Since their first residency in Astrid Noack’s Atelier in 2013 the two artists Seçil Yersel and Özge Açıkkol from Turkey have been preoccupied with the work and life of Astrid Noack. During their stay in ANA in November they will gather their experience with Noack around the question; “How to read Astrid Noack”.

When you look at Astrid Noack in the linear chronological art history context you get an overall impression of her and of her production. What Seçil Yersel will try to do is to make a “circular-affect based history reading”, where she will come close to places and people that were not in the circle of Noack; from different time periods and geographies. So, the interpretation of Noack together with Yersel’s personal mapping of other women figures both from Istanbul and other cities, forms and stories will hint the potentiality of the “affect power”.

Özge Açıkkol will investigate both what physically surrounds the sculptress herself and her studio. As a reaction to Seçil Yersel’s insight/inside curiosities, she will construct a diary from Astrid Noack’s voice and perspective trying to imagine the past time and space in which Astrid Noack has lived. In her essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? the art historian Linda Nochlin writes that “In every instance, women artists and writers would seem to be closer to other artists and writers of their own period and outlook than they are to each other.” Following this very critical aspect in art history, Açıkkol’s intention is to try to formulate connections between herself, Astrid Noack and other women artists and search for another type of relational surrounding for her, based on her artistic intelligence and horizon.

On Saturday 27 November at 14.00 – 16.00 the two artists are inviting you for “a walk and a look” that will start and end at ANA. After a short introduction to the performative walk, we will stroll around with guidance following some of the imaginary routes that Astrid Noack’s might have moved along. Together in silence we will experience some pieces of works, corners, spots and things in “sustained attention”. Coming back to ANA we will share the experiences around the table while Astrid Noack’s “Young Man Planting a Tree” will witness the process from the corner of the room.

Özge Açıkkol and Seçil Yersel are co-founders of the artist collective Oda Projesi (2000) together with Güneş Savaş. Besides their collective work they work individually.

Seçil Yersel has a background in sociology and art. She works with photography + text + sound and her main concern is to capture the potentials of the in-between space and focusing on the present moment and memory; with a therapeutic approach she makes montages and uses different exhibition methods including performative talks.

Özge Açıkkol works at the intersection of art, socio-spatial practices, literature, and pedagogy. She is a collector of situational usages of İstanbul’s public spaces and she is in search of alternative pedagogies related with those spatial practices. Since 2013, with Oda Projesi she questions the transformatory capacity of ‘the artist mother’. Hence, she is interested in reclaiming the fundamental and invisible act of “caring” as a support structure in the public sphere beyond its trapped interpretations in the private.

Oda Projesi is an artist collective based in Istanbul. It was founded by Özge Açıkkol, Güneş Savaş and Seçil Yersel who turned their collaboration into a project in 2000. From January 2000 their space in Galata functioned as a non-profit independent space, hosting projects, gatherings and acts up until 2005, when Oda Projesi was evicted from the apartment due to gentrification. Since 2005 Oda Projesi continues to work with different mediums and create spaces for meetings and gatherings.

Peter Petersen (1953-2020) – a mourning play, takes its starting point in my father’s life and death, as well as the system that took part in killing him.

On a late Saturday morning at the end of September last year my father collapsed and died, just 67 years old. The last 15-20 years of his life were marked by depression, unemployment, illnesses, social isolation, severe opioid- and alcohol abuse, a prison sentence, an economy in ruins, and a life on the edge and the bottom of Danish society. My father belonged to that category of people that society no longer needs. He was declared a surplus citizen, an abject-subject, unproductive and reduced to a body that simply needed to be administered, through additional medication and disqualification. In addition to a huge debt and a broken-down house, he left behind large amounts of boxes full of objects he had found in the trash – everything from porcelain figures to old film projectors, things that no one saw any value in any longer. This collection of fragments from his life, his material leftovers, is the framework of the exhibition, which will take the form of several performances in Astrid Noacks Atelier.

The mourning play (’Trauerspiel’) is a dramatic genre within the baroque tragedy, where death and mourning are the main protagonists: here the decay of humans and nature are in focus, the language gets fragmented and everything appears already as a ruin, or in the process of becoming one. By leaning into this tragical theater-form I allow myself to dwell on that which is decaying, on that which is no longer. By staging my father’s life and death, I want to invite the audience to take part in the mourning-process in order to de-individualize the grief. For the mourning is not only mine, every loss also contains a political dimension. The great taboo that surrounds death, means that grief gets privatized and made into something you must get over quickly. But I do not need to get over my loss and I will not let my father’s life disappear into silence. By creating a space around his death and the anger and loneliness that simmers in my grief, I want to open up a discussion of what constitutes a mournable life.

Opening: Saturday 2 October from 16-21 with performances at 16:30, 18:00 and 19:30.

There will also be performances:

Sunday 3 October at 16:30, 18:00 and 19:30.

Wednesday 6 October at 16:30, 18:00 and 19:30.

Thursday 7 October at 16:30, 18:00 and 19:30.

Friday 8 October at 16:30, 18:00 and 19:30.

Saturday 9 October at 16:30, 18:00 and 19:30.

Registration is required at: kbr@astrid-noack.dk. You are also welcome to show up and get a free seat if there is one. The duration of the performance is approx. 40 min. There is free admission and seats for a maximum of 10 people at a time.

NOTE! After 9 October and until 24 October, the exhibition will consist of a video documentation of the performance.

The video documentation is open:

Saturday 16  and Sunday 17 October at 13-16

Sunday 24 October at 13-16.

Trailer: https://player.vimeo.com/video/609739528?h=e05d2c7f4e

The exhibition is supported by The Danish Art Foundation and the Danish Art Workshops.

Pelle Brage has been invited to develop a new social art project in ANA’s mobile children’s studio at Den Bemandede Legeplads in Mimersparken on Nørrebro. Under the title “The Border. A Social Sculpture Experiment”, the project in a critically playful way invites children and young people to discuss our society and the world we live in.

With a focal point in a sculptural installation consisting of a fence and a border barrier, the project investigates and further develops this temporary border. It’s about rules – why some can get through and others not. Does a visa require any specific actions? Or are there any questions you need to answer to pass the border? Do you have to be approved by the children?

The idea of ​​”The Border. A Social Sculpture Experiment” is to bring together a group of children and young people in a creative activity where the content is developed at a children’s level. This in a local area, where the children, in continuation of current initiatives and legislation (such as the ghetto law), are confronted on a daily basis with issues of discrimination and unequal access to common resources on the basis of ethnicity and nationality.

The project is supported by Huskunstnerordningen (the Danish Art Foundation)

Acts of Listening: A Common Attempt to (Re) Articulate a Feminist Position is based on the feminist video archive Let Us Speak Now, which was initiated by Kirsten Dufour and Andrea Creutz in 2002. The unfinished archive, where new voices are constantly being included, consists of more than 100 filmed interviews with artists and cultural workers from countries such as the United States, France, Armenia, the United Kingdom, South America, India and Denmark. Across generations, the archive illuminates and maps how feminist strategies have evolved over the years and how art, activism and feminism form a diverse field.

Inspired by the archive’s position of ‘listening’, and it’s polyphonic and collective method, Acts of Listening is conceptualized as a series of consecutive “files”, where the audience is invited to take part in the process when Let Us Speak Know is once again activated. With a focus on selected interviews in combination with contextualizing material and newly produced interviews, each file step by step illuminates the questions and obstacles that feminism currently faces.

The first file which is opened in ANA, and which revolves around the American part of the archive, will resemble a ‘work-archive’, where the process is in focus. In this first moment, a provisionally spatial presentation forms a framework around a series of conversations and events that provide space for collective discussion about ephemeral archives and the position of feminism today. These are arranged by visual artist Nanna Katrine Hansen and the feminist working group Ecstatic Feminists, which consists of Marie Louise Krogh, Misja Thirslund Krenchel, Merete Enggaard Jakobsen, Anna Baagø, Hannah Lutz, Kirstine Nordentoft Mose, Anne Louise Fink and Thea von der Maase.

The project is organized by curator Johanne Løgstrup, visual artist Pia Rönicke, art historian Karen Mette Fog Pedersen and curator Kathrine Bolt Rasmussen.