Photo: Mikael Olsson

The Board Room project was initiated to aesthetically delve into the history of the Stockholm School of Economics. The Board Room, perhaps more than any other space in the school, signifies the intersection between past traditions and present value systems and was therefore the perfect place to start. The approach used was to, with deep respect for the past, put this symbolically charged space in a historical perspective. The idea was to pay tribute to the room's original aesthetic and symbolic qualities, and meanwhile to shed light on the past through the lenses of today. Thereby, the hope was that a more multi-facetted understanding of today's society could arise.

Two contemporary artworks have thus been installed in the room: Maria Friberg's Somewhere else and Bella Rune's Konsekvensanalys. Somewehere else (2016) is a photographic work, site-specific to the measurements. It is a significant milestone in the artist’s works, and was at the fore­front of rethinking gender and power structures in both society at large and in the world of business. Friberg's portraits of men in suits break with norms for how men are usually depicted and suggests a vulnerability seldom otherwise ascribed to powerful men.

The digital work Konsekvensanalys for the Board Room of the Stockholm School of Economics by Bella Rune is an immer­sive artwork that uses augmented reality technology. It treats the current environment as a canvas to integrate new, virtual objects that interact with the past, the present and the future. Augmented reality became a household tech­nology in the summer of 2016 when Niantic and Nintendo released the mobile game Pokemon Go, which created a global phenomenon that transcended age, gender and cul­ture. The artwork by Bella Rune similarly works with any mobile device onto which an app can be downloaded for free.

Article about the Board Room Project in Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish): Manspread och genusfrågor i Handels konstsatsning