Huda 30, Tyve Dage i Viborg – En Rejse, Viborg Kunsthal, 2013

 

 

Twenty Days in Viborg – A Journey

This project responded to an invitation from Viborg Kunsthal in 2009, and was performed in collaboration with Rikke Johansen Smith, from Viborg Museum, from 2010 – 2013.

The emblematic history of Viborg was challenged, by the combined use of a durational strategy, and the logic of pure chance. Twenty randomly chosen participants opened their homes for me to document. Each also gave me randomly chosen parts of their subjective history.  I documented both on 1200 photos, and on twenty elven minute long video films.

As an entity, these fragments of homes and subjective histories suggest a different history of the small merchant town, than the one told at the museum.

Today it is also an integrated part of the museums collection. The National Arts Council in Denmark in 2011, and the Carlsberg Foundation in 2012 supported the project.

(For detailed information, please scroll down) Photo; Kerstin Bergendal

 

 

      Gerdas badeværelse, Tyve Dage in Viborg- En rejse, Viborg Kunsthal 2013.

 

I was invited to elaborate an exhibition for the public art gallery of Viborg, in a minor Danish town. During a research visit to the local history museum, I was introduced to an explicit and repeated description of the identity and history of Viborg. I took this frozen image as my point of departure for my own research of the history of contemporary Viborg.

I invited the head ethnologist from Viborg Museum, Rikke Johansen Smidt, to act as my travelling companion, on a constructed journey from home to home, of twenty citizens of Viborg.

Unlike a classic predefined museum research, I based my journey upon a pure
random logic. There were no prefixed focus areas for the journey, or premeditated values. Each conversation took its own unpredictable course. Each participant directed us onwards to the next person. We had no control at all.

Rikke recorded all conversations for posterity, while I acted as The Traveller, reading each home through 40 – 120 intuitive snapshot photographs. These photographs, in all over 1200, were consequently printed and collected in each their folder.  For the future these folders are included in the collection of the Viborg Museum.

 

 

Subsequently, I invited participants to visit me in a temporary film studio at the public gallery in Viborg. From each visits, I made a short film that introduces a participant during the moment, when they get to see my photographs from the visit to their home for the first time. Triggered by the images, they share memories and reflections of living in Viborg. In between the selected parts of these conversations, randomly chosen photos from their homes appear in silent clusters.

The films were presented installed at individual monitors at the Viborg Kunsthal in 2013, and at a separate homepage, www. tyvedage.com.

 

 

 

Finally, in 2013, we co-organized a public meeting with all the participants. In addition we invited two senior officials from Viborg – the mayor and the head of the historical museum.

All were invited to reflect about the version of their history, as presented by the project. This dialogue took place in the City Council Hall at the Municipality, in presence of the Mayor.

Subsequently, all films and photos are incorporated in the collection of the museum.