Michael Johansson’s Give and Take brings together fragments of Tromsø’s public space, while reconnecting the city’s waterfront with a longer history of artistic experimentation and urban planning.
By Fabio Lanna
Nordrom Kunst
Tromsø, August 2026
Walking along Tromsø’s waterfront in the days before 15 August, something unusual begins to appear among the familiar elements of the city.
Sections of public benches have been marked with colour. Elsewhere, a bench has been transformed almost completely in pink. Along the harbour, pieces of street furniture that would normally disappear into the everyday landscape suddenly become conspicuous.
These interventions are part of Give and Take, a new permanent public artwork by Swedish artist Michael Johansson on Tromsø’s waterfront.
The work is being installed ahead of its public opening on 15 August 2026. Communication from Tromsø kommunes kunstsamling and NÅ! Art and Public Space Tromsø describes one of its central elements as the “Hybridbenken”, a bench assembled from parts of different public benches found along the quay. (Source: Tromsø kommunes kunstsamling / NÅ! Art and Public Space Tromsø, 2026 project communication.)
The municipal art collection posed a question alongside images of the work taking shape: could a bench assembled from fragments of several others somehow sum up Tromsø’s development?
It is a question that becomes particularly relevant when the history of the waterfront itself is considered.
A waterfront already under transformation
Give and Take does not appear in an untouched urban landscape.
For years, Tromsø’s relationship with its waterfront has been the subject of planning, artistic intervention and public discussion.
KORO documents the beginning of a collaboration between Tromsø kommune, KORO and the Berlin based architecture collective raumlaborberlin through the urban space festival Ka no? in September 2017. The festival explored public spaces in the northern part of the city through art and temporary interventions. (Source: KORO, Sjøfronten i Tromsø.)
In February 2018, that relationship developed into a five year agreement. According to KORO, the wider strategy was connected to Tromsø’s city centre planning and to an ambition to turn the city towards the water, considering the waterfront from Hansjordnesbukta in the north to Hålogaland Teater in the south.
What makes this history particularly relevant to Johansson’s new work is a small entry in KORO’s project chronology.
In August 2019, the waterfront programme included test benches and colour markings along the quay promenade. (Source: KORO, Sjøfronten i Tromsø, project milestones.)
The bench, in other words, was already being used as an instrument through which the city could test how people encounter and occupy its waterfront.
From testing the city to Tromsø Sjøfrontlaboratorium
The experimentation continued.
In 2020, Tromsø Sjøfrontlaboratorium described itself as an art and urban space project organised by Tromsø kommune in collaboration with KORO and raumlaborberlin. (Source: Tromsø Sjøfrontlaboratorium, project documentation.)
Rather than separating artistic practice from urban planning, the project treated both the planning process and public space itself as contexts for artistic work. Three artist teams were commissioned to undertake projects during 2020: 70°N arkitektur with Berit Steenstrup, Statex collective, and Michael Johansson / Endboss /=+.
The laboratory investigated parts of the waterfront connected to areas including the proposed university museum site, Mack Øst and Sørsjetéen. Its activities included public events, discussions and experiments around how the future city might be imagined and negotiated.
Questions about public access to the water were central to those discussions. Documents produced through the laboratory repeatedly address the relationship between the city, the shoreline and the waterfront as a shared urban space. One of its 2020 texts notes that the quay promenade was described in the proposed city centre plan as one of Tromsø’s most important public spaces. (Source: Tromsø Sjøfrontlaboratorium, 2020 chronicles.)
Johansson’s presence in Tromsø in 2026 therefore continues an artistic relationship with this urban territory that can be documented at least as far back as the Sjøfrontlaboratorium.
Give and Take
Six years later, that relationship has resulted in a permanent work.
Johansson’s current professional record lists Give and Take, Tromsø Waterfront, Tromsø among his selected public installations.
In the days preceding the opening, the work is visible not as a single isolated object but through interventions distributed among existing elements of the waterfront.
The most explicit is the Hybridbenken.
According to the public communication accompanying its installation, the bench brings together components from different public benches along the quay. Existing urban furniture therefore becomes material for a new piece of public art. (Source: Tromsø kommunes kunstsamling / NÅ! Art and Public Space Tromsø, 2026 project communication.)
The gesture also connects the work to something that predates it. KORO’s documentation of test benches and colour markings on the promenade in 2019 establishes that benches have already played a role in the experimental development of this waterfront.
The relationship between those earlier experiments and Johansson’s present artwork should not be overstated. The available documentation does not establish that Give and Take directly derives from the 2019 test benches.
What it does establish is a continuity of context.
Public furniture, access to the waterfront, artistic experimentation and questions about how people occupy the city have repeatedly appeared within the development of Tromsø’s sjøfront.
A city assembled from its own fragments
There is an intriguing material fact at the centre of Give and Take: something already belonging to the city has been taken apart and recombined.
This is where documentation ends and another kind of reading can begin.
The following is an editorial reading by Nordrom Kunst, not a statement from the artist or from KORO. The Hybridbenken can be encountered simply as public furniture. It can also be seen against the history surrounding it: years of temporary experiments, urban planning, artistic interventions and discussions about how Tromsø should meet the water.
The question raised by Tromsø kommunes kunstsamling during the installation therefore remains open: can a bench assembled from different pieces become a summary of the development of Tromsø itself?
It is not necessary to answer it.
Perhaps the more interesting aspect of the work is that it places the question directly into everyday public space.
The artwork does not require entering a museum or gallery. It occupies the same waterfront where people walk to work, wait, meet, watch boats arrive, sit beside the harbour or move through the centre of Tromsø.
And people can sit on it.
The waterfront as a continuing project
Seen through the history documented by KORO and Tromsø Sjøfrontlaboratorium, the opening of Give and Take is less easily understood as the arrival of an isolated artwork.
The waterfront has been repeatedly tested as a place where art, planning and public life can meet.
Ka no? explored public space in 2017. A formal collaboration followed in 2018. Test benches and colour markings appeared along the promenade in 2019. Tromsø Sjøfrontlaboratorium brought artists into the planning discussion in 2020, including Johansson himself.
In 2026, parts of the city’s existing benches have become material for a permanent artwork.
What began as experiments in how the waterfront might be used has therefore left traces that can still be encountered in the city.
Some are embedded in planning documents and archives.
Others are now places where someone can simply sit.
Michael Johansson, Give and Take
Tromsø waterfront, Tromsø
Permanent public installation, 2026
Public opening: 15 August 2026, 14:00
Meeting point: Fangstmonumentet, Tromsø
(Source: Tromsø kommunes kunstsamling / NÅ! Art and Public Space Tromsø, 2026 project communication.)
Sources and further reading
- KORO — Sjøfronten i Tromsø (project documentation and chronology)
- Tromsø Sjøfrontlaboratorium (original project blog, 2020 chronicles)
- Tromsø kommune (official website)
- raumlaborberlin (official website)
- Michael Johansson — Bio & selected public installations (official artist website)
- Michael Johansson | Helsinki Contemporary (gallery artist documentation)
- Tromsø kommunes kunstsamling / NÅ! Art and Public Space Tromsø, 2026 project communication on Give and Take (no stable direct link available at time of publication)
Cover Image – Pink bench at Løkta, part of Michael Johansson’s GIVE AND TKE public art project, Tromsø, August 2026.
Photo: Fabio Lanna / Nordrom Kunst