Bubble Metropolis (installation view), 2019. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Calder Harben: Bodies of Water, 2017-, hydrophone recordings, subwoofer, air-chairs, programmed lights. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Allan Sekula & Noël Burch: The Forgotten Space, 2010, 112 min, HD video. Courtesy: Allan Sekula & Noël Burch and Doc. Eye Film.
The Otolith Group: Hydra Decapita, 2010, 31 min, HD video. Courtesy: The Otolith Group and LUX.
Amitai Romm: An Obstinate Craving for Sleep, 2018, 170 x 450 x 75 cm, machine embroideries on water-soluble fabric, steel, magnets. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
Amitai Romm: Untitled, 2018, 29,7 x 21cm, ballpoint pen on paper. Foto: Kevin Malcolm.
The sea as a resource - concrete and metaphorical - is the starting point for the group exhibition Bubble Metropolis, the first chapter in Vermilion Sands' 2019 programme The Speculative. A series of visual, formal, intellectual and scientific experiments will manifest throughout the year through speculative, artistic and fictitious scenarios. The overall framework allows us to explore how areas such as sci-fi, climate change, migration, biotechnology, paleo art, linguistics and afrofuturism are not only interconnected but potentially inseparable.
At our exhibition space at Tagensvej 85 we are proud to present the audio work Bodies of Water (2017 - ) by Calder Harben. With its source in underwater audio recordings made at a variety of locations from nearby Øresund to Niigaani-gichigami (Lake Ontario), this sub-acoustic installation reconsiders the borders of perception, suggesting a bodily experience of reciprocal intimacy. We are equally excited to exhibit Amitai Romm's sculptural installation An Obstinate Craving For Sleep (2018). In this fragile embroidery Freudian dream analysis meets Hungarian satirical comic, where increasingly sophisticated vessels navigate a growing ocean of urine.
At Kunsthal Charlottenborg we present the film Hydra Decapita (2010) by The Otolith Group. This work makes reference to the Detroit techno group Drexciya, who from 1992 - 2002 built an engaging mythology of an advanced underwater civilisation inhabited by unborn children of pregnant women who were thrown overboard from slave ships during the middle passage across the Atlantic. Ideas on globalization, capitalism and climate change are explored with a particular focus on the relationship between money, death, abstraction and language. Kunsthal Charlottenborg will also show the essay film The Forgotten Space (2010) by Allan Sekula & Noël Burch. Here the sea is considered as potential capital and we follow the huge infrastructure of container ships, trains, trucks, engineers and politicians, which together form the basis of globalised maritime trade.