“Our time has produced a need for contrast. This has been achieved not only in the external appearance of plastic expressions of color and matter, but also, and chiefly, in the tempo of life and in the techniques related to the daily, mechanical functions of life; namely standing, walking, driving, to lying and sitting shitting in short, every action which determines the content of architecture.”                                          – Theo van Doesburg

“Sludge Cake” is a continuation af Sebastian Hedevang and Andreas Rønholts shared project “The Chocolate Wagon”, which circles around themes of sanitation, sewers and their related histories and subjects.

For Astrid Noacks Atelier the artists will produce a series of works that departure from the short history of ‘the sludge cake’ (danglish for ‘night soil’) in a call response with Astrid Noacks relief “Oksekærren” (The Ox Cart) from 1953.

The term ‘sludge cake’ refers to a short experimental transition period from the manual emptying of the latrine to the establishment of the modern sewer system, when the latrine was transported to fields and molded into brick sized blocks left to lie and dry in the sun. The blocks was thereafter sold for use as fertilizer in farmning. In that context the sludge cakes was sometimes referred to with the more subtle euphemism “city manure”. The use of ‘sludge cakes’ ended i Denmark out of fear that German refugees from WW1 would bring diseases, that could spread through the “city manure”.

‘Sludge cake’ was reintroduced as a term in the Danish language, when the sewers stopped being led directly to bodies of water. It refers today to the dewatered settable solids from the primary clarifiers in modern wastewater treatment plants, but the residue in the form of compressed pucks from biofuel facilities are also called ‘sludge cakes’.

Overall the recycling of the ‘sludge cake’ has developed into high tech processes. Roughly sketched the sewage sludge is divided into 3 degrees of quality: A-sludge, which is used as fertilizer in farming with the more neutral sounding word ‘biosolids’, B-sludge, which has to be further treated before recycling, and C-sludge, which is deposited or burnt. Besides the recycling of sewage sludge as ‘biosolids’ it is also a component of such recycling as biogas, phosphorus recovery, bioplastics, biofuel and building materials. The continual challenges for the recycling of the sewage sludge are amounts of heavy metals, microplastics, hormones and pharmaceutical pollutions, as are avoiding emissions of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere while still producing useful energy from them.

The most recent utilization of waste water is monitoring Covid-19 on the sewer network, where it is possible to measure and locate outbreaks even before individuals in a given area experience any symptoms. This could become an important tool to overcome one of the biggest challenges of the present pandemic: the relatively long incubation period for the virus.

Opening: Saturday June 5th at 14

Opening hours: Saturday and Sunday from 13-17

The exhibition is supported by:

The Danish Art Foundation, The Municipality of Copenhagen – Council for Visual Arts and Guldagergaard.

Thursday 21th January from 17-18

Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/167859695087439/

The performance journal bastard and Astrid Noacks Atelier has invited performance artist Sara Hamming for a conversation on the occasion of the premier of ENGLISH SPEAKERS – a sound- and music performance about English performed by nine loudspeakers – the 24th November at KUBE.

ENGLISH SPEAKERS is a performance about the English language, performed by nine loudspeakers. In etymological masturbation scenes and trance creating spelling séances you will hear English – a main character and a language in one and same voice. English tells her story, but gradually her story is interrupted by other voices. A rebellious girl choir, search engines language of algorithms and the holes, which appears in the narrator’s memory. What will become of the language of the world, which lives in the mouth of you and me? Is the imperialistic linguistic falling?

The artist talk at Astrid Noacks Atelier, which because of covid-19 is streamed online, will begin with a performative scene by Sara Hamming, but will apart from that take its’ starting point in the artist’s latest work. The conversation will continue around Sara Hamming’s art practice and earlier works.

Sara Hamming is a writing performance artist and stage director and creates works from the production platform Moribund, Sara Hamming works performatively and often audibly with the relation between language and history. Earlier works includes among others OUM – en iscenesættelse af stemmer in collaboration with composer Anja Jacobsen, Choreography on the Face in the series Whole Body Treatment and Bloody Mary d. 4., staged in her  childhood home – detached houses in Valby and Snekkersten.

The artist talk with Sara Hamming is organised by the editor of bastard, art critic and writer Mette Garfield.

The event is supported by the Danish Art Foundation.

ABOUT BASTARD
bastard.blog is a performance- and contemporary stage art, choreography and cross disciplinary art practises journal. The journal focuses on the performance genre, which rarely reaches the columns of daily magazines and art medias. Besides articles, reviews, interviews and artists’ contribution at the web platform, bastard arranges events such as talks and performance series in order to expand and create attention around the performance media and to reach a wider audience.