“Saving the bird’s nest” is a redistribution of the campaign “Save the Bird’s Nest” that was initiated by a local community in Copenhagen’s northwest area back in 2020. The community mobilized in a collective struggle after realizing, that the iconic pink building housing the popular pub “The Bird’s Nest”, where planned to be bulldozed in favor of more profitable youth houses.

In September 2022, after two years of fighting, the politicians decided NOT to tear down the pub. So, what did the community do to save their place? What actions and tactics did they apply and what can we all learn from their battle?

To answer these questions, Another Public asked Denniz Batak, the owner of the pub and one of the leading figures in the campaign, to share the story and elaborate on the different steps taken in the process – from the initial suspicion to the building of friendships and the final celebration. Artist Lasse Mouritzen was then invited to make a film, telling the story of the struggle through the lens of the people involved. The film ended out as a manifest, using the voice of Denniz Batak to inspire others to take up the fight against gentrification.

Watch the film, use it and share it. And let’s show that local citizens do have the power to change the development of their neighborhood – in favor of community rather than profit.

Saving the Bird’s Nest is curated by Another Public as part of the global art project Look Who’s Talking by 7 1/2, South Korea.

Another Public presents a project collaboration with the Indonesian art collective Jatiwangi Art Factory (JAF) and the Kunsthal for Comtemparary Art Rønnebæksholm in Næstved. This project exchange knowledge  and methods working with sound art, participatory art and all the unexpected that happens when people   from different cultures meet.
JAF uses art and artistic methods to change the social, geographical, political and economic landscape of a city or community. In this kind of artistic practice, the work of art merges with a societal purpose that involves the needs, resources and views of the locals. JAF uses clay as material and inspiration in many of their activities.
The Indonesian art collective visits Næstved over a time periode of 14 days, where they will live and work at Rønnebæksholm.  During the 14 days they will create songs inspired from their meetings and conversations with people they meet, and make clay instruments with school kids from Næstved. At the end of the project the collective and the kids will perform at a public concert at Rønnebæksholm.
Jatiwangi Art Factory (JAF) visits Næstved as part of a bigger world tour leading up to their particpation in Documenta Fifteeen. During the tour, the collective produces a new album consisting of songs made with inspiration from the cities they visit and together with the people they meet.

“Living Billboard” var et samarbejde mellem Another Public og kunstneren Pelle Brage.
Projektet bestod af et stort digitalt billboard, midlertidigt placeret på Rådhuspladsen i København i november 2021. Forbipasserende kunne bestemme skærmens indhold, der blev vist i loop det meste af døgnets timer. Skærmen var sat op med et system, der gjorde det muligt at skabe indhold på en Ipad (tegning, video, foto, grafik mv) og derefter uploade det direkte på skærmen.

Pelle og hans assistent Oliver stod ved kunstværket hver dag og gik i dialog med dem, der stoppede op på vej over pladsen.

Intentionen med projektet var, fra Another Publics side, at udvikle og eksperimentere med et nyt deltagerbaseret format for kunst i det offentlige rum i samarbejde med en kunstner.

“Living Billboard” lagde op til en meget spontan og umiddelbar form for deltagelse, der gav mennesker mulighed for at påvirke værkets udtryk, mens de var på vej gennem byen.

Kunstner Karoline H Larsen blev inviteret til at deltage i Værk Din Verden med et nyt kunstværk skabt i samarbejde med lokale borgere i Kolding og Fredericia.

Kunstværket var en undersøgelse af, hvad der sker, hvis man lader borgerne ændre på byens visuelle struktur; Hvad er muligt og hvordan kan et nyt aftryk forandre oplevelsen af et sted? I løbet af projektet blev Koldinggenserne og Fredericianerne opfordret til at sætte deres egne aftryk på byrummet med reflekterende tape. Der blev afholdt offentlige tape-aktioner og delt tape-kits ud i lokale butikker. 80 elever fra Fredericia Gymnasium skabte stedsspecifikke tape-værker, som de selv satte op i byen på steder, de havde udpeget forud.

English
Artist Karoline H Larsen was invited to participate in Værk Din Verden with a new artwork created in collaboration with citizens from Kolding and Fredericia. The artwork examined how visual statements in public space changes the experience of a city. Citizens from the two cities was invited to make their own contribution using reflecting tape.

Kunstner Molly Haslund blev inviteret til at skabe et nyt kunstværk til Værk Din Verden i Vejle. Værket Alphabet Camp undersøgte oplevelsen af Vejle set gennem Vejlensernes optik. Henover en måned bevægede kunstneren sig gennem Vejle med en mobil skrivestation. Skoler, forbipasserende og andre interesserede blev inviteret til at skrive om deres oplevelse af Vejle.

Alle historierne vil indgå i en bog, der bliver publiceret i august 2021.

Værket er en del af vores løbende projekt Værk Din Verden, der bruger kunst til at engagere borgere i samtaler om deres by.

#VærkDinVerden pilot version ran throughout November 2018 in 7 cities in Denmark and on social media. The aim of the project was to engage people in the making of visuel statements on public art. The pilot project used the idea of a marketing campaign as an exhibition model, being present on several sites, platforms and media simultaniously. Throughout the month of the exhibition the statements where spreading and the conversation kicked off in random everyday places and situations.

The 8 participating artists where: Tanja Nellemann Poulsen, Christian Elovara Dinesen, Kristoffer Akselbo, Charlotte Haslund-Christensen, Jacob Tækker, Within Walls, Jens & Morten og Lars Arrhenius.

#VærkdinVerden pilot version happened November 1 to November 30, 2018. Curated and produced for Råderum.

The Cool Down Party was a one day exhibition at ARoS showing works by Kristoffer Akselbo, Jacob Tækker, Tanja Nellemann Kruse, Jens & Morten, Within Walls, Charlotte Haslund-Christensen, Christian Elovara Dinesen and Lars Arrhenius. The exhibition was the final event during Værk Din Verden 2018.

Hvordan ser Midtfyn ud om 50 år? I kunstprojektet Den Utopiske By inviterede vi Midtfyns borgere til at forestille sig deres egn i fremtiden og diskutere, hvordan den ideelle by ser ud og fungerer.

I løbet af efteråret 2020 vil kunstnerduoen Jens & Morten realisere borgernes fremtidsvisioner i et nyt interaktivt digitalt rum.

Via workshops med 3D scan, game jams, modelbyg, lydoptagelser, tegning og digitale samplinger blev der skabt et nyt Midtfyns univers, der gjorde borgernes fremtidsdrømme til virkelighed.

Projektets mundede ud i en serie videoer og en Midtfynsk spilleplatform, hvor alle havde mulighed for at gå på opdagelse i egnens fremtid og bygge videre på fortællingen.

Living as Clay explored how the local material clay mentally connects people and places in Jatiwangi. For the exhibition three artists produced new process based art works for three different sites: A school, a health centre and a market. The participating artists responded to the social role of these sites through the lens of clay, resulting in different art works that mutually celebrated clay as a way of living in Jatiwangi:

• Superfood by Christian Elovara Dinesen at the health centre.
• Connecting Clay by Emil Krog Rasmussen at the school.
• Fruit Tile Trading Station by Jesper Aabille at the market.

View the exhibition catalogue here.

For the exhibition Living as Clay Emil Krog Rasmussen invited kids from Al Mizan Islamic Boarding School to make a huge multi-colored chain out of clay with him. Through a series of workshops each student made their own individual clay chain.  Each student’s chain was then linked together with the classmates’ chains. Finally all the classes’ chains were tied together into a long chain, that they collectively installed in the school yard; Planting the chain in the earth and letting it grow organically up and around the trees.

The final sculpture symbolises the kids’ mental connection to clay, to the school and to each other. Also transforming clay into a metaphor for the educational system pointing towards the importance of emotional connections and collective caring as well as the fragile structure of a community.

Fruit Tile Trading Station by Jesper Aabille was one of three new art works made for the exhibition Living as Clay in Indonesia.

For Fruit Tile Trading Station, artist Jesper Aabille, had a booth at Ciborelang Market in Jatiwangi. From there he invited shoppers and sellers to trade real fruit in exchange for fruit tiles; sliced fruit combinations hand painted on roof tiles. If one costumer gave one watermelon and a banana, Jesper would paint one watermelon and a banana on a roof tile and give it to the costumer in exchange.

The project mimics the social and economic system at the market were people hang out and meet each other while buying food to bring back home.

The roof tiles original function as money based trade object is turned into a conversation about the value of the market as a social space often used for unformal hang out, gossiping and sharing stories. Inviting the costumers to freely define the value of the roof tiles in fruit, Jesper asked how is value created? And points towards Jatiwangi as a place where social life and chit chats might rank higher than money and profit.

The project ended with an open ceremony in Jesper’s market booth where all the traders came and picked up their fruit tile order and ate fruit salad together.

For the exhibition Living as Clay artist Christian Elovara Dinesen transformed the kids’ nutrition consulting room at the hospital into a visual and humorous art installation called Super Food. The art work taped into the urgent issue of malnutrition among kids, an issue that the hospital deals with through counseling families in food’s nutritional values.

In Super Food Christian turned this difficult and heavy health issue into a playful and aesthetic conversation and campaign focusing on food and health as more than just a matter of nutrition, but also a matter of imagination, play and togetherness.

The installation consists of several sculptures imitating the local kids’ collective selection of food they would consider as super food. The kid’s super food selection is shown as oversized, intensely multicolored clay food piles, decorated with glitchy stickers and blinking led light.

In Super Food Christian uses clay to mirror the Jatiwangi kids’ relation to health and food and taps into Jatiwangi’s characteristic sense of humor and collectivity as a step stone to talk about healthy ways of living.

Another Public was invited by the New York-based art organization No Longer Empty to participate in a 4 month collaborative curatorial experiment and conversation taking place in Flatbush in Brooklyn.

Based on the overall concept of community wellness the invited curators worked towards a new exhibition to take place in the context of the local hospital Kings County Hospital. The curators conducted a series of studio visits, did site specific research in Flatbush, discussed and speculated in curatorial and collaborative strategies, methods and challenges within the field of contemporary art, site-specificity and community involvement.

The project culminated in the collectively curated, site specific exhibition (After)care at Kings County Hospital, expanding hospital services into a concern about everyday life in the Flatbush community.

Another Public deltog i konkurrencen om at skabe et 2-årigt kunstprojekt til Brøndby Strand i samarbejde med områdets beboere. I projektet fungerede Another Public som producer på kunstneren Jesper Aabilles team og var med til at skitsere det endelige projektforslag, der blev fremlagt for styregruppen. Tre teams var udpeget til at deltage i skitse-konkurrencen på baggrund af et Open Call iværksat af Statens Kunstfond.

Værk Din Verden er et projekt og en metode til at engagere mennesker i nye samtaler om byens rum gennem kunst. I projektet arbejder vi med en åben, samskabende og dialog-baseret tilgang fra start til slut, med udgangspunkt i den lokale kontekst og i tæt samarbejde med lokale partnere. Intentionen med projektet er at introducere kunst som et værktøj til samtale og fællesskab mellem forskellige mennesker og som indgang til nye perspektiver på byen og dens muligheder. De kunstværker der indgår i Værk Din Verden er midlertidige og folder sig ud i mødet med byens brugere.

I 2021 blev der skabt værker i Ærøskøbing, Vejle, Kolding og Fredericia. Se film om værkerne på projektets YouTube kanal.

Tekst og redaktionelt arbejde for kunstner Jesper Aabille i forbindelse med hans soloudstilling Pølsernes By på Kunsthal 6100 i Haderslev.

When the public library in Værebro got a new art work from The Danish Arts Foundation – The Grass Bike by N55, Another Public made a communication campaign to encourage local awareness and motivate the library users to borrow and use the art work.

The campaign consisted of three components, a hand-out recipe on how to use The Grass Bike, a small booklet with ideas and inspiration and a public event where the art work was presented and could be tested out. As part of the campaign Gladsaxe Libraries got the local press to cover the news about The Grass Bike.

Another Public has carried out a series of communication initiatives for Kunst i Værebro, among them two smaller publications and hand-outs that describe the art project in the housing area and make the residents take part.

Take a look at one of the publications here.

Kunst som Løsning is a folder presenting the artist Pelle Brage and his art practice. The folder is targeted towards municipalities, companies and institutions interested in artistic solutions to everyday problems.

Amalie Frederiksen/Another Public wrote an essay on Kitchen Dialogue; a the nomadic social art project by artist duo Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen. The essay was published in a new book by the artist duo that collected all their Kitchen Dialogue projects with, among other writing, essays by some of the curators they have been working with throughout the project’s lifespan.

The essay responds to the Kitchen Dialogue project Strategies to Minimize the Error, happening in Copenhagen in 2016 as part of the exhibition Alt_Cph curated by Amalie Frederiksen & Charlotte Bagger Brandt.

Buy the book here.

Danish Art Foundation asked Another Public to write about a selections of newer public art works recently supported by the council. The writings was published as part of the publication Kunst i Hverdagen.

Som en del af Værk Din Verden har kunstneren Molly Haslund lavet en bog med udsagn fra de borgerne, hun mødte i Vejle, mens hun bevægede sig gennem byen med sin skulpturelle campingvogn; Alphabet Camp. Som afslutning på projektet inviterede vi i samarbejde med Kirkens Korshær til boglancering i Mariaparken i Vejle.

Til arrangementet deltog blandt andet brugerne af Kirkens Korshærs varmestue i Vejle, elever fra Vejle Friskole, Bylaboratoriet, forbipasserende og andre interesserede. Flere af de fremmødte havde selv bidraget med udsagn til bogen, og eleverne fra Vejle Friskole læste op sammen med Molly. VærkDinVerden i Vejle har på den måde skabt et rum for byens mangfoldighed af stemmer og bragt de meget forskellige grupper af mennesker lidt tættere sammen.
 
Alle indtægter fra bogsalget doneres til Kirkens Korshærs samtale-tjeneste Sct. Nicolai Tjenesten, der hver dag året rundt lægger øre til overhørte stemmer. Bogen kan pt. købes i København ved henvendelse til Molly Haslund eller Another Public. Minimumsprisen er 35 kr. som betales via Mobile Pay direkte til Sct. Nicolai Tjenesten på: 492063.

Room Service – guesting other territories is a series of conversations about the ethical dilemmas and cultural conflicts associated with creating art projects in public spaces. What is the best way to act as an artist or curator in other people’s territories? How do you enter cultural contexts that have completely different rules, social codes and notions of art that may be different from those by which you are shaped?

On Thursday 30 September, Room Service was guesting Art Hub with a mini-seminar focusing on socially engaged art in the light of the current debate on representation, identity and colonial power dynamics.

The seminar addressed issues such as hospitality, equality and the equalisation of balances of power in an attempt to identify dilemmas and come up with new ways of continuing to create art for, and with people other than those who are similar to us.

To assist in this attempt, we had invited a panel consisting of the curator Charlotte Bagger Brandt (DK) and the artists Kenneth Balfelt (DK), Vincent Rumahloine (ID) and Dominique Lämmli (CH).

The seminar was moderated by the artist/researcher Lasse Mouritzen and curator Amalie Frederiksen from the Another Public.

Artist Jesper Aabille created a relaxed, informal atmosphere with his performative hospitality happening, Five Finger Punch, featuring a punch menu served during the event, accompanied by cultural histories of the origins of each type of punch.

I forlængelse af Værk Din Verden 2021 arrangerede vi en rullende konference om kunst, byrum og deltagelse. Sammen med 30 unge byrums-entusiaster og oplægsholdere diskuterede vi, hvordan vi kan skabe bedre byer med kunst, kultur og arkitektur. Undervejs zoomede vi ind på processer, udfordringer og dilemmaer i arbejdet kreativ byudvikling.

Intentionen var at rammesætte et socialt og uformelt format, der både gav plads til vidensdeling, faglig inspiration og netværk.

De deltagende oplægsholdere var:

Christina Juhlin
Er PhD studerende og forsker i bypolitik og menneskers forskellige måder at engagere sig i deres omgivelser – og hvordan de engagementsformer bevæger sig mellem (og udfordrer skelnet mellem) det personlige og det politiske. Især ser hun på, hvordan forskellige engagementsformer er båret af og kommer til udtryk gennem rum. Christina forsker også i hvordan kultur og kreativitet er blevet en form for fælles agenda – altså ‘alle’ vil på en eller anden måde kunsten og kulturen – som i nogle tilfælde kan resultere i en form for afpolitisering af den offentlige debat om byen og retten til byens rum.

Aysha Amin
Aysha Amin er initiativtager til kunst/kultur/arkitektur platform og galleri, Andromeda 8220, som har base i Gellerup siden 2017. Andromeda arbejder tværfagligt, nysgerrigt og kollaborativt, ud fra lokal-globale samfundsaktuelle emner og netværker. Aysha er optaget af– og udforsker/udfordre relationerne imellem det materielle/ immaterielle, det lokale/det globale, den individuelle/ familiære fællesskaber, konstruktionen og oplevelsen af magtstrukturer, Ayshas arbejde er blevet vist lokalt, nationalt samt på Venedig Biennalen i 2018 og på DAAD Galerie under Berlin Bienalen 2020.

Jeanette Frisk
Jeanette Frisk er arkitekt og stifter af ArkiLab, et tværfagligt urbant konsulentstudio, der særligt beskæftiger sig med demokratiske designprocesser. Jeanette har arbejdet både nationalt og internationalt indenfor diverse arkitektoniske discipliner, herunder urbane rum og bygningsdesign, involvering og forandringsledelse, research, udstillinger mm. Derudover faciliterer hun kreative workshops på folkeskoler, med særligt fokus på at engagere børn og unge mennesker.

Værk Din Verden Prisen was a site specific celebration of the public art work HjerteMix placed inside a long tunnel in a housing area in Greve.

The event was an extension of Værk Din Verden 2018, that encouraged the public to nominate their favorite public art works. Based on the nominations a jury selected HjerteMix as the winner. The residents won an award by artist Tanja Nellemann Kruse and 5000 kr. to celebrate.

The celebration consisted of the large scale participatory art performance Growing Grid by the artists behind HjerteMix, Karoline H Larsen, Benny Henningsen, ÅF Lighting, Helle Hove og Astrid Randrup. Over 150 residents and locals joined the event painting their tunnel with colorful grid patterns.

Room Service a live conversation series with artists and curators who work nomadically, making art on other people’s territory. This ongoing project explores different methods and strategies of local engagement and collaboration, and sets light on the dilemmas and challenges when guesting other people’s places.

Room Service 2 invited artist duo Pedagogy of Space (Kristian Byskov & Margarita Del Carmen) who work internationally with engagement and organizing of local groups aiming to activate spaces and create new possibilities for people to affect their neighborhoods. Interested in land rights, creation of space and negotiations in relation to specific sites, the artists uses different methods for shared spaces to be designed and formed collectively.

Room Service is realized by Another Public, hosted by LOKALE and made in collaboration with Jesper Aabille and Human Hotel.

Room Service is a series of live conversation series with artists and curators who work nomadically, making art on other people’s territory. This ongoing project explores different methods and strategies of local engagement and collaboration, and sets light on the dilemmas and challenges when guesting other people’s places.

Room Service 1 invited curator Rhine Bernadino (UK/Phillipines) who’s curatorial practice is inspired by sailing, pirates, guerilla tactics, falling in love and gossiping. She runs an artist residency and community art project in a small fishing town in the Philippines. On of Rhine’s methods to engage and start up new community collaboration is hanging out and partying.

Room Service is realized by Another Public, hosted by LOKALE and made in collaboration with Jesper Aabille and Human Hotel.