| art.description.project | Anyone that passed by the exhibition space Astrid Noacks Atelier in Rådmandsgade in Copenhagen during summer 2020, will have noticed that the site was a fenced off site of construction. The multifaceted backyard environment that until recently surrounded the atelier was literally becoming a hole in the ground. Reinforcements, excavators and concrete elements shaped a provisional landscape, in which the studio itself was inaccessible and enclosed by a wall of cover plates.
In this landscape, fueled by property speculation and gentrification capital, I turned to a landscape of a different kind and region, by introducing the Muitalus sámiid birra. A book from 1910 about the life of the Sami, and the first book ever written in Sami by the Sami Johan Turi. Or, the wolf-hunter who became a writer. However, part of the credit for the book’s creation can be attributed to the Danish female painter contemporary with Astrid Noack, Emile Demant Hatt (1888-1958). Her role as female artist, ethnographer, translator and collaborator in the publishing of Muitalus sámiid birra, was the point of departure for my work in the context of Astrid Noack’s Atelier.
Practically, an outdoor LED screen functioned as a sculptural support structure for an experimentation with collaborative video-editing. Approaching exhibition making as a process of encounters and the notion of audience as a critical resource, a portable cabin, parked inside the construction site, more precisely functioned as a temporary studio during a couple of events exploring collaborative ethnography as artistic methodology. The events all took place between the 14th and 30thof August 2020. | sv |
