stedSANS – Tora Balslev & Felia Gram-Hanssen

TIME
31 Aug. at 19.00-21.00: Expedition
1 Sept. at 17.00-19.00: Expedition
31 Aug.-10 Sept.: Exhibition (no reservation) – see opening hours below
9 Sept. at 14.00 & 10. Sept. at 11.00: Performance walk
9 Sept. at 16.30: Artist talk (no reservation)

PLACE Refshaleøen – meeting place varies, info follows
WHAT performance / walk / exhibition
LANGUAGE Danish
FREE – reservation due to limited place

How can art and performance make the landscape speak?

stedSANS is an artistic study of Refshaleøen. An exploration that listens to all voices. Trees, asphalt, buildings, waste water, stones, insects…

Refshaleøen is in the middle of a major transformation. From shipyard to sanctuary for creative souls to the living district of the future. It has created a crack in time and space, and you can help investigate what emerges from it. Where do we see traces of industry in external and internal landscapes?

When we meet a place, we also meet ourselves. stedSANS celebrates one of central Copenhagen’s last free spaces by listening to the voices of the place to see which voices will carry on to the future Refshaleø.

EXPEDITIONS
Dancer Tora Balslev invites you on expeditions into the island’s various landscapes, and you can come along on 31 August and 1 September.

As a participant in an expedition, you must listen to the landscape through your body. Through sensations we collect the visible and invisible essences of the place. You have to touch, lean, play, let your body be shaped by the lines of the place and follow a leaf in the wind – in order to get to know the place better.

The investigations take place where transformation is evident, and we explore what emerges when a place is being met with tenderness and care.

In addition to the two open expeditions, Tora investigates the site together with groups that have a practice within tenderness, care, art, the body and sensuality. These are the Center for Art and Mental Health, the Academy for Music, Dance and Theater and the Psychomotor Education.

COMMON WALK
The last days, 9-10 September, Tora Balslev and visual/sound artist Felia Gram-Hanssen create a performance walk with the material that has been collectively gathered, created and thought about during the previous 14 days. Tora and Felia have listened, and now they pass on what they have heard in a walk focusing on transformation, purification and traces.

As audience, you are part of a group that wanders through the places that have been researched. You hear stories about the place interwoven with soundscapes and voices from the expeditions that tell what they have encountered here. You see the dancer enter the scene and re-enact the movements that joint listening has called forth.

The walk is performed only twice for a small audience, who slowly enter the soundstage of the place as the Icon of Industry, a place of growth and mass production – and quietly ask: Where are we going?

EXHIBITION

Experiences gathered together on the expeditions are collected in an exhibition with sound, words and images. Visual and sound artist Felia Gram-Hanssen collects impressions and reflections in an installation that anchors the ephemeral. A window into the sensuous essences of the place.

The exhibition takes place in KOLONIEN, a small, atmospheric building by Jane Ostermann-Petersen centrally located on Refshaleøen.

The exhibition also functions as an open workspace for the artists’ preparations for the common walk.

9 September at 16.30, there will be an artist talk – a reflection room where you can have a cold drink and join in an informal conversation between the artists and landscape architect Bettina Lamm, who has followed the project.

Opening hours

Mon.-Fri. + Sun.: 14.00-18.00 (1 Sept.: 14.00-16.00)
Saturdays: closed

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Dancer and performance artist Tora Balslev is artistic director of the company Daily Fiction. She is interested in creating relationships with multi-species communities, and she works choreographically and meditatively with experiences of being in connection with her surroundings. A work driven by a need for a new responsibility. www.dailyfiction.dk

Visual and sound artist Felia Gram-Hanssen creates performative and installation works, where she explores sound, image and movement. Tora and Felia have collaborated since 2012 in works shown at e.g. Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Charlottenborg and Overgaden.

CREDITS