Höller/Bäckström’s proposal as a questioning of the form of the exhibition as such. The day per day changing presentation puts the viewer’s expectation to be able to see a whole exhibition at once on hold. Furthermore with their concept a general denial of the necessity or of the surplus of the cognition of an exhibition was suggested. The final presentation in Venice seemed to confirm this. Of the two works/sets presented Faldbakken’s was a rather low-key presentation of a film shown on a monitor plus his new book piled up for the visitors to take home. A life sync-sound transmission from the outside of the pavilion to its inside by Höller and Bäckström left the buildings’ space completely empty. Whatever one the visitor finds on a day, the other set will merely exist as a rumor. This abstinence makes the overall exhibition concept itself with its doubting tenor the most dominant feature of the pavilion’s display. Another major aspect of the display is the dismantling of the modern architecture of the Nordic pavilion: Höller and Bäckström had its glass-walls taken out altogether and thus converted the idea of transparency of the modern concrete-and-glass-construction by Sverre Fehn by literally opening it up to the outside.

Laura Horelli’s exit out of this year’s Nordic pavilion exhibition was based on the curator’s immediate acceptance of the dominating exhibition concept. First of all Bäckström’s and Höller‘s concept completely denies the necessity of a group show. Ultimately Horelli considered this concept and above all the performance of the pavilion’s curator as patronizing with regard to the individual projects of the artists invited. In her opinion any project one might realize in the pavilion as conceptualized by Bäckström/Höller would be perceived as a stage prop, namely a piece in a show by Bäckström/Höller.

Picking up this background to Horelli’s exit out of this year’s Nordic pavilion Deborah Ligorio proposed with “Roof Passage” an architectural solution for Horelli’s reintegration into the pavilion exhibition.

Ligorio’s proposal is part of the continuous project Custom Habitat which was started by Ligorio in 2000. The Nordic pavilion as drafted by Ligorio provides - not without humor - an escape route out of the pavilion in form of a rope-ladder which leads up to the pavilions roof along the prominent trees, those trademark of the Nordic pavilion which grow from the pavilions’ bottom through a whole in its roof into the sky. The rope-ladder would lead the visitor up to the outside or rather to the open space on the concrete roof of the modernist building which is now, as indicated in Ligorio’s drawing, an area claimed for the factually in Venice not present piece by Laura Horelli. Ligorio situates Horelli’s space on the outside of the pavilion and by this on the outside of Backström‘s/Höller’s stage while at the same time leaving a trace in the inside space, the rope-ladder, which merely indicates the possibility of another space, connected to but not integrated in the exhibition. Furthermore Ligorio re-introduces the idea of a group show by insisting on its simultaneity. Last but not least, by mirroring the open hall with the outside above the roof of the pavilion, Ligorio challenges Bäckström/Höller’s concept of opening up the transparent architecture literally and turning it into something similar to a passage or an open station hall: By pointing out the roof and its hole Ligorio mockingly recodes the area downstairs as an inside-space.