Residency To-Go: Pop-up presentations at the Container Academy

On Saturday 2 March, the Container Academy opened its doors for a full day of performances and presentations by AHC’s To-Go residents.

The program started at Halmtorvet, where a bus took the participants to the new studio community in Nordhavn. Along the way, artist Jonas Kjeldgaard Sørensen gave an insight into his project Himmelhviskeren in the form of a performance, which is being developed site-specifically for Roskilde Festival.

The day featured presentations by Rasmus Søndergaard Johannsen, Banaan Al-Nasser and a performance by artist Yujin Jung, who tested the work Longing energies: Ceremonial Recurrence, a performance being developed for this year’s Roskilde Festival as well.

In addition, the participants experienced works by artists Mette Rasmussen and Jean Marc Routhier.

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JONAS KJELDGAARD SØRENSEN
graduated from the Funen Art Academy in 2018. Since, he has developed a performative praxis that tells stories about our contemporary imagination. By dealing with historical research through the lens of speculative narratives, he imagines other realities instead of accepting the excisting. For the exhibition William, it’s not a dream at TRANSIT in 2022, he created the alter ego THE WEAPON GRINDER, to allow him to see the warzone as a showroom. Seen as the SKJALD of The War Machine, the figure navigates through topics of contemporary brutality, the liquid genealogy, and the collapse of masculinity. Singing has recently entered the praxis, as a seductive force, to sing forward the dark spirit of capitalism. He performs in fictions, with theatrical awareness, and has shown his work internationally. This autumn he is touring with the new performance Spittoons and Black whole.

RASMUS SØNDERGAARD JOHANNSEN
creates process-lead works with a strong focus on textile art. The repetitive processes involved in production, rhythms of action and pattern repeats typically provide the starting point for the content and form of his long-term projects, which require extensive familiarisation with intricate work techniques. Rasmus Søndergaard Johannsen studied at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, exhibited at Kunstverein Göttingen, Kunsthalle Darmstadt and KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin and is initiator and curator of the exhibition space Kunsthal Thy that opened in 2023.

BANAAN AL-NASSER
is a Jordanian/Palestinian mixed-media artist. In her practice, she investigates identity and cultural issues. Banaan Al-Nasser’s works are often decidedly social, poetic and political. Her life experience has led her to juxtapose and examine spirituality, creativity and human values in both the Middle East and the West. Her works often take the form of everyday objects, charged with symbolic value that crosses and challenges national borders, class divisions and cultural narratives. Banaan Al-Nasser, MFA graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2018. Her works have been exhibited at venues including ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (Aarhus), Fatamorgana (Copenhagen) and Betty Nansen Teatret (Copenhagen).

METTE RASMUSSEN
graduated from Funen Art Academy in 2020. She works within the fields of graphic art, sculpture, wood carving, and text. Nordic folklore and related natural creatures and phenomena such as trolls, gnomes, and elves form a thematic and aesthetic focal point for her works in an investigation of the unconscious and the wistful. The artist is concerned with narration as form, and based on a non-linear understanding of history, she pulls tangled threads through time and space in a fantasy of a pagan and magical past in relation to an alienated present.

JEAN MARC ROUTHIER
is based in Copenhagen. He graduated from the Sculpture School at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2015 of which three years took place at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Routhier works experimentally and cross-media, both in his individual practice, where he mainly works with print, sculpture, and installation, and in various artistic and curatorial collaborations. His work is conceptual and often balanced between pure abstractions and the informative. Through the works, Routhier examines questions about the construction of a subject and the existence of an objective truth.

YUJIN JUNG
holds a BA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College in London (2013), and a MA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (2021). Her most recent solo exhibition was Intervals #2 at PLATFORM in Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen (2022), and she participated in the jury-selected group exhibition OPEN SYSTEM at UKS in Oslo (2023). She received work grants from The Danish Arts Foundation for the years of 2022/23. Jung explores cultural and philosophical implications of folklore, oral history and myth through sound, voice, text and moving images to contemplate our contemporary world and current climate through diverse forms of sound installation and narrative-based sonic-visual work.

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ABOUT RESIDENCY TO-GO
Residency To-Go is not a traditional residency, but a programme that takes place in the artist’s own studio. This means that the programme is open only to artists who already have their own studio, but who would benefit from feedback and welcome support in the development of their practice as artists.

An important part of Residency To-Go is the development of networks and discussion/feedback sessions with curators and mentors based in Denmark and Skåne County (Sweden). AHC’s team of directors will also provide feedback, and artists will be given an advisory course with an art consultant.