FROG CHORUS
Frog Chorus skulle være åbnet i Møstings Hus d. 7. januar, 2021 – i dag lancerer vi den i en online version på idoart.dk. Gruppeudstillingen er skabt af Mo Maja Moesgaard, Mia Isabel Edelgart, Hannah Toticki Anbert, Deirdre J. Humphrys, Calder Harben, Hannah Lutz og Selini Halvadaki. Gruppen har inviteret kurator Malene Dam til at skrive en tekst om den kollektive proces i arbejdet med udstillingen.
Copenhagen, December 29th, 2020
Dear viewer,
An exhibition is where the artworks finally come together and sit alongside and next to one another. Together they fill the space, and connections and meanings begin to form within and between them. A group exhibition is, in that sense, the physical and spatial moment when artworks meet each other as well as the context of the exhibition space and the public.
But before we are able to experience the exhibition Frog Chorus, a much longer process has occurred. This part of the artistic process is oftentimes invisible and inaccessible to the public, and therefore somewhat unacknowledged. We might be able to read which funds supported the making of the exhibition. But what I want to focus on is rather the collective, artistic, and personal support structures that make it possible for us, as a public, to experience the exhibition Frog Chorus today. And to do so, I would like to address this letter to all of the artists in the show.
Hannah Lutz, Calder Harben og Selini Halvadaki, Chorus, 2021 (Print på plast. Redigeret uddrag fra brevudveksling, sommer 2020).
Frog Chorus, 2021 (installation view). Møstings Hus. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Dear Selini, Hannah Lutz, Mo, Cal, Mia, Hannah Anbert and Dee,
You asked me to write a text that connects the process of what came before to what we see in the exhibition. I want to start with a beginning.
In 2016, you made the group exhibition ‘Det ku være politisk’ at JANUS in Tistrup. The title was a proposition and a desire to insist on the fact that art can be political. I was a part of your group, and partook in the process leading up to the exhibition. We had monthly meetings, did readings together, gave feedback on each other’s artworks and produced a catalogue for the show. This process lasted about a year and a half. Here and now, five or so years later, the group has reconvened. And between that last exhibition and now, between the here and there is a line, an in-between – a desire to continue the commitment to each other, and to maintain a structure of meetings to support each other in your daily lives as artists.
Calder Harben, Listening to (a) Future: Minke Whale, 2021 (Øreknogle fra vågehval fra Røst, Norge. Kunstnerens samling, audio, 7 min). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Deirdre J. Humphrys, the liver is a crown, 2020 (Stoffarver og akryl på lærred, 134.5x215cm). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Calder Harben, Listening to (a) Future: Minke Whale, 2021 (Øreknogle fra vågehval fra Røst, Norge. Kunstnerens samling, audio, 7 min). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Frog Chorus, 2021 (installation view). Møstings Hus. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Mo Maja Moesgaard, and space is a pressing matter, 2021.
(Genbrugstekstil, lynlås, broderegarn, velcro, 312 x 258 cm). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Frog Chorus, 2021 (installation view). Møstings Hus. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Mo Maja Moesgaard, and space is a pressing matter, 2021 (Genbrugstekstil, lynlås, broderegarn, velcro, 312 x 258 cm). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Most artists have a handful of trusted colleagues they talk to when they develop new work, sharing the vulnerable moments within the process. Shared studio spaces, old classmates and peer groups provide a scaffolding that supports the artist, whose work life is often highly individualized – the artist is a free floating agent, responsible for setting their own deadlines, creating their own schedule and paving their own path of success, whatever that might look like. The artists in the group all have practices that pendulate between collective processes and individual work. But for the group, the collectivity wasn’t about making one collective work. Rather, it was about supporting each other’s individual practices and creating a community for thinking and sharing together.
Almost two years ago, the group decided to find a venue where they could make an exhibition together again. The exhibition offered a tangible deadline and a physical space for a public moment. And it served as a concrete reason to commit to a collective process.
It takes a will and a desire to say: Let’s do another exhibition.
Frog Chorus, 2021 (installation view). Møstings Hus. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Hannah Toticki Anbert, Digital Islands, 2020 (Jesmonite, ecopoxy, vinylgulv. Variable dimensioner).
Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Hannah Toticki Anbert, Digital Islands, 2020 (Jesmonite, ecopoxy, vinylgulv. Variable dimensioner).
Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
The dull and practical tasks of emails, follow-ups, fundraising and budgets have been shared within the group. And when you have a group of seven artists, it entails a lot of communication. But collective processes are many things. Over these two years, you have all made a schedule that allowed for a space to share reading, thinking and simply spending time together.
Every three months you have had week-long seminars, each one organized by two artists within the group. At different moments you have each stepped up and taken the lead, and structured your collective time together. Those collective moments – the readings, the communal meals, the laughter and the walks in the forest – were intermittent breaks in each of your daily lives, and a possibility to refocus and continue the conversations that had been developing. Between these seminars, you have written letters to each other in a circular chain, receiving from one and sending to another, never directly responding to each other, but to the group.
Frog Chorus, 2021 (installation view). Møstings Hus. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Calder Harben, Listening to (a) Future: Barnacles, 2021 (Briller med andeskæl, fundet i den mexicanske Golf. Kunstnerens samling, audio, 7 min). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Calder Harben, Listening to (a) Future: Lake Ontario Atlantic Salmon, 2021 (Akvarel, audio, 7 min).
Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Frog Chorus, 2021 (installation view). Møstings Hus. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Mo Maja Moesgaard, and which bodies where, 2021 (Genbrugstekstil, pladevat, 8 á 30 x 30 x 1 cm). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Mo Maja Moesgaard, and how we press up against it, 2021. (Genbrugstekstil, Velcro, 126 x 76 cm). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Starting this text with a beginning, and ending with the finality that is the moment of the exhibition, suggests a progressive linearity. A start and a finish. A story. But what I found you have built as a group is something circular and horizontal. Something that convenes and catches, it listens.
On display will be a snippet of the letters you sent to each other over the summer. You let me read all of them. In each of these letters, you struggle to find moments to think, to reflect and to listen. Some of the letters were difficult to write. You were waiting for that moment to appear, when there was a stillness and something to say and share. Waiting for a moment that felt generous and open. But what many of you found was frustration and tiredness, and that daily life came in the way. What seemed to occur in each letter was a process. Often, the difficulty of the beginning, and then, somewhere in the middle, the letter opens up a space of thinking and reflecting, and the generosity of sharing and listening takes over. The letters capture something that is seldom available in an exhibition. They capture the conditions of daily life, and the precarity of maintaining an art practice between money jobs, rent and bills, friendships, relationships, family, and – for some of you – kids. They capture activism, politics and the shared joy of daily moments, the joy of finding a stillness within and outside the routines.
Selini Halvadaki, Voice Over I, 2021 (HD-video, 12:00 min). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Selini Halvadaki, Voice Over I, 2021 (HD-video, 12:00 min). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Skulptur: Deirdre J. Humphrys, Jeg har brudt mit hoved med den. Her er den, 2021 (Pap, Financial Times, lim og metal fod). Videoer: Selini Halvadaki, Voice Over I, 2021 (VHS fra 1987, 00:50 min) og Voice Over I (HD video, 12:00 min). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Deirdre J. Humphrys, Jeg har brudt mit hoved med den. Her er den, 2021 (Pap, Financial Times, lim og metal fod, 240 x 188,5 cm). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
The title of the exhibition, Frog Chorus, beautifully suggests this invisible scaffolding you have built, where you communicate across a distance, each month receiving a letter and writing to another in the group. It is a continuous reminder of the group – a commitment which requires attention and time, but which holds you as well, and listens by saying: I hear you, and I see you. The struggles that may seem individual in each letter over time accumulate as shared conditions. What one brings up in a letter is reflected and echoed in others. And that is where the proposition ‘Det ku være politisk’ is not only about the finality of what is on display in the exhibition, but about the very conditions for making it, and what it takes to get there.
Frog Chorus, 2021 (installation view). Møstings Hus. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Deirdre J. Humphrys, Jeg digter måske lidt til, forskønner måske, men stort set var det sådan, 2020 (Hæklet uld og ’detoured’ tegnestifter, 133 x 205 cm). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Mia Isabel Edelgart, Sov, 2021 (Video, 32 min. Interviews foretaget i haven og området omkring Møstings Hus, 2020. Optagelser: live webcam af får om natten. Komponist: Heine Thorhauge Mathiasen). Video still.
Frog Chorus, 2021 (installation view). Møstings Hus. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Deirdre J. Humphrys, Ikke så dyb men dyb nok, dyb nok, 2020 (Stoffarver og akryl på lærred, trælægte, sytråd og ’detoured’ tegnestifter, 180 x 152 cm). Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Dear viewer, when you see the show, try to listen for these glimmers of connections which go beyond what each work is about. As a curator writing this text, there is something beautiful in thinking of this process of building a group exhibition which trusts that a shared process, a structure of support and feedback, offers a much deeper way of connecting the artworks on display. This group has made an exhibition by insisting that committing to each other, and sharing time and attention, brings a kind of shared scaffolding to the final artworks on display. The connections and meanings may not be obvious, but they are there as shared conditions. Like in reading the chain of letters, the connections accumulate over time and space, and offer more nuances to the times we find ourselves in.
We are in the middle of a global pandemic, and as I write this, Denmark is yet again in lockdown. I worry that this exhibition won’t be able to open to the public. And I wonder how we can share across a distance.
– Malene Dam
Brevudveksling
Som en del af det kollektive arbejde der ligger forud for denne udstilling har kunstnerne skrevet breve til hinanden. Ud fra denne brevudveksling har Hannah Lutz, Calder Harben og Selini Halvadaki redigeret et uddrag, som er blevet til værket Chorus (2021). Se og læs værket her.
Oplev udstillingen udefra frem til 21. februar, 2021
Det er også muligt at besøge Møstings Hus og se forskellige udsnit af udstillingen udefra. Tag et kig ind af vinduerne hele vejen rundt om bygningen og oplev flere af værkerne. Udstillingen vil være oplyst alle hverdage fra kl. 11-16, samt hele døgnet i alle weekender.
Mo Maja Moesgaard, Mia Isabel Edelgart, Hannah Toticki Anbert, Deirdre J. Humphrys, Calder Harben, Hannah Lutz og Selini Halvadaki er i starten af 2021 aktuelle med gruppeudstillingen Frog Chorus i Møstings Hus, der sætter den kollektive arbejdsmetode i centrum. Udstillingen er en undersøgelse af den geografi, der på kryds og tværs vokser ud af kollektive og individuelle vilkår i gruppen; af venskab, afstand, prekære økonomier, omsorgsarbejde, begær og en fælles insisteren på at gøre sig umage sammen. Gruppen har arbejdet sammen siden 2015 og tidligere vist udstillingen Det ku’ være politisk i Janusbygningen, der også havde bidrag af andre kunstnere.
