Tullkomplexet – Artistic Readings of Place through Space, Body, and Moving Image
Tullkomplexet is an artist-driven collective formed by Felice Hapetzeder, Marit Lindberg, and Johan Suneson, who explore the city through artistic methods, site-related installations, and participatory processes. In the project Tullkomplexet/Greenroom/Sorgenfri, presented at Molekyl Gallery in Malmö in autumn 2024, the Sorgenfri neighbourhood was activated as a site through a total environment, where filmic sensing—a method used in urban investigations by, among others, Rem Koolhaas (2004)—served as a central working approach.
In this context, filmic sensing is not merely about documentation, but about experiencing, sensing, and analysing place through moving images, sound, and montage. The city is not depicted as an object to be observed from a distance, but as something we inhabit—something that is felt, heard, breathed, and continuously changed. The entire exhibition became a bodily and filmic extension of Sorgenfri, weaving together local narratives with artistic interpretations and architectural fragments.
The exhibition was constructed around a spatial relief covered in textile, in which collages of photographs from Sorgenfri were combined with sculptural and performative elements. Through a hyper-local TV station, filmed stories, urban imagery, and close-up performance, the project offered a layered reading of place—an example of what in urban humanities is described as thick mapping or thick description (Geertz, 1973): a deep, situated, and affective investigation into how place is shaped through time, memory, and human presence.
The project also engaged Ida Sandström, a researcher in urban planning, and Anna Brag, an artist and researcher, whose collaboration with the participating artists served to deepen the inquiry into the social, historical, and spatial intricacies of the Sorgenfri area. Their insights provided a critical layer to the work, enriching the artistic interpretations with research-based perspectives that anchored the project more firmly within both academic and local contexts.
In the performance segment, the artists physically interacted with the work by entering three body-shaped, drop-like cavities embedded in the relief. Felice Hapetzeder described the sensation of, in that moment, being enveloped by the neighbourhood—a physical and emotional experience that reflects the project’s core idea: to become one with the place, to read it from within. This bodily and visual encounter with the wall thus became both a tool for understanding and a poetic act of belonging.
The music, composed by Sebastian Persson and Christoffer Modig, played a vital role in the performance experience and acted as a sonic extension of the relief’s spatiality. Their soundscape not only amplified the movement of bodies in the space but also evoked an atmosphere in which Sorgenfri’s layers of memory, architecture, and voices could emerge in a new sensory form.
Tullkomplexet’s work demonstrates how artistic methods can deepen our understanding of urban environments beyond what is measurable, and how art can serve as a critical practice to reveal spatial, social, and historical tensions.
Tullkomplexet/Greenroom/Sorgenfri is a sub-project within the larger initiative The Cave, the TV-Studio, and the Invisible Monuments.
- Kajsa Lindskog documented the performance.
- The following individuals appear in the video, in order of appearance:
- Anna Brag, artist and researcher
- Ida Sandström, architect, researcher, and lecturer at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Lund University
- Silvia Norberg, local resident
- Laura de Jong, local resident
- Petter Kreuger, local resident
- Dan Schyman, local resident
- Sebastian Persson, musician
- Christoffer Modig, musician