There are plans to reopen the river that currently runs hidden beneath the public housing area in Bispeengen. While the adults talk about neighbourhood regeneration, budget memos, permaculture and regulations, we (Misja and Tina) – together with the children in the area – have decided to just get started building a river.

More than 1000 children live in Bispeengen. Children whose voices are rarely heard when decisions about their neighbourhood are made. Voices that are best expressed when you do something, create something, play something and try something out.

Vi bygger bare en å (We’re just building a river) is a collaborative art project based on the plans to bring the river back to the surface in Lundtoftegade – part of the Copenhagen Municipality’s neighbourhood regeneration programme. A river in a residential area will have a major impact on both residents and urban development. But what will actually happen if water becomes part of everyday life again? What landscapes will it bring with it? What new smells and sounds? What species will become the children’s new neighbours and playmates?

The first part of the project consists of a filmic performance piece created in collaboration with visual artist Søren Thilo Funder, the exhibition venue Til Vægs and local children. The film imagines three new species – in the water, on land and in the air – that would most likely settle in the area if the river was reopened. From here, a narrative unfolds about what it is like to be a river and how we can live and play in and with nature.

Vi bygger bare en å is part of Misja Thirslund Krenchel and Tina Helen’s two-year residency under the Danish Arts Foundation, in collaboration with Astrid Noack’s Atelier and the City of Copenhagen’s Area Renewal Department. An Artist-in-Residence project that deals with (local) urban policy at a child’s level and the potential of art to create democratising, aesthetic processes – while also being part of the larger political and artistic considerations and actions in the area.

In the next phases of the project, more artists and collaborators will be involved, including Kirsten Astrup & Marie Bordorff, Beata Hemer, Jeppe Vedel-Brandt and Marie Northroup.

OPENING HOURS 

Every tuesday from 14.00 till 17.30 hour.

Ongoing from 7th of April till October 2026.

During the day, there will primarily be planned workshops with the surrounding institutions. During the above times, there will be public drop-in workshops, where everyone is welcome.

If it rains heavily, we may be forced to close.

Address: You will find Astrid Noack’s Mobile Children’s Studio in the black container opposite the allotment gardens, right next to Bispeengens Bemandede Legeplads: Hillerødgade 23B, 2200 KBH N.

BIO

Misja Thirslund Krenchel (b. 1981) is a visual artist, educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and based in Copenhagen. Misja’s practice is broadly concerned with home, construction and housing policy. She is interested in the relationship between raw materials, home and landscape, in the physical framework of a home, how homes are remembered and understood over time, and who has the right to a home in Denmark. Her method can be briefly characterised as investigations into different ways of creating stories and positions from which these stories can be told. Her work takes the form of text, sculpture, drawing and sound, and often as encounters and actions in collaboration with others.

Tina Helen (b. 1976) is a visual artist, educated at Malmö Art Academy and based in Copenhagen. Tina Helen’s work with visual art stems from a political engagement in the field of asylum and urban politics. Driven by a need to express and explore the complex relationships between indignation and passion, despondency and compassion, her work brings together philosophical, existential and interpersonal insights. She works contextually and often in collaboration with others. Tina considers pedagogy to be a material in her artistic work, and a large part of her practice is concerned with how the encounter between art, people and pedagogy not only nourishes each other, but can also challenge inherent norms.

The project is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence Programme and the City of Copenhagen.

Utantill/By Heart is an exhibition and investigation into oral storytelling and origin stories. The tradition of telling stories beyond the written word is a folk and indigenous practice that passes on knowledge between generations. Bypassing text, oral exchanges have the capacity to circumvent institutional and hegemonic history to develop storylines that stretch beyond colonial time. Retelling is an embodied and political act that secures and reinvigorates culture. With an installation of tapestries and objects that function as props in her stories, and a series of open events and workshops, Lisa Nyberg invites us to both consider and practice oral storytelling, to develop our capacity for imagination and collective myth making.

Nyberg’s own attempts at oral storytelling builds on Swedish and Saami folk traditions, as well as lecture performance and embodied pedagogy. Working as an artist, teacher and researcher Nyberg is interested in the relationship between knowledge and art – in how art can help us understand the world and each other and in how art operates the more than rational in our societies and culture and gives form to the unknown. In her artistic practice this interest has taken the form of performances, installations, workshops and sound pieces; a free university and a think tank on radical pedagogy; educational art programmes, an open studio space and a residency program for artists at risk. Nyberg is an associate professor at Umeå Academy of Fine arts, Sápmi/Sweden.

The exhibition is curated by roda – soft water on hard stone.

Opening

Thursday 4 June 6 – 8pm

Tale Telling Circle

Tale Telling Circle with invited guests

Friday 5 June 5 – 7pm with Bodil Krogh Andersen, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Felicia Konrad, Martin Kristoffer Lund, Imri Sandström, roda – soft water on hard stone (Katarina Stenbeck and Carla Zaccagini)

Friday 26 June 5 – 7pm with Francis Patrick Brady, Joanna Johnson, Tone Olaf Nielsen, Marit-Shirin Carolasdotter and Louise Fontain

I feel like you have a story to tell. A tale that was gifted to you and that you are now the custodian of. It came to you as a story of creation, a journey, or a riddle. It carries with it a gift in the form of a lesson, a guiding principle, or a collective memory to be passed from mouth to ear. Or maybe the gift is hidden in the drama. Will you offer us a story?

The Tale Telling Circle offers an opportunity for us to practice sharing our stories. As the host, Nyberg has invited a few selected guests – artists of all kinds – to tell a story, but she welcomes everyone who attends to both listen and share. Come join the circle!

Utantill/By Heart Workshop

Workshop part I Saturday 26 June 12 – 4pm
Workshop part II Saturday 27 June 12 – 4pm CANCELLED

Welcome to an introduction to the tradition and practice of origin stories and oral storytelling. The workshop is aimed at anyone who is interested in retelling as an embodied and political act. By aiming beyond the nationalist, colonial and capitalist narratives that dominate our present, we will call and recall other origin stories into emergence. Our findings will be restated in our own words until we know them by heart, offering them a home in the body-mind of our collective experience. The workshop is carefully constructed to be a hopeful practice without guarantees.

All are welcome but registration is required. To register please write lisa.nyberg@gmail.com no later than 1 June.

Drinks and a small meal are included.

The Flat Choir with Francis Patrick Brady

Friday 26 June 3 – 4.30pm

The Flat Choir is a participatory singing and storytelling workshop for people who don’t sing and people who do. It is not about performance, but about sharing stories and songs with a group. It is about a form of oral storytelling that has been partially forgotten in modern life. This project is inspired by Sacred Harp singing from the Appalachian mountains and the traditional pub carols sung in the English town of Sheffield (where the artist grew up).

Sacred Harp is a singing tradition that emphasises singing together for amateurs and was designed to be accessible to non-literate settlers in America who wanted to sing together at church. The traditional Sheffield pub carols are one of the oldest oral singing traditions outside of the church in Europe. The Flat Choirworkshop also borrows techniques from Larp (Live Action Role Play) and the artist’s previous project The Choir of Not Knowing.

https://francispatrickbrady.com/

PROGRAMME

Thursday 4 June 5 – 7pm

Opening with performance

Friday 5 June 5 – 7pm

Tale telling circle with invited guests

Saturday 6 June 12 – 4pm

Workshop part I

Friday 26 June

3 – 4.30pm The Flat Choir with Francis Patrick Brady

5 – 7pm Tale telling circle with invited guests

Saturday 27 June 12 – 4pm

Workshop part II

The exhibition is open the following days:

Saturday 13 June 12 – 3pm

Saturday 20 June 12 – 3pm

Thursday 25 June 5 – 7pm

Sunday 28 June 12 – 3pm

roda – soft water on hard stone is a curatorial programme generating conversations with artists and thinkers that unfold in various formats on three continents and the ocean in between. In the face of accelerating interlaced crises birthed by colonial, capitalist and extractivist logics, roda – soft water on hard stone searches for ways to develop sensibilities of co-existence across human and more-than-human worlds that can guide us towards better ways of living, learning, making and believing. www.roda-softwateronhardstone.org

roda – soft water on hard stone is funded by the Bikuben Foundation.

Join us in the underground car park beneath the courtyard of Astrid Noacks Atelier for an afternoon and evening of performances, food, drinks, and art sale.

Together, we wish to reclaim this space for art, community, and collective care. Through gathering, creating, and sharing, we affirm our support for the Palestinian people and for the ongoing struggle for freedom, dignity, and justice.

Admission: Sliding scale 80–150 DKK
Food: 50 DKK
Beer / Soft drinks: 15 DKK
Wine / Mixed drinks: 30 DKK

On this summer solstice, let us come together through art, community, and solidarity with Palestine. 

All proceeds will be donated to The Freedom Theatre in Jenin.

Organised by: In Solidarity with Palestine, Astrid Noacks Atelier Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology & Det Lilla Rum

Graphic design by Florinda Pamungkas