13 June: Michelle Eistrup
TIME: 13 June 16.00-04.00h
START: Amager
CATEGORY: Visual artist
Live-stream every hour on the hour on www.facebook.com/walkingcopenhagen
SELECTIVE MEMORY
Who remembers, who is selected, what preservers? I will interact with different spaces, buildings, sites, and institutional spaces along my journey, and tell small humorous and yet sad stories of encounters and histories protected in my brain.
My journey starts in Amager, crossing to Christianshavn, Værnedamsvej, Frederiksberg, Nationalmuseet, Statens Museum for Kunst, and so on. I will create a route but also allow for derailing along the way.
Do you remember when you came…? Do you remember how they looked…? Could you see the deep blue waves in the sky… twinkling lights right above you? Oh, I knew you when you were old, but sprightly you were. Wandering and taking me in hand, showing me your love. I held you above others…
This city was calm, like no other space, I could move… all alone wandering through its streets, late at night, nothing I could have experienced before. I knew I could judge other spaces by what you taught me, that the night was no longer to be feared.
I will wander early in the evening and late into the morning through the streets of Copenhagen, marking my traces with stories, my thoughts with images, and words on buildings as I move.
This walk will be a personal and critical journey for me. Buildings hold memories that can no longer be touched – they are held only in the beholder, and then what the pen has deemed to write. I will explore this city with both an insider and outsider point of view, as I have never wholly given over to this landscape. I will imagine other scenes in the present, the past, and how these images can transpire and transpose what we see, feel, and touch.
DOCUMENTATION JUNE 13
NOTES
“Everything, every process, every event or encounter is itself a mode of becoming that has its own time, its own movement, its own force.”
– pg. 2, Becoming Undone, Darwinian Reflections of Life, Politcs and Art, Elizabeth Grosz
Crossroads, power and politics of space
Who has access to what, and what type of interaction occurs based on possibility, social needs and function.
1. Crossroads – An interim of spaces, which holds different communities that interact with each other through public space.
2. Face to Face opposing architectural structures – Colonial money and the newer. Architectural crossroads – Buildings and monuments constructed that face each other as a reminder to power and their status within the landscape.
3. Behind the times in critical thinking, narrative and reflection – and post humus in representation and discourse. In sync with the current cultural discourse in Denmark. Power structures are revealed in the narrative and choice.
FILM
1. Fabrikken for Kunst, Crossroads (without audio)
2. Football Crossroads (without audio)
3. Christiania Crossroads (without audio)
4. Christianshavn (with audio)
5. Vold Crossroads (with audio)
6. National Museum (without audio)
(Behind the times in critical thinking, narrative and reflection- and post humus in representation and discourse. In sync with the current cultural discourse in Denmark. Power structures are revealed in the narrative and choice.)
7. Akademie for Kunst/Charlottenborg, Colonial money and the newer (without audio)
8. Nørreport (without audio)
9. Nørreport Crossroads (without audio)
10. Statens Museum for Kunst
Talk with Visual Artist, Gillon Grantsaan:
Behind the times in critical thinking, narrative, and reflection- and post humus in representation and discourse. In sync with the current cultural discourse in Denmark. Power structures are revealed in the narrative and choice.
The pressure from the external world on the individual. The dot is a symbol of self control and the circle is a symbol of inner power control. Dialectic balance of inside and the outside to keep harmony. Digestion of negative energy breaks this power. Kongo Graphic Writing and other Narratives of the sign. (pg .113. Barbaro Matinez Ruiz.)
11. Odd Fellow Palace, Colonial money and the newer (without audio)
12. Amalienborg and Maersk, Colonial money and the newer (without audio)
13. West Indisk Pakhus, Queen Mary and Maersk, Colonial money and the newer (without audio)
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Michelle Eistrup is a visual artist who works primarily in video, photography, and sound. She grew up in Jamaica, Paris and New York, and presently resides in Denmark with her family. She has her MFA from the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen and BA from Haverford College, Pennsylvania. Her practice explores the history, legacies, and denial/absence of colonialism through four overarching themes: African diaspora identity and expression; politics of recognition; dynamics of isolationism; and embodied rites and rituals. Rooted in a vibrant global arts community, she has exhibited internationally, and she curated BAT, Bridging Art + Text.
Bridging Art + Text: The 3 volume publication is the result of a long-stretched effort of editors Michelle Eistrup and Annemarie B. Clausen, producer Anders Juhl, and the input from more than 30 artists, scholars, curators and writers, who collaborated at a workshop in Denmark in 2012 with the overriding themes: Spirituality, Black Identity and Aesthetics, Art & Independence and Spaces for Art & Literature. The BAT workshop aimed at creating bridges between professionals working with parallel sources of inspiration, primarily anchored in the Caribbean, the US, Africa and Europe. The publication is made in collaboration with The Karen Blixen Museum.
Eistrup has exhibited in art institutions and galleries like the National Art Gallery (Kingston, Jamaica), The Modern Museum (Stockholm), Haugar Vestfold Kunstmuseum (Norway), Camp (Copenhagen), Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Galleri Image (Aarhus), Kuala Lumpur Fine Art Museum (Malaysia), The Taitu Art Center (Ethiopia), Arnolfini (London), Momentum Nordic Festival for Modern Art (Moss), and AGWA (Perth) in Australia. Eistrup has also participated in residencies in Sweden, Senegal, Germany, Australia, Kenya and Trinidad.
