architecture, public artworks, commercial spaces and systems of surveillance shape civic experience: who feels welcome, who is visible, who adjusts their behaviour, and whose memories become part of the public image of a place.

The title poses a question rather than a conclusion. It invites participants to consider whether resistance remains possible in spaces shaped by heritage, regulation, visibility and everyday routines. It asks: what forms such resistance might take: collective attention, hesitation, conversation, care, refusal, imagination, or simply moving differently together?