Non-site welfare landscapes on-site: curated displays of transformed social housing estates

Abstract

ABSTRACT Exhibitions are anything but a neutral; they may affect the ‘reality’ they mirror. As such the exhibition is an ongoing, open product of research that is always researching research itself, but that is also affected by and affecting politicised agendas. This article focus on the large open spaces—the welfare landscapes—of the Danish 1970s social housing estate, Gellerup and Toveshøj, currently subject to ‘radical’ transformation and displayed in its most crucial location, i.e. the site itself. I reflect on the culture of display when an exhibition is interacting with what it displays providing a theoretical framework drawing on concepts such as Smithson’s site/non-site, the Gesamtkunstwerk—played out in a neoliberal context—and international fairs like the IBA. Moreover, the built and displayed transformations spur reflections on the sliding changes of the welfare concept itself and how that is mirrored in the conducts and ethics of display.