Gothenburg is building a new railway, the Västlänken, which will run under the city.

Three new stations are to be built.

In 2017, the Swedish Transport Administration and the Norwegian Art Council announced a competition to choose art that will decorate the stations.

At Korsvägen station, the artist duo Goldin and Senneby's work "Evig anställning" won.

By employing a person for life, whose sole job would be to stamp in and out, the work would portray that return on capital is more profitable than working.

But the work encountered patrol.

The Swedish Transport Administration canceled the collaboration at the beginning of 2022 and pointed out that the financing idea contradicted a section in the capital supply regulation.

Now the artist duo is demanding both the Swedish Transport Administration and the Norwegian Arts Council of just over two million kroner in compensation.

- We believe that the Swedish Transport Administration has backed out of the agreement without reason.

The artists have been promised compensation for doing this, and they have done the work according to the contract.

But now that the Swedish Transport Administration cancels the contract without reason, they have to replace the artists, says the artists' lawyer Jens Tillqvist.

Considering lawsuit

The idea with the work was to invest the artwork's budget in the stock market and that the return would pay the permanent employee's salary.

The Swedish Transport Administration claims that the financing idea is contrary to a section in the capital supply regulation which states that state money may not be invested on the stock exchange.

- This is directly incorrect.

This is about a work of art, in the same way that you can use government funds to buy a sculpture or a painting, says Jens Tillqvist.

Now the art duo is considering suing the Swedish Transport Administration for illegally canceling the contract.

- We obviously have a different interpretation of the paragraph and our view is that we do not have the opportunity to implement the artwork, says Joakim Jonsson, technology and environmental manager for Västlänken.

The Norwegian Arts Council does not want to comment on an ongoing case, but points out that their principled position is that artists should always be compensated for their work.

To Göteborgs-Posten, the Swedish Transport Agency and the State Council for the Arts comment that there has been no guarantee that the proposal would be realized in the form of a work of art.