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CRIR RESEARCHERS AND PROJECTS 2004-2007 The Higher Academy of Happiness Artist Rae Chapman trades under the name of the Higher Academy of Happiness, using art as a way of doing research on the good life. The language of the corporate world is spoken to ask business questions on how to improve the quality of life. Recent Academy research projects include arts events such as a citizen’s jury with three-year-old children, and curatorial events that use jazz, film, dance and craft to establish alternative performance indicators. Public participation strategies have included questionnaires, raffles and recipe collections as ways of engaging audiences in philosophical debates and action research on well-being. Tania Georgoupli Is a 23 year old journalist from Greece, currently undertaken an MA in International Broadcast Journalism in City University in London . She has a degree in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Athens and has also worked for various Greek media organizations. Sheryl-Ann Simpson Sheryl-Ann in finally finishing up her MA in Community Development and Planning at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in the United States, and her research focuses on how large-scale government and business decisions impact our everyday lives and spaces. With a Public Pen-Pal Project she is hoping to link individuals living in very different locations who, nevertheless, are dealing with perhaps surprisingly similar situations. The goal is to allow people to share their stories, reflect critically on their own experiences, and, just like childhood pen-pals, hopefully create an opportunity for new friendships across distance. Rosario Ugarte. London/New York. Trained in London and born in Santiago de Chile, Rosario is a documentary photographer who uses her camera as a tool to communicate concepts and ideas coming from the underground and the peripheries of society. With previous experience as a magazine photo and creative editor both in Chile and New York, she combines images, graphics and the best of the fashion and advertising worlds to communicate what she finds important and valuable for a balanced society. Looking forward to understand Christiania’s ideas, foundations and beliefs in order to de-mystify and highlight its contribution to the global society and coming generations, she is currently developing an ongoing series on Christiania's symbolism, to be exhibited in the next Brighton Photography Biennial in the UK, October 2008. Inger Wold Lund Inger Wold Lund is a student at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She tries to tell her usually melancholic stories through different approaches, varying from parties, installations and writings to drawings and internet pages. She recently founded the Ferdinand Institute, department of adding temporary meaning to the seemingly meaningless. She also writes for the magazine Kunsthåndtverk. Her latest work is a public art piece at Marienlyst commissioned by the NRK (National Norwegian Broadcasting). www.ingerwoldlund.no Jonathan Trayner Jonathan Trayner is an artist based in the UK; he works over a variety of media, mainly performance, text and digital media. Originally intending to study Christiania’s psychogeography he ended up engaging in the covert surveillance of the Danish Ministry of Finance. www.trayner.org Anders Lund Hansen Anders Lund Hansen is a researcher and teacher at the Department of Social and Economic Geography, Lund University. Lund Hansen has a Ph Licentiate and PhD degree in Human Geography from Lund University, and a BA in Geography and MSc in Human Geography, both from University of Copenhagen. In the fall terms of 2002 and 2004, he was visiting research scholar at Center for Place Culture and Politics, The Graduate Center of the University of New York (CUNY). Anders Lund Hansen’s special interests are political economy, urban social theory, uneven development, urban space wars, globalization, gentrification, urban politics and property markets. For five years he has been an elected board member of the non-profit housing association Lejerbo København. Through this work he has taken active part in the production of the urban space of Copenhagen. He also experiments with film making. link to details University of Lund Kayle Brandon, Bristol, UK, visual artist Is interested the spatial and social relations that govern the realms of daily life. She participates in and creates situations that allow a hyper-real experience of self and critical engagement on street levels, physical intelligence, and provocative intervention. She creates self responsive participatory events, with critical subjects to originate around and collective experiences to go home with and remember. She will study the dogs in Christiania - how the social and politic relations of humans extends beyond the realms of human concern into non-human lives and laws. Homepage Jo Zahn, Hamburg, filmmaker With a background in visual communication/ film at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and New German Literature, rhetorics and art history at university of Tübingen, he has produced several experimental documentary films and participated in numerous group projects, mainly dealing with questions of collective image production and role models in communication and education. He is currently working with the Copenhagen TV station TV-TV on a film about Christiania. He will research how christianites relate to the public image of Christiania. How can Christiania be represented in relation to the many different perspectives of the people living there? Maria Pranzo, Italy, sociologist Sociological research, analyzing community institutions by active participation. A PhD project financed by Sapienza University in Rome. Bruno, political activist from Modena, Italy Bruno has since 1981 organized cultural exchanges between Christiania and the alternative communities of Modena. His stay in Christiania will focus on his next cultural exchange project. Half Machine Café in the Grey Hall Three Dancers from Berlin stayed in the CRIR-residency. Homepage Dellbrügge & de Moll Artists Dellbrügge & de Moll from Berlin developed their project: ‘Quest of a perfect location’ which explored the future perspective of Christiania and Tivoli in the booming city of Copenhagen. Does Tivoli act as a pacemaker in the tivolization of the urban development? Will Christiania turn into a theme park of another kind? One thing is sure: both will have to further evolve in order to survive. As part of their research, the artists organised a HEIMKINO event in Christiania – a self-built cinema, where they showed films that may or may not remind christianites of Christiania. Homepage Richard Jackman and Robert Lawson, Seattle USA Architects and video documentarists produced "Our Heart is in Your Hands", a video exploring the current crisis in Christiania from the perspectives of longtime Christiania residents: youth who have been “exiled from the garden,” government officials, and the Danish people, who view Christiania as a symbol of the freedom that they both cherish, and fear. http://audience.withoutabox.com/films/christiania Michael Baers, USA/Berlin Michael Baers is an American artist based in Berlin, commonly using montage as his method and the serial comic strip as his medium, Michael Bears illustrates and discusses various situations and discourses – often inspired by history and art theory. His visual storytelling resembles the storyboard of a film manuscript. Under the title Meta-Comics, Michael Baers, with the help of a variety of references, ventures into an investigative, critical and self-reflective line of reasoning. “What is the Mystery? developed out of a desire to make work in Christiania that would have a direct means of distribution to the community. It was published weekly in the Christiania community newspaper, Ugespejlet. http://crir.net/michaelbaers/mystery_1.html Sarah Minter Mexican video artist Sarah Minter created a video about the beginning of the “Forrny (Re-new) Christiania” project, which was presented in the Grey Hall in Christiania About Nikoline van Harskamp The video, "To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest..." - produced during Nikolines residency at CRIR was exhibited in Kunsthallen Nikolaj in Copenhagen. The three part video explored the making, enforcing and judgment of law in a free state. It is based on dialogues with residents in Christiania and with libertarians and anarchists in London. Homepage Maja and Anto Giannoccaro, Italy Research for an independent Italian culture/society e-magazine into Christiania’s values and democratic structure, the role of art and humor in the creation of a new democratic, political and social form, and the preservation of Christiania’s cultural and historic memory. Merkur Bank Merkur Bank - a bank that supports sustainable development holds its yearly meeting in the CRIR house Homepage The Architectural Association Unit 10 from the Architectural Association in London together with Kathrin Böhm and Andreas Lang from the London based art/architecture collective ‘public works’ developed various mapping and participatory projects during their stay in Christiania. Images Marianne Rydvald, Sweden/Hawaii Artist in residence while doing a major restoration work on the thirteen square meter mural painting that she created during the early seventies and eighties in Christiania. The mural painting has been bought by the Danish National History Museum who funds the restoration of the work. Link Alicja Lindert and Michal Sociology students from Wroslaw, Poland Porter Fox Journalist Porter Fox, USA, researched material for several articles about Christiania’s current situation About Vanja Larberg, Gotemburg, Sweden An architect whose work explores different means of investigating and communicating architecture and urban phenomena. Central to her work is the rethinking of architectural practice as a social process, and social networks as enabling the architectural process to be changed and redefined. Based on her research she developed maps of the social uses of shared spaces in Christiania. The residency was set up as a collaboration with The Nordic Institute of Contemporary Art (NIFCA) Nicoline van Harskamp An artist from Rotterdam who explored the idea of self-government and how it relates to self-policing, neighborliness and social control in the Freetown. She works with the idea that a city is a collection of buildings and streets as well as a collection of memories; human connections, narratives and networks can be discovered when looking at informal urban structures. (Semi-) public spaces are in many ways owned by those who spend the most time using them or watching them, either professionally or out of interest or boredom. Over the last years she has worked on issues around official and unofficial ownership structures through -often community-based - art projects. Her work in Christiania has resulted in several high profile presentations. Homepage Linas Marii An anthropologist from Vilnius, Lithuania, currently studying at the Institute of Anthropology at Copenhagen University. Linas Marii explored how Christianites - people of different background, values and social status negotiate, challenge and interpret the internal rules of Christiania - how they create meaningful lives as individuals and as members of the community? Christiania is a semi autonomous social field, where semi autonomous is defined by capability of generating and interpreting rules. In Christiania rules are based on consensus but negotiated through the grassroots dynamics of everyday lives and different practices. Rules therefore create order as well as disorder. Linas Marii explored CA as a social experiment, a community in development as well as an example of legal pluralism existing in a Western European country. Link to details from University of Lund Charlotte Østervang Photographer Charlotte Østervang’s Classical Christiania Portraits has evolved over four years of portraying people in Christiania. Her photographs aim to communicate and de-mystify Christiania to the Danish population and attempts to capture and document the soul of the place - the people behind it, as important contributors to Denmark’s cultural heritage. Her daylight photographs using an old-fashioned large format portrait camera, have been inspired by portrait photographers such as August Sanders sociological portraits during 1st and 2nd world war, as well as Richard Avedon’s contemporary portraits from “The American West” - a photographic tradition that does not exist in Denmark. Homepage Richard Jackman Richard Jackman, Department of Architecture, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, was awarded a Valle Scholarship to study the relationship between decision-making processes, political structure and the built form in Christiania. Christiania will provide a laboratory for investigating how a radically different social and political structure impacts on the way people design and construct buildings and urban environments. What are the built consequences of Christiania’s society? A presentation will take place in Christiania and a research paper will be presented in academic circles in the United States and Denmark. Half Machine The CRiR house has hosted participants in the Half Machine Event that takes place every year in the Grey Hall in Christiania. The Half Machine event involves artists, technologists, dancers, programmers, installation artists and inventors from all over the world in an enormous evolving cross-art event where art installations are cross-connected in a giant grid and triggered by human interaction. Thrown away technology is merged with new inventions and audiences are encouraged to play and control machines, robots and sensors that directly trigger the evolution of the experiment. http://halfmachine.info/ Eva Christensen Eva Christensen, Institute for Languages and Culture, Roskilde University Center in Denmark, is conducting research for a Phd. project "Stories from Christiania". The project documents how individual stories and accounts evolve and are expressed during the politically initiated period of change in Christiania, 2004/2005. The aim of the project is to give voice to the complex narrative relationships that are otherwise in danger of being lost in the very public, ambiguous and conflict oriented representation of changes taking place. The project aim is to provide a more accurate approach to how the cultural memory of Christiania is being shaped, and to strengthen and qualify the discussion about Christiania’s future. The project’s aim is to contribute to linguistic theory about the ways in which people express themselves, tell their stories and how storytelling can be utilized as a scientific method to gain insight into social processes. The first planned communication of this work will be a conference in Italy, summer 2005. About Neil Chapman & Martin Wooster Neil Chapman & Martin Wooster, artists, writers and teachers at universities in London. Martin Wooster studied politics and philosophy at the University of East Anglia before going on to develop a practice as a painter. Neil Chapman completed his MA in fine art at Central Saint Martins, London. They recently collaborated on a piece of writing entitled; 'Commissioning the War Machine', which considered issues around the appointing of war artists. For their project at CRiR, they looked at the history and current status of Christiania in relation to the concept of community: What is it that constitutes community? What is the dynamic of its formation? They considered the proposal that the idea of community has something to teach us about subjectivity, creativity, and about the very nature of life. The project produced an archive of sound recordings based on conversations with residents in Christiania, which resulted in a series of pieces for radio broadcast. Sound files from the research Søren Martinsen Søren Martinsen, artist and Artistic Director of Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, will create an artwork in Christiania that will take on its own life in a real life environment rather than mediated through the established art world machinery of money, media and institutionalization. Instead, in focusing on a different strategy for artistic production, the project will attempt to emphasize the value and importance of Christiania as a place, that “in not playing the game”, opens up new possibilities for human creativity. During a fourteen day period a “public” art work will be created in Christiania that may not be realizable anywhere else. Interview Dr Jaime Stapleton Dr Jaime Stapleton Research Coordinator for the Intellectual Property Charter, a project that examines the role of Intellectual Property Law in global, cultural and economic relations from a human rights perspective. Jaime Stableton is a senior Research fellow at Birkbeck Law Department and works for WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation). He has a longstanding research interest in the relationship between aesthetics and political economy. His research has focused on the relationship between concepts of ownership, property, and personal expression that have developed in the Christiania context. His primary focus is the ‘sense of ownership’ that Christianites have developed in relation to their homes and community and its relation to ‘legal’ ownership of property in Christiania. His research examines the extent to which particular forms of ownership determine the parameters of personal expression and the relation of such aesthetic expressions to notions of identity, recognition and belonging. The research will be presented as an essay, situating the Christiania experiment in its historical context, and examining what cultural changes may be brought about by the introduction of private property. It will be disseminated in academic journals, newspaper articles and presentations in the UK and Denmark and has already resulted in many international conference papers.. www.jaimestapleton.net Professor Neil Smith Professor Neil Smith is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, where he also directs the Centre for Place, Culture and Politics. He is the author of several books, has authored more than 120 articles and book chapters and has been translated into ten languages. He is co-editor of Society and Space, sits on nine editorial boards and has been awarded Honors for Distinguished Scholarship by the Association of American Geographers and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Neil Smith has made substantial theoretical contributions to the fields of urban theory. His urban interests include long-term research on gentrification, emphasizing the importance of patterns of investment and disinvestment in the real estate market. From the global to the local scales, he argues, our spatial worlds are constructed and reconstructed as expressions of social relations and especially as expressions of capitalist social relations. In connection with his stay in Christiania he will lead a public debate exploring issues of ownership in relation to Christiania’s current political situation – what can be learnt from Christiania in an international context. More info “Hjælp til Selvhjælp” Herfra og Videre Project “Hjælp til Selvhjælp” (Help to self-help) - Christiania’s “social office”, has since 1978 helped Christiania residents “integrate” with outside society. The project “Hjælp til Selvhjælp” is an offer for unemployed Christiania residents that face job-activation by the Danish social system. Two coordinators have been in charge on a daily basis in the CRiR researchers house. Københavns Almennyttige Boligforeninger KAB - Københavns Almennyttige Boligforeninger (Copenhagen Non-profit Housing Organizations) is the largest housing administrator in the Greater Copenhagen Area. With 35.000 residential units it is a major player in Copenhagen housing politics. KAB has played a part in proposing a model for the future Christiania in fall 2004. An employee from KAB stayed with her child in the CRiR house during a ten-day period in order to learn from Christiania. Homepage Joshua Gottdenker Designer and developer Joshua Gottdenker (US), stayed in the CRiR house to help the activist group “Forsvar Christiania” (Defend Christiania) with computer communications. Sofie Van Bruystegem - City Mined, (Belgium). City Mined is an international network of urbanists working with public spaces and the city as a collective resource. City Mined develop self-determined projects that promote local autonomy in the frame of global urban development. In connection with her stay in Christiania Sofie Van Bruystegem organized "Shadow Cities: The Paradox of Planning” - a workshop in and about Christiania, that explored free zones, networks and 'breeding' places in the city as part of the Copenhagen Biennal of Towns and Town planners in Europe "City Living - Living City”. Anna Monier and Carole Thibaud Anna Monier and Carole Thibaud, students from Business School of Nantes and Modern Literature at the Faculty of Nantes, and members of the French movie makers association Makiz - will produce a documentary about the ‘free city‘ of Christiania in Copenhagen. The film considers “Christiania as an exception in the world and in the history of alternative communities that must be understood as a necessary singularity because it contributes to the diversity of economical and social models at a micro scale”. It explores: to what extent a system of self-management can last within a European capital such as Copenhagen, how Christiania balances the domination of capitalism by providing a different economical and political model of the society, to what extent the art and culture of Christiania is an expression of the “freedom” of its inhabitants, Christiania‘s cultural and social role in Copenhagen, and the solutions conceivable for both the inhabitants and the Danish government in order to preserve the experiment. |
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