Sight-Seeing (2021)
7 channel site specific HD video installation (silent), 35:00 min.
Made for the outside video platform at the public housing area in Copenhagen called Lundtoftegade.
On the street Lundtoftegade in Copenhagen, the democratic rights are under threat by the recently approved ”Ghetto-law”. The question regarding who has the rights to define reality and which groups of minorities are kept on the outside in a democracy, is on display in Sight-Seeing, made for the seven monitors at Lundtoftegade.
In the narrative of Sight-Seeing, the viewer follows a tourist-group on a trip to Athens, Greece. The group visits a handful of well-known attractions as they begin to doubt what they are actually experiencing. They doubt the ways they are able to interact with what they are seeing. What is experience and what is learned experience? Are they able to change this experience? Are there other ways of seeing?
The text-based video work engages in a dialogue with New Classical architecture in Copenhagen and the images are reminiscent of the specific ways the story of European heritage is told. These stories are deeply intertwined in the representations we meet in art history, in museums as well as in architecture and archeology. In other words, the historical foundation and the monumental experience through which we perceive collectivity.
The images in Sight-Seeing primarily consist of surfaces, structures and close-up details of architecture and thus engages with Lundtoftegades own walls and structures. The viewer is therefore given the chance to reflect on what kind of architecture they are surrounded by. What is worthy of preservation and what should be demolished? How can architecture be democratic?
Text: Søren-Emil Stenkjær Schütt
Photos: Nils Elvebakk Skalegård