Contact
Christopher Sand-Iversen
Director
csi(a)sixtyeight.dk
Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller
Curator
rebekka(a)sixtyeight.dk
Inanna Riccardi
Education Coordinator and Curator (remote)
inanna(a)sixtyeight.dk
About
SixtyEight is a non-profit, independent arts organisation based in Copenhagen, an open platform for long-term research projects, exhibition-making, educational initiatives and publishing in various forms. Our flexible structure allows us to collaborate with artist-run initiatives, larger-scale institutions and universities alike.
SixtyEight works with discursive, research-based projects that involve artists, curators, academics and scientists, and with the potential of art as a practical, pedagogical tool for young people through collaborative educational and learning initiatives.
SixtyEight wishes to engage with the question of how artistic practice and theoretical discourse can foster reflective and pluralistic modes of thought as our societies face an uncertain future. For this reason, SixtyEight has also always been a free space for the free speech of the artists and curators we work with.
In the spring of 2023, 12 years after opening in its first exhibition space, SixtyEight moved out of its permanent space in order to shift focus from exhibition programmes to longer-term artistic research projects and new forms of collaboration, which can encompass workshops, residencies, exhibitions, on-site research and publishing. For this reason, SixtyEight also launched the online journal future/tense, in order to showcase the ongoing projects, publish research of various kinds, and delve into our extensive archives to take a fresh look at older projects and what they might have to say today.
Support
Our online journal, future/tense, has received funding from the Danish Arts Foundation.
The programme of exhibitions in 2023 was kindly and generously supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Beckett-Fonden, Augustinus Fonden and Knud Højgaards Fond.
The two-year exhibition programme Memoirs of Saturn received generous support from the Danish Arts Foundation, Det Obelske Familiefond, and Beckett-Fonden. Individual exhibitions received support from Københavns Kommunes Råd for Visuel Kunst, Knud Højgaards Fond, and William Demant Fonden.
The two-year exhibition programme Modes and Notes on the Local received support from the Danish Arts Foundation. Individual exhibitions received support from Københavns Kommunes Råd for Visuel Kunst.
SixtyEight's first two-year exhibition programme, A Dictionary of Advanced Difference, received support from the Danish Arts Foundation and Bikubenfonden.
The Curatorial Thing received support from Nordic Culture Point 2017-20, and from Novo Nordisk Foundation in 2022.
68 Square Metres Art Space was originally founded with support from the Danish Arts Foundation.
Partnerships
Cross-regionally SixtyEight and RSS Press collaborate with Rønnebæksholm regarding its FællesRum (‘Common Space’) residency programme and the desire to offer time for reflection and immersion in their large garden, and on publishing the work produced by the artists and writers in residence.
As part of our aim to practice more sustainable programming, wine at our events is provided by Oinofilia (lit: love of wine), a local importer of Greek natural wines from smaller to medium-sized wineries, all of which have a green (organic or biodynamic) philosophy, unique terroir, grape specialization, history and tradition in common.
Friends and Supporters
History
SixtyEight was established by Christopher Sand-Iversen and Iben Bach Elmstrøm and opened in May 2011 as 68 Square Metres Art Space in a disused paint factory from the 1940s, which had been given to cultural entrepreneurs and small creative business for a number of years. We created an exhibition space in an old laboratory within the existing industrial structure, which was part of a dynamic group of artists, musicians, designers, event organisers, and urban gardeners. Together we brought a new set of possibilities and cultural activities to the area. We were at the same time part of a migration of independent exhibition spaces and commercial galleries to the East Amager quarter of Copenhagen, and took the opportunity to initiate and organise a coordination of the galleries and cultural activities in the neighbourhood through a concept called First Fridays.
From the autumn of 2015 to the autumn of 2022 artist Hugo Hopping was part of the team, during which time we re-organised as SixtyEight Art Institute with Iben Bach Elmstrøm as our first official director, and focused on knowledge-intensive exhibitions shaped by artistic and curatorial research, representing Nordic, European and international artists and curators alike. Curator Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller joined the team in the spring of 2022.
In 2017 we launched RSS Press to publish the research material generated by artists and curators, as well as commission new work by artists and theorists working in contemporary art and related fields of literature and theory. Today, the press also collaborates on various artistic, theoretical and educational publication projects with Leeds Arts University and the IT University of Copenhagen, among others.
Also beginning 2017, we offered an intensive curatorial programme to curators and artists called The Curatorial Thing. Here artists, curators, and academics met for approximately 7-10 days and attended public lectures and closed workshops with leading cultural, scientific, and artistic professionals invited by SixtyEight Art Institute.
In October 2018, SixtyEight was awarded BKF-Prisen, the Danish Union of Artists’ prize for best independent space of the year. The motivation for the award included that SixtyEight’s “ambition and international focus are unparalleled in Denmark, even among the state-funded institutions”. At the end of 2019 SixtyEight received a prize from the Danish Arts Foundation “towards continued work”, the Foundation stating that “SixtyEight has filled a gap in the market, and it is difficult to see how we could do without the institute”.