12 Sep 2011

Alt_Cph11 Encounters at the Factory for Art & Design, Copenhagen

alt_Cph11 Encounters - art moves into the cityscape
Copenhagen Alternative Art Fair, www.altcph.dk

For sixth consecutive year Alt_Cph provides the setting for an intense and direct meeting between local and international artist-run organizations and exhibition spaces. This year the art fair puts sharp focus on public space and the individual's activity in the community in relation to a globalised world environment. A number of socially and sustainably-oriented projects will take place in the local area. Each day there will be performances, artist talks and debates.

Friday 16 September 16-22
Saturday 17 September 12-20
Sunday 18 September 12-20


The Factory for Art & Design, www.ffkd.dk

Alt_Cph is Copenhagen's alternative art fair. The fair has, since its inception, acted as a non-commercial platform for the self-organizing art scene by creating new networks and relationships. In contrast to the concurrent running Art Copenhagen Forum, this event offers an artistic experience that is not for sale.

Each year, the fair is curated in relation to themes that are relevant to the current art world. Many artist-run organizations have, in recent years, worked with the environment, public space, and global changes in economy and culture by producing work in reaction to this with local solutions to problems. The participants of Alt_Cph11 Encounters are each, in their own way, working with projects in public space, with the individual and the community as the focus.

The fair begins with a performance by Spatial Interventions (US). Inspired by how skateboarding and parkour treats the cityscape as playground, the twin brothers explore the body as sculpture in contrast to the building structure. The same evening Metabolic Studio (US) presents an art parade in a backyard in the Sundholm quarter, in which the audience will be engaged by a group of performers. The artist group has worked to activate places through creative engagement since 2005. Also Berit Nørgaard (DK) stimulates creativity and the community, with her project Furniture, which asks visitors to build a piece of furniture for installation in their stairway. The idea is simple: The furniture is a direct inspiration to build and an opportunity to make contact with the neighbors in the public space of the building stairway. Field Work (DK) involves the community by proclaiming a part of the street outside the Factory for Art and Design for 'common ground', while N55 (DK) drives around on their spaceframe vehicles, which are converted into mobile bike kitchens. Back in the fairhall, Mary Coble (US) uncovers the histories of the neighbourhood in her performance Asylum, where the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred.

The debate series organized by Brett Bloom (US) explores the emergence of a socially and politically engaged art practice and how it treats a series of questions: Errors and cracks in welfare states, the articulation of possible worlds that show concrete alternatives to life under the global capital strictures, as well as ways to be in public space.

Participants
ANA – Astrid Noacks Atelier (DK), ArtMobile (S), Mary Coble (US), Field Work (DK), Bonnie Fortune (US), Det Fynske Kunstakademi (DK), Gaden Finder Vej (DK), Galleria Huuto (FI), JAC Studios (DK), Koh-i-noor (DK), Kultivator (S), Lauren Bon and the Metabolic Studio (US), MODTAR projects (DK), Mustarinda (FI), N55 (DK), The New Beauty Council (SE), Berit Nørgaard (DK), rum46 (DK), Space Poetry / Pist Protta (DK), Spatial Interventions (US), Window 107 (DK)

The fair is curated by artistic director Anja Franke and communicator Marie Bruun Yde from the artist-run organization Instant HERLEV Institute, www.instantherlev.dk

Entrance
DKK 50, -. The ticket also provides access to Art Copenhagen in Forum.