The Danish Art Workshops, April 2022

ANA, April 2023

During their first stay in ANA in the spring of 2022 Søssa Jørgensen og Geir Tore Holm initiated studies of the local environment and the bird life in the area in collaboration with ornithologists and others with an interest in birds in the city. Inspired by the new housing complexes around ANA as well as historic nest boxes, Jørgensen and Holm collected recycled materials on Ydre Nørrebro from which they have built a sculptural nest box, which will be installed on the roof of ANA in April 2023. During the artists’ subsequent stay in May 2023, the nest box will be the location for a new film about how the area’s birds such as swifts, despite the newly constructed buildings and other measures – which are supposed to prevent their free activity – continue to fly around and settle down.

BIO: Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim in 1995. Alongside their individual practice, they teach contemporary art. In 1993, they started Balkong, using their apartment as an exhibition space, which raised questions about what art can be. These home-based experiences led to wider activities. In 2003, together with the two Thai artists Kamin Lertchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija, they started Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land in Gildeskål, Nordland, with a focus on topics such as use og nature and knowledge sharing. From 2010, their focal point and place of work and residence has been the farm Øvre Ringstad in Østfold.

For the first time a complete work in Danish by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) is available. It has been translated by Claus Handberg and Tine Demandt and is published by Antipyrine.

Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1911 and made her debut as a writer in 1933. As an adult, Bishop lived in Paris, Mexico, New York, Florida and more than ten years in Brazil. She has received many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and is considered one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century. She died in 1975 in Boston.

The poetry collection Geography III (1976) is one of the central works of her authorship, where Bishop shows her special ability to expand the world inwards, to scale, zoom from large landscapes and into the smallest details.

There is a reading and a glass of wine between 4pm-6pm.

Residual products of the construction industry accumulates into small mountains at Nordhavnstippen in Copenhagen which in the long term will be filled in the harbour as the foundation for the expansion of the city. New landmasses are dammed by a wall of rebar, concrete and large stones shipped to Denmark from the mountains of southern Norway.

Land reclamation projects are not a new phenomenon.

When large parts of Nørrebro were renovated in the 1980s, the remains of the demolished neighborhood ended up as part of the land reclamation project around Sydhavnstippen’s recreational areas. If you dig in the soil, you might find traces of the cultural history created by the 80s squatter movements.

When the buildings that were part of the creative, social and diverse environment around Astrid Noack’s Atelier were demolished, they most likely ended up in the land reclamation project of the north habour. In a way, the future construction projects of the north harbour will rest on this foundation.

Solastalgia is an expression of the sadness over the irreversible, which can be experienced, for example, if landscapes change drastically due to climate change or when natural resources are extracted by an industry, or as the philosopher Glenn Albrecth describes it, it refers to ‘the homesickness you experience when you are still at home and your home environment changes in ways that make you uncomfortable’.

With our project in Astrid Noack’s Atelier, we will draw a parallel between the sadness of losing nature and the sadness of losing culture that cannot be reconstructed due to urban planning and gentrification.

It can be seen as a declaration of love to pick up a stone from the ground, put it in your pocket and take it home with you, just as it can be a declaration of love to take care of discarded objects that have lost their use value. In contrast to this, we see a violence in acts of classification, extractivism and displacement of natural resources as industries appropriate nature on a large scale.

With reference to the fragmented natural resources that form the land extensions – both those from the construction industry and those from the blasted mountains – we will work with topics such as restitution and restoration through the production of textile collages.

Inspired by weighted blankets, which have the function of relieving anxiety, we fill our textiles with stones from the north harbour as a way of gathering the fragments into a new form. And just as blankets can look like mountain landscapes that breathe when they are shaped around a resting body, we want to help create a bodily and close relationship to the materials, landscapes and narratives we are a part of.

EVENTS

Thursday 23 March at 4pm-8pm: Opening (sessions & soup)
From 4pm-7pm there will be listening sessions with “stone rugs”.
There will be soup at 7pm

Thursday 30 March at 1pm-8pm: Workshop & social soup
We will set up the sewing workshop flexible plans* at ANA, where we will sew pennants and banners together, which we will hang in the street of Rådmandsgade on 20 April. You can help sew on the joint project, and you can come and sew your own banner.
We have large quantities of fabric, so please come by and help make your mark on the street.
We will make soup together from 6 pm

Thursday 6 April at 4pm-8pm: Sessions & soup
From 4pm-7pm there will be listening sessions with “stone rugs”.
There will be soup at 7pm

Thursday 13 April at 1pm-8pm: Workshop & social soup
We will set up the sewing workshop flexible plans* at ANA, where we will sew pennants and banners together, which we will hang up in the street of Rådmandsgade on 20 April. You can help sew on the joint project, and you can come and sew your own banner.
We have large quantities of fabric, so please come by and help make your mark on the street.
We will make soup together from 6pm

Sunday 16 April at 1pm-7pm: Excursion to the north harbour
We will visit “the mountains of the North Harbor” at the landfill. Afterwards we will give a tour of our new artist community at vesterhavsvej 7.
We will meet at the roundabout at the end of kattegatvej in nordhavnen at 1pm.
We will be outside so dress according to the weather.
We will serve coffee and a snack.
Sign up for the excursion so we know how many are coming and in case of changes. write to martinchristoffer@gmail.com

Thursday 20 April at 3pm-8pm: Launch of publication, hanging of banners & social soup
From 3pm we will together hang up our new “pennant banner” and celebrate the street and the spring.
We will make soup together and eat at 6pm
At 7pm there will be a presentation of the publication

In addition to the events, we are open by appointment (email: martinchristoffer@gmail.com)

*flexible plans was a sewing club initiative for collective textile projects that started in bolchefabrikken’s sewing workshop in 2020.

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Thanks to the Danish Arts Foundation, Nørrebro Local Committee, The Municipality of Copenhagen – Council for Visual Arts, Kvadrat and Copenhagen Furniture Upholstery.

Opening: Saturday 11.2. at 2pm–6pm

The artistic process of creation is in itself a form of transformation. Transformation of experiences, observations and fascinations into new expressions, forms, materials and contexts, which in turn can trigger new observations and thoughts in both the viewer and the artist herself.

By reworking his photo documentation of randomly appearing visual constellations in the street life, Wojciech Laskowski Laspin directs attention to these and transforms them into new forms and images with their own autonomy.

Marianne Søgaard Sørensen has transformed items of clothing, donated by friends and friends of friends, into 4 objects that represent the givers’ chains of relationships, but at the same time bear traits from traditional rag rugs and the conception of resources they expressed.

Open: Every day at 5pm-7pm and Saturday 18.2. at 2pm-6pm

Saturday 18.2. at 4pm: Art as a Learning Process

Wojciech Laskowski Laspin talks about art and learning based on some of his projects for children and young people. From projects in ‘Art & Mathematics’ to participatory projects with a broader social aim.

BIO: Wojciech Laskowski Laspin is a visual artist and arts educator. Born in Wroclaw, Poland, resident in Denmark 1986-2010. Since 2010 living in Austria. Educated at the University of Art in Poznan, specializing in art communication and art pedagogy. Works as a freelancer in two areas: 1. As a visual artist within installation, sculpture, Land-Art, Book-Art, drawing, painting and photography. 2. In the area of art dissemination / art education as a project maker, teacher, and with social art. Since 1991 collaborates as a freelance art teacher, course instructor, consultant, project maker and project manager with several institutions in Denmark, Germany and Austria. Among other things, The Art School in Tvillingehallen in Copenhagen, the National Gallery of Denmark, the Art School (on Jagtvej), KLAX in Berlin, Arnulf Reiner Museum in Baden bei Wien, Kulturkontakt Austria, Volkshochschule in Wiener Neustadt, Astrid Noack Atelier. 1994 – 1998 – founder and head of the art school “Pulsar” in Copenhagen.

BIO: Marianne Søgaard Sørensen was trained as a weaver at Kerteminde Husflidshøjskole 1978-80 and on scholarship at the University of Art in Poznan, Poland with Magdalena Abakanowicz 1984-86. She has a Master’s in European Ethnology from 1997. She has worked with utility weaving, image weaving, textile art and Land art projects.