History History
exhibition growing out of the workshop Our collective memory, right here, right now, Funen Art Academy, Odense, Denmark (6 days of lectures, workshop, individual meetings, group critiques + 5 weeks independent studio work, exhibition) 2014
In conjunction with the 70th anniversary of Funen Art Academy artist Åsa Elzén organized the workshop Our collective memory – right here, right now with assistance from art historian Karen Mette Fog Pedersen. Students Jona Borrut, Katharina Fulgsang, Bertil Osorio and Oscar Erik Yran participated in the workshop that took place this fall.
Archival material related to the history of the academy, such as photographs, educational material, art works, news clippings, student lists etc was gathered a month prior to the workshop and placed on large tables. One afternoon was spent touring the buildings that housed the academy in the past accompanied by former students sharing their memories, and a serious ghost hunt was undertaken one night at Brandts Klædefabrik.
Alternative history writing, archival desires, the use of fiction, history forgery, anachronisms, refusal of chronology, identification with people from other temporalities, biography, taxonomy, the politics of history writing were notions investigated through discussions, texts and art works.
From these starting points the students began their own research and developed individual and collective projects stemming from the question how artists can work differently with temporality compared to proper historians. History History is an exhibition of those projects. Simultaneously, it is an attempt to present the workshop in itself, not as source material juxtaposed to art works, but to blur preconceived distinctions between the two and point to the fictitious and arbitrary inherent in all history writing.
