Bench Press

As debate swirled around the rights and wrongs of the proposal to remove a memorial bench in Oslo that honoured 18th century Swedish Botanist and alleged racist Carl von Linné aka Carl Linnaeus(1707-1778), it struck me just how significant this form of public recognition really was. Who has the right and the power to erect these benches and why. On whose behalf are we erecting “racist benches”, as it became known? Eventually the case was settled by Oslo city council adding an extended text on why Linné’s studies and categorisations were problematic. As public sculptures and monuments across the USA came under scrutiny after the horrors of the George Floyd case, well known municiple monuments across Europe honouring slave traders, also rightly came under attack. Most famously with the Edward Colston statue in Bristol. In Norway, we had the humble public memorial bench.

To supplement my arguments on digital forums to throw them in the sea, I decided to set out and create my own benches IRL.

Works and phrases in the form of traditional brass plaques were affixed to public benches throughout the city to celebrate the life and works of artists, authors, movements and activists including Black Lives Matter, Maya Angelou, Malcolm X, Albert Camus, Guy Debord and the Situationist movement alongside Norwegian authors Jens Bjørneboe and Alexander Kielland. Most of which remain in situ to this day.