Timeframe：

2018.4.1——2019.7.31

Artists：

Rikke Ehlers Nilsson, Maj Horn, Johannes Sivertsen, Ditte Soria, Nanna Lysholt Hansen, Astrid Myntekær, Sif Hedegård, Scott William Raby

13.04.2018 project presentation 6pm

28.04.2018 exhibition opening 3pm

Place：baitasi art museum

Response is a multi-faceted art project that is initiated bythe artists Rikke Ehlers Nilsson and Astrid Myntekær and is currently supported by the Danish Arts Foundation. The artist led non-profit organization COPING - which is an acronym of the two main cities involved, Copenhagen and Beijing - was founded to help realize the project's goals.

Response will work thematically with translations as the first fundamental step towards establishing a dialogue with and understanding of each other’s cultural contexts. As an extension of these initial translations, we wish to create an open framework for an investigation of how contemporary art can co-create adialogue between different visual cultures between Denmark and China.

Within this general framework, Response seeks to present eight individual projects, all existing in flux and undergoing changes and modifications throughout themonth-long duration of the exhibition. We hope to engage in an active interaction with the audience byintegrating a high frequency of social events, such as talks, discussions, and performances. During our stay in Beijing, the space of the gallery will undergo a steady change to accommodate a social frame for meetings and connections between Danish and Chinese artists, I: project space, and local audiences in Beijing.

The exhibition at Response will serve as the starting point for a publication to be produced by COPING with the artists involved after the exhibition. The idea is that the publication will serve as an experimental platform for artists, art writers, and thinkers involved with the project to reflect upon, share, document, and theorize their cultural exchanges between Denmark and China to broader publics. In the interim development between the initial exhibition and the launch of the publication, an online presence for Response will be established to communicate the shifts, progresses, and ideas between these physical and literary aspects of the project to a broader audience. As it is our intention that the exhibition at Response should not to be seen as a concluded process culminating with us leaving Beijing, a follow-up exhibition organized by COPING with predominantly Chinese artists is to take place in Denmark – a response to the response that will accompany the exhibition in Beijing, publication, and communicationplatform.

Furthermore, COPING has invited the Danish art writer and historian Louise Steiwer of kunstkritikk.no to join the project. She will assist in writing about the project in Denmark, through an article on kopenhagen.dk, and articles in various Danish, European and Asian publications.

Artist：

Astrid Myntekær

Astrid Myntekær constantly tests, challenges and refines materials and technologies innew contexts and compositions. Posh and high-tech materials establish links tomore low-key materials from local DIY shops and low-key industrial producers.She is interested in topics like body and environment, society and nature,science and aesthetics, and the invisible forces and energies that form them at micro and macro levels.

Ditte Soria

Ditte Soria (b.1982) is an artist based in Copenhagen. Her work was recently included in the exhibitions Georrrrge at Leslie,Berlin (2018), The Curvesof the World – CHART Emerging at Kunsthal Charlottenborg,Copenhagen (2016), Reception atRingsted Galleriet (2016) and Autumnin Europe at Kunstverien New Jörg, Vienna (2016, soloexhibition). Upcoming exhibitions include Motherload at Skovsnogen – Deep Forest Artland, Herning and WhatWe Know is What We Do at Den Frie, Copenhagen. Soria is a co-founder of the exhibition space and artist collective YEARS in Copenhagen.

Johannes Sivertsen

Working with traditional painting techniques, Johannes Sivertsen is preoccupied with exploring the status of painting in contemporary visual culture, with an attention on how the gaze is affected by past and contemporary images. In his work he uses classical oil painting to stage tales, fictions and other cultural structures that forms our gaze. Through a naturalistic painting process and use of “genres” such as still life and trompe l'oeil, he points to the impossibility to see the world objectively, but shows how painting can reflect those interpretations we see it through. Rather then representations, his images aim to be a reflection on how we see.

Maj Horn

Statement：

My work deals with public spheres and communities by looking into aspects of knowledge sharing, the acquisition of sites, and the identity and atmosphere ofplaces. The media I work with range from photo and installations to dialogue-based processes, walks, and actions. Lately, my practice has circled around the topic of childhood and play in the city, influenced by writings by the English anarchist architect Colin Ward. In the publication “The Child in the City” from 1979, he introduced strategies for reclaiming and occupying public space, using the term `Schools without walls’ for how the city itself can be the ground for children’s education. I have started a series of projects involving both theoretical studies and explorations with groups of children and youth, with the aim of investigate how these strategies can be reinterpreted in a contemporary context.

Nanna Lysholt Hansen

Statement：

In my artistic practice I investigate relationships between the body, language,voice, gender and technology. By using my own personal experiences of the female body, sexuality, pregnancy, birth and motherhood I draw attention to the body as a technological and biological intergenerational mediator of knowledge,voice and memory. My works can be experienced as live performance or as the body manifests itself through hybrid technological forms.

Rikke Ehlers Nilsson

Statement ：

Rikke Ehlers Nilsson works with the image and its application in public andprivate distribution. She seeks to skew the appropriated image's reading as ameans to discuss social issuesrelating to one's image and how it is produced inthe 21st century. Through the gesture of appropriation she also investigatesthe camera's program and its ability to define global cultural narratives. Bytouching upon various overlapping themes and strategies within imageproduction, such as its relation to popular culture and media by workingthrough identification and self-presentation, she seeks to find newsubjectivities and possibilities in how to read, understand, and produceimagery within a contemporary art context.

Scott William Raby

Statement ：

Raby’sartistic practice examines thes ocio-economic and geopolitical forces that shape the dynamics of art and its position within the broader frameworks of culture, capital, and power. The artist’s work often examines, appropriates, and works upon the (im)material infrastructures and architectures of the art world as sites of production, in-and-of themselves. This is a non-site and interdisciplinary approach that shifts between new contexts and locales, however, Raby prefers aesthetically pared down and more social forms of production such as discursive events, pedagogical performances, writings, readings, and talks. These works often meander between the intersectionsof art, architecture, and public spaces, seeking not to differentiate art from society, but to rather understand their interwoven connections through projects that seek to utilize and expand the instrumental potential of art.

Sif Hedegård

Statement ：

In my work I try to question the notion of "truth". With sculptural objects, texts and myself as actor/performer, I seek to create spaces of uncertainty where fictions and tropes can be explored. I like to embody different characters with dialogue inspired by tales of the mentally ill, true crime and the style of personal diary. My interest is not to simply mimic these genres, but to present them in a way where their inner qualities could be explored. The spaces I create are made with a meeting between random placements of everyday objects and a more chaotic scenographic approach. In my installations, I often use materials like personal garment and other fabric, smaller household objects and paper, as well as wood and papier-mâché for more abstract elements. The movements in the performances are non-scripted to keep directness in the action, and to leave a space for the audience to question what is on purpose and what is to be trusted.

This project is supported by:

Danish Arts Foundation/

Danish Embassy China/

Baitasi REMADE

Mediapartners:

www.kunstkritikk.no

www. kopenhagen.dk