The three Copenhagen-based art organisations, InstantHERLEV Institute, Astrid Noack’s Atelier, and SixtyEight Art Institute collaboratively curated a screening programme, The Places We Live, that examined whether the current conception of the nation state is functioning as a model for contemporary democracy. One of the most prevalent developments of the 21st century is the waning of the nation state and its loss of influence over human circumstances, which has negative impacts such as apocalyptic nationalism, wall-building and border controls, and growing xenophobia. The screening programme reflected on a range of frictions apparent in how we conceptualize the idea of belonging to a specific nation state. The works screened in the programme question ideas of majority/minority relationships, perceptions of the privileged versus the underprivileged, aspects of cultural alienation, questions of inclusion and exclusion, and the definition of public and private space.

Screening programme:

Dor Guez
Watermelons Under the Bed

Dor Guez’s work raises questions about contemporary art's role in narrating unwritten stories and re-contextualizing visual and written documents. In Watermelons under the bed, Guez’s camera dwells on Jacob Monayer in intimate settings. Intermingled with these quotidian moments, Jacob’s son, Samih, recalls his parents’ process of adjusting to life in Israel after the Jewish occupation of Palestine in 1948, and the choices they made for their children. The watermelon carries symbolic significance, linking identity and place within Palestinian culture.

Sergio De La Torre
New Dragon City

New Dragon City uses an abandoned building in downtown Tijuana as a base for a live performance, which was taped and edited as a video. Storefront windows transform passersby into witnesses and voyeurs. A group of six Cantonese migrants, who are not professional actors, lived together for several days, showing their everyday actions and making their legal occupation of the building visible. De La Torre was inspired by the dramatic situation experienced by members of the bourgeoisie in Luis Buñuel’s 'El ángel exterminador' (The Exterminating Angel). The scene also alludes to the artist’s memories of his childhood and adolescence in downtown Tijuana. Since the beginning of the century, the place has become inhabited by Asian communities, mainly from China and Japan, that have remained hidden and silent at the fringes of Mexican culture. The work reflects upon how inclusion and exclusion in foreign nations can, in lieu of integration policies, be a century-long process.

Vladimir Tomic & Ana Pavlovic
Dreamland

In this work the artists explore how identities and subconsciousness are formed, by interviewing former refugees and immigrants about their dreams after their arrival in Denmark. The piece portrays an odd contrast between young people dining and partying and the stories they narrate about living through the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the traumatic experiences of civil war. Dreamland addresses the human and emotional aspects of being between identities and nationhood.

Larissa Sansour
Nation Estate

In Nation Estate national belonging is reduced to swiping your key card with a Palestinian flag across your apartment door and entering a simulation of a ‘could-be’ world. In this ironic and sci-fi-inspired short film, Palestine is transformed into a Nation Estate tower, a gated community, where each Palestinian city has its own floor. Gone are checkpoints and secret dirt road detours. An elevator takes the ‘citizens’ from the ground floor to the sky, and every level has its own cultural, political, and historical characteristics and references. The film reflects upon belonging, nationality, and dreams of lost places, countries, and cultural estate.

Nanna Katrine Hansen
Staying with the trouble* of working together

Staying with the trouble* of working together is based on interviews and actions inspired by the Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal and his ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’. The artist creates a framework within which groups consisting of people with very different backgrounds and privileges, only some of whom have Danish citizenship, can work together. The people involved are challenged to arrange certain objects in a way in which no object becomes more powerful than others. The video examines the challenges we face when we work together, due to the different roles assigned to people by the nation state. Graphic Design for Nanna Katrine Hansen: Anders Gerning.

Bios

Dor Guez lives and works in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Selected solo shows: 2011: Beursschouwburg Art Centre, Brussels; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv. 2010: The Centre for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Selected group shows: 2010: “Untaken Photographs,” Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia; “The Golden Chain,” Dvir, Jaffa. 2009: “Georgiopolis,” Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Petach Tikva.

Sergio De La Torre's works have appeared in the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Bienal Barro de America, Museo de Bellas Artes Caracas, Venezuela; Cleveland Performance Art Festival, Cleveland, Ohio; Atelier Frankfurt, Germany; Centro Cultural Tijuana; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco; TRIBECA Film Festival, New York; and el Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia. Sergio De La Torre is an Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco Art and Architecture Department.

Vladimir Tomic graduated from The Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts and is based in Copenhagen. 2017: Anthology Film Archives, New York, USA. 2016: Barbican Arts Centre, London, UK. 2015: BERLINALE - Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, Berlin, DER TAGESSPIEGEL READER’S PRIZE and JURY SPECIAL MENTION – Peace Film Prize. 2015: IDFA – International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NL - BEST OF FESTS.

Ana Pavlovic graduated from The Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts and is based in Copenhagen. Selected festivals and exhibitions: 2018: Etats g.n.raux du film documentaire, Lussas, FR. Pravo Ljudski Film Festival, Sarajevo, BiH. 2018 Fokus Video Art Festival, Best Art Film Award, Copenhagen, DK. 2017: Solo show at Inter Arts Center – “Love at Last Sight”, Malmø, SE.

Larissa Sansour lives in London and works with film, sculpture, installation and photography. Sansour mixes fiction and facts in great utopian and political pieces and borrows formal elements from science fiction, Westerns, and American sitcoms. She uses her own Palestinian experiences in her critical and dystopian discussions about nationalism, identity, alienation, colonization, and resistance. Sansour represented Denmark at The Venice Biennale 2019.

Nanna Katrine Hansen has been working with film and in various activist contexts. She studied at Roskilde University and is currently a student at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Art (2014). She is member of Bridge Radio Collective, a radio group producing radio about migrant’s struggles and border politics

The screening program is kindly supported by The Danish Arts Foundation