Seminar: FRESH EYES on Art and Literature in the Public Space

What happens to art when you take it out of the museums and galleries? What happens to literature when it detaches itself from the white pages of a book and instead conquers nature, gables and park benches? That is what a number of artists and researchers will discuss at this open seminar on the democratising effect of art and literature in the public space.

On Friday November 25th, Galleri Image,  the Aarhus Centre for Literature and the Aarhus Center for Visual Art will host the open seminar FRESH EYES on Art and Literature in the Public Space at Godsbanen in Aarhus. The seminar will address how everything from municipal art projects to graffiti and poems on gables have an impact on our perception of urban spaces, and how the city can be utilised for artistic purposes.

The programme offers a wide range of presentations by artists and professionals who will introduce how they approach their own work with art and public spaces.  Among other things, the Danish writer Morten Søndergaard will talk about his work with projecting his own poetry unto the gable of a building in Valby, as well as engraving it into a rock in the forest landscape of the Danish island Bornholm. In addition to this, international artists and researchers will also participate in the seminar - such as the South Korean artist and Professor at the Chung-Ang University Kyungwoo Chun and the French poet Jacques Jouet. Both will discuss their own work with art and literature in the public space.

The seminar is a part of the cross-aesthetic project FRESH EYES - International Artists Rethink Aarhus, which is the result of a collaboration between Galleri Image and the Aarhus Centre for Literature in connection with Aarhus 2017 - European Capital of Culture. Since 2013 the two institutions have invited photographers and writers from Europe, Asia and Africa to Aarhus to interpret and rethink the city in terms of culture, life and soul.

Programme:
Kl. 10.30 - 11.00: Coffee
Kl. 11.00 - 11.10: Welcome by moderator Cathrine Gamst
Kl. 11.10 - 11.40: Art historian Sabine Nielsen (DK)
Kl. 11.40 - 11.50: Coffee and reading by poet Jacques Jouet (FR)
Kl. 11.50 - 12.10: Author Louise Juhl Dalsgaard (DK)
Kl. 12.10 - 12.30: Visual Artist Kyungwoo Chun (KOR)
Kl. 12.30 - 13.30: Break
Kl. 13.30 - 13.40: Coffee and reading by poet Jacques Jouet (FR)
Kl. 13.40 - 14.10: Author and literature scholar Martin Glaz Serup (DK)
Kl. 14.10 - 14.30: Visual Artist Marianne Jørgensen (DK)
Kl. 14.30 - 14.50: Coffee
Kl. 14.50 - 15.10: Poet Morten Søndergaard (DK)
Kl. 15.10 - 15.45: Panel discussion with writer Gitte Broeng (DK)
Kl. 15.45 - 16.00: Closing remarks

Everyone is welcome at the seminar and admission is free. The seminar will be conducted in English. We kindly ask you to send a non-binding  registration email to Denne e-mail adresse bliver beskyttet mod spambots. Du skal have JavaScript aktiveret for at vise den. by November 20th.

Sabine Nielsen
CAMP: The City as Historical Battleground
Art projects realized in urban public spaces often result in heated debates, controversies and power related struggles. In her presentation, Sabine will shed light on this tendency and do so by presenting a concrete case, CAMP’s participatory photo-project edgwareroad.org, and she will discuss how artistically generated conflicts and negotiations can be thought of as critical political practice.

Jacques Jouet
The French Oulipo poet will read aloud from his poems on Aarhus written as a contribution to the FRESH EYES project.

Louise Juhl Dalsgaard
ALL INCLUSIVE
Atlas over Aarhus is an ambitious literary project with the goal of creating a literary topog-raphy of the city. In other words, getting literature about the city placed in the city at the places that it is describing. What does it mean for art that it is reaching out towards the world, physically in urban space as well as by inclusion of local citizens in the artistic process?

Kyungwoo Chun
‘Writing’ in performance and public art as an endeavor to produce spiritual connections between and for people.

Morten Søndergaard
DETACHED POETRY
What does the material do to the content of a text? How important is the context and the place where it is said? What kind of meaning does light give to a text? In what way is the body and the place (con)textual? The poet Morten Søndergaard will elaborate on these questions and talk about his work with words detached from books and about his site-specific works, both existing and future projects.

Marianne Jørgensen
Marianne Jørgensen wants to present two art projects at the seminar. For these two projects she worked with and in public spaces as both an artist and a curator. The first project, ”Love Alley”, is a miniature city she worked on for 8 years, which comments on a small town area close to her home. The second project, ”SKULPTURLANDSBY SELDE 2016”, takes place in a suburban village, where she is placing a large number of sculptures in a public and residental area.  

Martin Glaz Serup
POETRY FOUND(ED) IN PUBLIC
On space, place, cultural memory and poetry read, written and found in public. This talk will investigate how and what poetry can be found in the public space. In particular in the sculptural word installations of Morten Søndergaard and the metro poems of Jacques Jouet. It will all be about conceptual poetry, cultural memory and the quotidian.

Read more about FRESH EYES at litteraturen.nu and here on our website.

FRESH EYES is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation, The City of Aarhus, Centre for Culture and Development (CKU), Aarhus 2017 and the Danish Arts Foundation.