Today, as the conditions that shape how we live together rapidly shift, so do the frameworks within which artistic expression can exist. Such frameworks are determined based on dialogues, actions and negotiations that inform the possibilities and limits of art, reflecting back on any given society – shaping it and its futures. CounterspacesOPI’s mission is to construct methods and projects and places within our shared living environment, which can act as counterspaces. Informed by particular artistic values, where imagination meets critical thought and active social involvement, OPI seeks to engage the ways in which we build and inhabit as a matter Of Public Interest. Double agentsOPI takes its point of departure in a collaborative experimentation across art, architecture, and beyond, exploring ways to engage with our living environment through a camouflaging practice – implementing projects that act as spatial double agents. Public(loc)ationOur headquarters resides in a storefront in Gröndal, Stockholm, an area undergoing significant transformation over the coming decade. The storefront is both a location and a form of spatial publication, a public(loc)ation. This is where we test, develop, and experiment by sketching and prototyping at a 1:1 scale in our living environment. The neighborhood itself becomes our atelier and its publics, contexts, and actors our conversation partners.
This ongoing dialogue with the area seeks to build long-term trust, knowledge, and host the disagreements that are a part of public life and essential to create experimental projects towards our shared living environment. Three supporting entitiesImportantly, we see this methodology as a foundation for shaping future projects, methods, and practices elsewhere - beyond our particular location. To facilitate this, OPI comprises three co-existing entities that structurally support and continually inform each other:
