The Norwegian state is responsible for the closure of a large number of cultural institutions in Oslo. Treated like disposable waste, their buildings have been discarded following the Fjord City redevelopment project and remain empty ever since. No plans for their re-use have been developed, and none are foreseeable in the near future. Have they simply become too specific, not open enough, too difficult to translate and consume, for them to keep pace with reality? Are they doomed to become hollow monuments, sculptural and historicized, and yet mute in the sense that they no longer speak to the general public? Could the unsustainable nature of this situation be turned into an act of institutional critique?
TMIS is not yet an answer to these questions, but a counterpoint to that context; an unsolicited stealth architecture project that will move across these empty museums and sporadically activate parts of them through a wide range of different actions. No budget, no deadline. The medium is the message.
As time goes by the project will not grow so much as dissolve or self-destruct. We do not believe that we are entitled to provide a definitive solution - but rather aim at laying the first strategic spark for a process that is to develop. TMIS functions in that sense like a city-wide and open-ended question, a shapeshifting apparatus to be taken advantage of. Some have called it an off-space, but we would like to call it an off-institution.
Full documentation, research and proposal is available at: tmis.no
