Denmark's most prestigious arts award goes to the exhibition and research project "Yet, it moves!"
The Bikuben Foundation's 2021 Vision Exhibition Award is accompanied by a DKK 5 mill prize. The exhibition "Yet, it moves!" is realized by Copenhagen Contemporary and Irene Campolmi in collaboration with the Interacting Minds Centre and three other scientific research partners, and involves IMC PhD fellow and artist Helene Nymann
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Yet, it moves! is a visionary research project and public art exhibition that investigates the interconnected movements across scales from the micro to the macro cosmos. The project will unfold through a series of decentralized art installations shown at different locations in Copenhagen from May to September 2023, creating opportunities for people to encounter contemporary art in new ways as the art will live in the city with the people on a daily base.
Yet, it moves! is conceptualized and curated by Irene Campolmi, curator and researcher, Marie Nipper, director of Copenhagen Contemporary and Jannie Haagemann, head of exhibitions at Copenhagen Contemporary.
The exhibition is realized in collaboration with the four scientific research partners DARK, the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen; Arts at CERN in Geneva; the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University, and the Program in Performance Studies and ModLab, University of California, Davis.
The award is accompanied by a generous gift of DKK 5 million, and Copenhagen Contemporary can now begin to work towards the creation of the exhibition format of the future, bringing into play disciplines from the worlds of art and science and unfolding in a direct dialogue with the citizens of Copenhagen, as they move about the city every day. At key locations in the city it will be possible to encounter spectacular contemporary art created by Ryoji Ikeda, Precious Okoyomon, Ralph Lemon, Black Quantum Futurism, Jenna Sutela, Cecilia Bengolea, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Nora Turato, Helene Nymann, and others to be announced. Through video, performance and art installations the exhibition explores movement as a ubiquitous phenomenon, making us aware of the many and complex patterns of movement that we are all part of.
Andreas Roepstoff, Prof, IMC, states: It is exciting to be part of this amazing collaboration that crosses boundaries between art, science and humanities.
When research moves out of the lab, and art out of the gallery, new configurations and meetings can happen in public space. I hope we can contribute to wonderful experiences that experiment with our everyday way of being in the world. Experiences that allow us to explore and reflect on how and why we act together.
Joseph Dumit, University of California, Davis, states: I'm incredibly happy to be part of Yet It Moves! .The result of an ongoing series of conversations across sciences and art, it is a platform for supporting imaginative practices through art-science residencies. As an anthropologist who studies how science and technology change, it is clear that this change has as much to do with care and imagination as it does with laboratories and testing. By providing time for encounters in these residencies, we can foster new curiosities. One thing scientists do really well is to get really curious about how something works in general. One thing artists do really well is share their curiosities in provocative ways and in specific places, ways that slow us down and introduce time to wonder here and now, to tell new stories about ourselves.
The focus on movement is also a focus on scales. What is a city in movement? How does the speed and perspective of the Metro relate to the checking of social media on your phone as you walk through a crowd. How does walking across a bridge each day relate to the next one, and how do traffic patterns shape our felt sense of urgency? Who do you notice around you and who do you remember? We can become curious about each of these questions as a physicist, as a sociologist, as a neuroscientist, or as someone who is late to meeting a friend. Each perspective calls up a different imaginary of togetherness as well as a different ecosystem of data.
Yet It Moves! challenges us to keep changing scales, to stay with the emergent troubles as well as with the troubles we know.
Participating artist and IMC PhD fellow, Helene Nymann, states: In times where realizing our interdependence with one another is ever more urgent, this interdisciplinary project supports novel ways of collectively moving with and of being moved by knowledge. I’m therefore extremely excited to be part of this ambitious vision and to create work alongside some of the best world-makers out there.
When climate change, COVID and other impending problems prevent us from moving around in the world as we used to, artists and scientists are needed to produce experiments that give new perspectives. Becoming part of this project will allow me to continue my work on memory, on how our bodies change along with our perception of the world and on how to remember a more sustainable future.
The jury’s citation
‘Yet, it moves! is the winner of the 2021 Vision Exhibition Award. Anchored in a grand vision of letting artworks occupy seven key locations in Copenhagen's urban spaces, the theme of movement, a subject at once fundamental and hyper-topical and complex, will be presented to a wide audience.
One of the strengths of the exhibition concept is its potential to offer the city users an experience of the artworks by moving together with them, thereby providing new and powerful visual entry points for experiencing interrelations that are otherwise only discussed theoretically. Carefully selected locations in Copenhagen are being envisaged as sites for the building of platforms and as experiential spaces for the presentation of screen-based works, performances and other artistic manifestations that can offer the experience of movement in us, around us and above us’, writes the jury in its citation choosing Copenhagen Contemporary as the winner.
Read more about the exhibition, Copenhagen Contemporary, and the award here: