Denmark Archives

Copenhagen and its ambitious art scene

There was no better way to end my summer than in Copenhagen, a vibrant city known for its creativity, design, boundary-pushing cuisine, and for being a polestar of progress when it comes to art. With only a recent history of art fairs, it is remarkable that the Scandinavian capital is now home to not just one, but two concurrent art fairs: CODE and CHART.

For its sixth edition, Chart (31st August – 2nd September, 2018 ) took place in the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, a beautiful baroque palace where 32 leading Nordic galleries eschewed the traditional booth structure, presenting their artworks in a museum setting, which turned out to be a more enjoyable viewing experience than at a typical art fair.

After a tour of the rooms, most of them shared by multiple galleries, I turned back to that of Galleria Heino, with new works by Finland´s acclaimed photographer and video artist, Elina Brotherus. With a bit of luck the artist was there and I had a chance to talk with her about the way she deals with her own biography by exploring the possibilities of photographic self-dramatization. Brotherus talked about the meaning of her One Minute Sculptures (2007) in collaboration with Erwin Wurm and how she was able to shoot her Nu montant un escalator (2017) nude video at 6 am, and in only two hours, on the escalator at the Centre Pompidou.

**Galleria Heino** at Chart Art Fair 2018, featuring Elina Brotherus , One Minute Sculpture with Erwin Wurm (Denk mit), 2018, From the series One Minute Sculptures; pigment ink print on Museo Silver Rag paper, mounted and framed 120 x 90 cm (image size) edition 6 + 2 AP, After Erwin Wurm, Organisation of Love, 2007.
Image rights: Elina Brotherus, Courtesy of Elina Brotherus and Galleria Heino.

Other noteworthy galleries were Andersen's presenting of works like Shiyuan Liu's Chair No. 10 (2018), Andersson/Sandström with large-scale works by Turner Prize-winning British sculptor, Tony Cragg, Norwegian gallery Golsa with Perla Piago's Excerpt from A, nr. 1 (2018) and Galleri Nicolai Wallner with Jose Dávila showing One in the other (2018).

**Galleri Golsa** at Chart Art Fair 2018, featuring Pearla Piago, Excerpt from A, nr. 1 (2018); Interactive sound textile, handwoven on Tc2 digital loom, cotton, steel wire, copper rod, oscillators and headset, 120 × 110 cm. Courtesy of Galleri Golsa.

**Andersen's** at Chart Art Fair 2018, featuring Shiyuan Liu, Chair No. 10, 2018, Courtesy Shiyuan Liu and Andersen’s, Copenhagen.

**Andersson/Sandström** at Chart Art Fair 2018, featuring Tony Cragg, Courtesy of the artist and Andersson/Sandström Gallery.

**Galleri Nicolai Wallner** at Chart Art Fair 2018, featuring Jose Dávila, One in the other (II) (2018) Plaster molds with artiicial gold leaf, 46 x 50 x 43 cm Unique; Photo credit: Anders Sune Berg, Courtesy of the artist and Galleri Nicolai Wallner.

Chart also organized a party for the local and international guests, which I decided to skip and attended instead a reception at the Copenhagen Contemporary, one of Denmark’s largest art spaces. The senior curator, Jannie Haagemann explained how this museum started as an ambitious experiment two years ago, and the work it took to finance a mainly privately funded institution with the support of the country’s largest foundations coupled with financial backing from the City of Copenhagen.

In the vast 7,000 m2 space, the museum allowed the Danish collective Superflex and American artist Doug Aitken to think big. The large-scale installation, probably familiar to those who visited the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall earlier this year, with tubular orange metal swings of One Two Three Swing! reappear in a new configuration, where the swings are designed for three people to swing together and experience the potential of collective energy.

CC1-8, SUPERFLEX. One Two Three Swing!
Installation shot, Copenhagen Contemporary 2018. Photo: Anders Sune Berg.

In the last room Doug Aitken’s 35-minute immersive video installation, SONG 1 incorporates video clips projected on a large circular screen. Actors and musicians, including Tilda Swinton, sing The Flamingo’s hit song from 1973, I Only Have Eyes for You . The audience can walk around or step into the spatial video work, while time and place take on another dimension within human experience.

CC9-17, Doug Aitken. SONG 1, Installation shot, Copenhagen Contemporary 2018. Photo: Anders Sune Berg.

I reserved my last day in Copenhagen for CODE (30th August – 2nd September, 2018), a new international art fair and the only one in Scandinavia that gathers upcoming and established galleries under one roof. Code also presents films, a series of talks Next Generation and ArtxBrand, as well as a performance program curated by Irene Campolmi.

In its third edition, Code welcomed 78 galleries from over twenty countries across five continents. I could see a balanced selection of galleries, from renowned ones to emerging or very young ones participating for the first time, such as Careva Contemporary from Riga.

Here are my top picks from the art on offer, in no particular order:

**Proyectos Monclova** at Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Anna Virnich, Michael Sailstorfer, Gabriel de la Mora and Robert C. Morgan. Photo credit: I DO ART Agency, Courtesy of Proyectos Monclova.

**Sexauer Gallery** at Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Caroline Kryzecki, 100 x 170 cm, 50 x 35 cm, Ball point pen on paper, Courtesy of Sexauer Gallery.

**Avlskarl Gallery** at Code Art Fair 2018, Featuring Axel Geis, Tony Oursler, Florian Meisenberg, Michael Sailstorfer and Gregor Hildebrandt. Photo credit: Torben Eskerod, Courtesy of Avlskarl Gallery .

**Galerie Krinzinger** at Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Kaspar Sonne , SON/S 2
Everything changes nothing (from the series beginning / middle / end), 2006
billboard, aluminium, pvc, wood 115 x 77 x 11.5 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Krinzinger. Photo copyright Galerie Krinzinger.

**KÖNIG GALERIE** at Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Alicja Kwade, Hypothetisches Gebilde, 2017, copper, granite, coal, powder coated steel 171.2 x 122.5 x 100 cm; unique; Courtesy of the artist and KÖNIG GALERIE.

**Galerija Vartai** at Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Mindaugas Lukošaitis, Vytautas Viržbickas and Janis Jānis Avotiņš. Photo credit: I DO ART Agency, Courtesy of Galerija Vartai.

**DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM** at Code Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Julian Charrière, An Invitation to Disappear – Tanah Grogot, 2018. Courtesy of DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM

**Galleri Riis** at Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Juan Andrés Milanes Benito. Courtesy of Galleri Riis.

**Galerie Geukens & De Vil** at Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Martha Tuttle, Untitled, 2018. Photo credit: Maria Nitulescu.

**Galería Alegría** at Code Art Fair 2018, featuring Stefan Rinck and Humberto Poblete-Bustamante. Courtesy of Galería Alegría.

by Nitulescu Maria

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: Something Strange This Way

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Something Strange This Way, installation view, photo by Anders Sune Berg

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller i Grindrod, Canada. Foto: Zev Tiefenbach. ©Courtesy the Artists.

Visiting the exhibition Something Strange This Way at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum the public will have a chance to see six extraordinary multimedia installations by the internationally renowned Canadian artist duo Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. The art duo is known as artists devoted to the medium of sound. Many of us will have experienced, or heard about, their so-‐called ‘walks’ with Cardiff’s intimate and thoughtful voice guiding us through public spaces. However, though sound is prominent, they also work within many other kinds of media. Since the mid-‐1990s they have created a number of large, interactive and spectacular installations featuring sound, music, narrative, found objects as well as compelling light effects. These are the kinds of art works that form the core of the exhibition Something Strange This Way.

The title of the exhibition refers to mysterious places, amusement parks and museums where strange and bizarre forces are at play. Like a large number of Cardiff and Miller’s works the exhibition plays on our expectations; they provoke our curiosity and seduce us, before twisting and revealing a new dimension.
Cardiff and Miller deliberately use effects from melodrama and from the entertainment industry. The bright and gaudy staging, the unexpected sequences of events, and the pulsating lights entice us like the rides in the amusement park. Their theatrical and carefully choreographed moods are accomplished through the use of sound, light, and special effects. They successfully simulate lightning, thunder and the passing of trains that make everything tremble. The artists manage to achieve this without making the works look like hollow glittering shells. They make up narratives of longing and desire, of loss and love.

The exhibition will run until April 19, 2015

Something Strange This Way
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
November 29 - April 19, 2015
AroS Aarhus Art Museum
Denmark
www.en.aros.dk

Image credits
- Installation view photo by Anders Sune Berg
- Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
i Grindrod, Canada. Photo by Zev Tiefenbach
©Courtesy the Artists.

by Michela Canessa

Christiania

Photos and text by Yann Datessen

In 1971, in response to increasing population pressure, Copenhagen City Hall decided to evacuate most of the squats of the city in order to renovate them. Overnight hundreds of idealists and marginals found themselves thrown out into the street. In search of a new home, a handful of them turned to the peninsula of Christianshavn where the Danish navy recently abandoned an area composed of an abandoned eighteenth century building complex in the South and by a lake and a forest practically returned to a state of wilderness in the north. On several occasions the security forces tried to dislodge them. Overwhelmed by the numbers and determination of the new residents, they soon gave up.

Fristaden, the freetown of Christiania is being born.
The community organized : without a leader, a guru, or any hierarchy, a model of self-management and libertarianism prevailed.
Today, despite numerous government legal attempts to take repossession of the enclave, despite incessant raids, the hunger and money of developers, despite the sometimes sharp disagreements between the “native” Christianites and dealers – who have become the rulers of one of its streets – despite the sometimes precarious living conditions, Christiania is still standing…

Between April and September 2014, I was fortunate to live there.
I stayed first in the community residences of Maelkboetten and then in the forest, in the cabins of the « Blue caramel. » Along the way I met Christianites in their homes, over a beer, a meal, a photo, sometimes in silence. Utopians of all shades, apaches and beakniks, old dreamers and young rebels, junkies and tramps, solitary lunatics straight out of a Bukowski novel, urban families seeking refuge from the worries of the capital, awakening artists, reawakening artists, Dionysus everywhere and Circus people of the angels.

Yann Datessen was born in 1977 and he's based in Paris.
He works as photographer, writer and photography teacher at Paris-Sorbonne University, he founded « Cleptafire », in 2011, a french magazine about contemporary photography.

by Positive Magazine

Roskilde Festival Photodiary by Christoffer Rosenfeldt

A Photodiary from the Roskilde festival by Christoffer Rosenfeldt

Thanks to our columnist Niklas Kingo for the coverage of the festival!
Read more

by Positive Magazine

Arriving At Urine City: Roskilde Festival

I arrived at the Roskilde festival two days before the bands started playing. The way the festival works is people start lining up Saturday, getting let in around midnight when the fences are usually broken by the over excited mob. Activities and events start the next day, Sunday, but the 180 bands don’t start playing until Thursday, and you can’t access the main festival site until then. If you want to catch all the action you watch the last band on Sunday and stay until Monday. Usually a huge band closes the festival, this year Kraftwerk. So if you’re there from start to finish you’ve spent nine (9!) days on some field. This is awesome when you’re 18 and alcohol only hurts when you get it in your eyes, but when you’re 23 and have acquired certain bad habits from working in the possibly least manly business around, not so much.

So already after one day at the camp site watching old school mates inhale more alcohol in an hour than I had in the last year, I called my best friend in the world, my mum, to come and fetch me so I could get a shower, a square meal and a much appreciated night of sleep. Leaving the campgrounds defeated I promised I would return next day when the music started and shit got real.

Actually it was mainly the weather that forced me into submission. I am an absolute vagine when it comes to cold weather. I fucking hate it. I have touched on this before, but ever since I went from 95kg to 73kg I have been freezing my tits off pretty much whenever it dips below the twenties (68F for the yanks out there). I wasn’t up for spending another night in a sleeping bag wearing all my clothes, lying in foetal position trying to warm one hand in my armpit and the other in my junk. I try to touch those areas as little as possible when on a festival. Taken aback by the absence of enjoyment I once derived from that one annual week of debauchery, I had a somewhat worried outlook on the days I was to spend on those hallowed fields near one of Northern Europe's oldest settlements, Roskilde.

(Stay tuned kids)

by Nicklas Kingo

5 Things You Have To Bring When Going To A Festival

At time of writing I actually just got home from a festival to pick up these things because I am male and therefore don’t think further than a couple of hours ahead. So this could not get any more real or authentic (so real I had to use two synonyms to describe the amount of realness… for real)