Georg Jagunov, Cocoon, 2014 (Sculpture and projection mapping project). Courtesy of the Artist.
Press Release, November 2021
Memoirs of the Abyss: Liquid Ground
Organised by Malou Solfjeld
Join us for an evening of film, discussion, food and natural wines, as we reflect on the mechanics of the extractivist worldview and how we can do things differently. As part of the exhibition and research project Memoirs of the Abyss: Three Ecologies and More, curator Malou Solfjeld and SixtyEight Art Institute welcome you to an evening featuring key works from the exhibition, as well as discussion between the curator and artists, accompanied by food and wine.
As the main event, Spanish artist Enar de Dios Rodríguez, will give an artist talk about her practice, which focuses on how human actions change and radically alter ecosystems, often leading to invasive operations that destroy biodiversity. She will introduce her latest film, Liquid Ground, which narrates humanity’s past, present and future underwater excursions, including the current mining of the seabed. The work reminds us that we are all entangled, all responsible.
As a prologue to this, Madeleine Andersson’s Dirty Coal, which takes a humorous and tongue-in-cheek look at the associations of extractivism and desire in so-called petrosexuality, will be screened and followed by excerpts from Mette Riise’s The Less Unsustainable Talkshow. Both works approach the relation between capitalism and climate change from a feministic point of view, revealing the perversity behind exploitation of resources through concepts such as “green growth”. The two artists will discuss the common themes and satirical elements in their work, and reflect on the wider issues at stake.
Jamain Brigitha (The Carribean Housewife), and Lesley-Ann Brown (Blackgirl on Mars) will kick off the evening by reading from their respective works, “Where are you from?” and “Decolonial Daughter - Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son”. The reading will be followed by a conversation.
Throughout the evening works by Signe Vad, Morten Søndergaard and Georg Jagunov will provide auditory and visual context, setting the scene for the common meal served by Send Flere Krydderier and accompanied by natural wine from Oinofilia. Send Flere Krydderier is a socioeconomic company which aims to introduce more women from ethnic minority backgrounds to the labour market. Oinofilia imports Greek natural wines from smaller to medium-sized wineries, all of which have a green (organic or biodynamic) philosophy, unique terroir, grape specialization, history and tradition in common.
Entrance incl. food: 100 DKK
Discount for students, the unemployed, members of UKK and BKF, as well as art lovers on a low budget: 50 DKK. The ticket includes a meal served by Send Flere Krydderier. Wine paid separately on the evening.
Get tickets via this Billetto Link.
Full Programme
From 18.00 to 23.00
Screenings and Artist Talks:
Enar de Dios Rodriguez: Liquid Ground
Madeleine Andersson: Dirty Coal
Mette Riise: The Less Unsustainable Talkshow
Reading and conversation:
The Caribbean Housewife aka Jamain Brigitha: Where are you from?
Blackgirl on Mars aka Lesley-Ann Brown: Decolonial Daughter
Works in the space:
Georg Jagunov: Chrysalis
Signe Vad: Placenta Rugs
Sound piece:
Morten Søndergaard: Speos
Food: Send Flere Krydderier
Wine: Oinofilia
Enar de Dios Rodríguez is a Vienna based Spanish artist, concerned with mapping as a timeless tool of control. She examines how human actions change and radically alter land and seascapes, often leading to invasive operations that destroy biodiversity. Liquid Ground is a video essay composed as a set of riddles. Throughout 30 minutes, the award-winning artwork talks about colonialism, ecology and representation through found footage of historical and contemporary deep-sea explorations: from illustrations of the first worldwide oceanographic expedition with HMS Challenger (1858) to current technologies and visions related to mapping the ocean floors with the prospect of mining the seabed.
Georg Jagunov was born in Russia, spent his childhood in Belarus and moved to Denmark in 1998. He studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Developing biosanctuaries from Als to Nørrebro, Georg recently transformed his studio into a spaceship of flint and moss. With his Chrysalis cocoon, Georg seeks to extend the projection screen surface by merging digital animation with sculpture, sound and spatial elements. Cocoon is a symbol of new life in becoming and the meeting with the unknown.
Jamain Brigitha aka The Caribbean Housewife, is an artist, curator, and creative entrepreneur who realizes projects and events worldwide. Besides her incredible hot soul soup kitchen, she is known for her spectacular pricelist, indicating a price range between 500 and 1 million kroner for questions like: “Where are you from?” “How long have you been in Denmark?” “How did you get here?” Asking for her recipes will cost you 5 million DKK. You can right now visit her and taste the renowned Housewife Roast at Sønder Boulevard 53, Wednesdays only. For our event at Koncertkirken, she will take a break from cooking and instead engage in a conversation about the question: “Where are you from?”
Lesley-Ann Brown is a Brooklyn-born writer with roots in the Caribbean. She writes from Trinidad and Tobago, Brooklyn, New York, Møn and Copenhagen, Denmark. Her book “Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son” (Repeater Books, 2018) focuses on matrilineality, and its relation to land and sea. In 2021 “Black Girl on Mars”, a collection of essays, will follow. For the Kulturhavn Festival event organized by The Caribbean Housewife, she performed her own interpretation of H.C. Andersson’s “The Little Mermaid”; a Caribbean Version, deconstructing the fairytale in favour of a decolonial story exposing the history of Copenhagen Harbour, the Danish involvement in human trafficking across the sea, and the mythical Mama Wata making justice.
Madeleine Andersson is a Swedish artist currently enrolled in the master program of the Royal Art Academy in Copenhagen. Her research project Petrosexuality examines sexual connotations within an industrial discourse. Her video work Dirty Coal was shown at SixtyEight Art Institute earlier this year, hidden away to surprise visitors in the most private space of the ladies' and mens' room. As part of the exhibition Memoirs of the Abyss: Three Ecologies and More, the work offered a humorous yet deeply sincere take on humanity’s perverse and self-destructive drive to exploit the resources of the Earth.
Mette Riise is a Danish performance artist who recently graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She is currently enrolled in the master program at the Academy Konsthögskolan in Malmø. In her practice Riise engages herself in the business world and combines the tragic story of capitalism and climate with critical satire and comedy. She is currently researching the castle in the air called “green growth”, by pointing to the fact that an ever expanding economy will never be sustainable. She is concerned with the white male supremacy and has been touring with her consultancy tutorial “How to build an artist brand” with special attention to the extreme underrepresentation of female artists in museums, collections, auctions and galleries.
Morten Søndergaard is a Danish author, word and sound artist and amateur speleologist based amongst olive trees in Italy. He has translated several works by Jorge Louis Borges, and in 2019 he created the impressive group exhibition “Sproghospitalet” (The Language Hospital) at Sorø Kunstmuseum, which examined how both language and the body consist of many interdependent parts, and how both body and language can become sick, or even fall apart. But perhaps words can also function as medicine, as is the case in his Word Pharmacy. The work presented on this occasion, Speos, is a bodily and verbal exploration of a mountain from the inside. A sci-fi documentary of a mission through underground tunnels in search of the chamber of silence. The sound journey is composed of ambient music, a poetic storyline, and the soundscape from within the actual cave expedition, all published in stone.
Signe Vad is a Copenhagen-based artist recognized for her ecological, activistic and performative artistic praxis and her on-going work with the Syndicate of Creatures (tSoC), Office of Emergency and Voices of Pythia. All projects characterized by collaborative approaches to addressing the current climate crisis and human caused mass extinction. For this occasion, she will present her placenta rugs – digitally woven blankets with the tree of life as its motif. Each placenta has been picked up by the artist directly from the mother in her home or hospital, shortly after birth. Instead of becoming a leftover material after nine months of pregnancy, the placenta is now immortalized as an artwork. Furthermore, it is transformed into a sacred item, in which people can wrap themselves in a ritual of rebirth and as a comforting reminder of the caring, nurturing, and life-giving functions the placenta once had for the fetus in the womb.
Memoirs of the Abyss: Liquid Ground at Koncertkirken has been organized by curator Malou Solfjeld as an extension of her exhibition/research project 'Memoirs of the Abyss: Three Ecologies and More,' developed for SixtyEight Art Institute's two-year exhibition programme, 'Memoirs of Saturn' and kindly made possible by the support of the Danish Arts Foundation.
SixtyEight Art Institute is an artistic/curatorial research organisation looking to uncover, develop, and further exchanges between artists and curators and their creative labour. Currently showing the exhibition project Above the Sky, Beneath the Ground with Anna Samsøe, Anne Guro Larsmon, Linnéa Gad and Iris Smeds curated by Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller and that is part of our two-year programme of exhibitions Memoirs of Saturn, which is looking to rethink the concept of ‘prosperity’ as a common value we have the chance to develop through art, in and with nature. The programme is kindly supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Det Obelske Familiefond, and Beckett-Fonden.