(ladies’ paradise) (damernas paradis)

Sweden. Maria Andersson and Victoria Brännström.

This collaborative work is a fragmented narrative sound installation about movements through public space and different prerequisites for these movements.

The installation was made out of six different narrative sounds and was placed in the entrance of Gallerian, a shopping centre in Stockholm, and the adjacent street, Malmskillnadsgatan, nowadays mainly associated with prostitution. They all related to the site in present and past and framed aspects of moving through these spaces. They were put together as an audio-guided walk, and the listener-/viewer’s steps and movements became part of the experience.

Some of the sounds are remakes: a speech of Selma Lagerlöf from 1938, a reading of Emile Zola’s book The Ladies’ Paradise and a sound version of the street performance, Kvinnan, staden och natten, by Sara Nilsson. The sounds tell the story of someone who walks the street and refuses to let herself be restrained.

(ladies’ paradise) reflects on accessibility, limit-ations and gendered spaces in our contemporary society as well as in the past.