kerstinbergendal

I am Kerstin Bergendal, visual artist, born 1957 in Sweden, but based in Copenhagen since 1984. I use drawing, photo, video and methods of pure play on the one hand, and durational strategies for critical intervention and participation on the other.

My work intervenes with the logic of a place. This also means, that the place and its locals, professionals and institutions also intervenes with me and thus with the art project, making it an unpredictable reciprocal and simultaneous ping-pong process. The discursive platform that eventually might grow out of such an exchange, aims at cultivating an existing local agency and improving conditions for joint local action with point of departure in the spectrum of critique on, utopic ideas about and hopes for the site.

The collaborative side of my work also comprises short term collaborative events and exhibitions with colleagues, the co-curating of the artist-run research platform TAPKO 1991–2005 and currently LOKAL. In 1996–2002, I headed the transforming phase of one of Europes oldest artist run public galleries, OVERGADEN, towards becoming a Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I have served as member of the committee for art in public spaces at the Danish National Arts Foundation from 2008-2010, and as a member of the Board of Kunsthal Århus from 2017-2019. Currently, I am Senior Lecturer at Academy Valand at Gothenburg University, in Sweden. I regularly engage in the public discourse on the role of visual art in relation to the wider contemporary society, and have produced and contributed to research projects within this field.

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/ Four Gardens for Greville Dementia Care Home

In 2016, on behalf of Bristol City Council, Willis Newson Art Agency in Bristol (UK) commissioned me to collaborate with architects Penoyre & Prasad and Steve Frazer of Landscape Architects Enzygo, on the development of a landscape design for a new 69 bed dementia care home, produced by Ashley House and Brunelcare.

As my point of departure, I proposed a small shift in the optics of what a dementia care-home garden might be. I chose to understand it both as a private sheltered outdoor residence, and as an addition or missing piece in the local fabric. In Greville there are but few parks and gardens for locals to assemble in. The new dementia garden could therefore act as one and if so, could offer to dementia residents a living surface of contact to the wider world. The  garden we proposed, thus was shaped as two different zones  – one closed residential garden zone, and one semi-open communal garden.

In collaboration with landscape architect Steve Frazer from Enzygo Ldt in Sheffield, I also performed a series of dialogues with different agents involved in, affected by and neighbours to the given site – staff, neighbours, relatives. Their different knowledge and ”lived experience” were intertwined via a process of co-production of an architectural model. This model was presented to the architects and the commissioners, by the end of 2017.

These cross consultation dialogues differed from normal procedures in play when planning dementia care homes. Normally consultations are conducted in separated tracks and with no aim to stage a collaboration across the professional divides.

The indicative drawings, subsequently produced on  basis of these consultative dialogues, were presented to the commissioner as an actual landscape program. But they also stand as a prototype of a planning based on an otherwise non-existing consultation process.

A key element in the published proposal is a focal shelter, proposed and adapted specifically for social activities for residents with dementia. Above, you see this shelters placed in circular garden areas on the drawings generated by the dialogues.

The shelters offer a goal for a resident walking in the garden, or a place for the resident who wishes to have something to do. The small architecture also serves a strategic role as a tool,  mechanically opening a closer link between the outside of the institution, and the inside. Between the sheltered parts of the garden and new platforms for co-production and co-habitation between the residents and their relatives, their neighbours and local cultural association.

The Danish architect M C Trabut – Jørgensen has elaborated the model you see above.

Here you find the proposal for a new dementia garden elaborated by myself and Steve Frazer in 2017 – Lacey RD garden layout. 

This material was published, both as a separate folder entitled A NOW-TIME ZONE/ Four gardens for Greville Dementia Care Home and within the formal building applications from Ashley House and as an architectural model.

However, in 2018, the entire building project was stalled by the Ashley House, and thus also the garden project. But myself and Steve Frazer have keep open a critical discursive dialogue with agents normally engaged in relation to dementia care homes. In summer 2018, we were invited by Dr Christina Buse from the Dep. of Sociology at the University of York to perform a workshop during a public conference entitled “Architectural design and construction for later life care: challenges and opportunities for designing with and for building users” at Kings Manor, University of York, UK, arranged by the Department of Sociology of Wentworth College.

We presented the project with a focus on ways of identifying, supporting and cultivating the concept of local agency and co-ownership, as the basis for a dementia garden layout. The model was displayed, as well as the very rough video sequence mentioned above, to introduce the basic working mode. The Dep. of Sociology published ‘Buildings in the Making’, a research study following the design and construction process on building projects for older people, in particular extra care housing and care homes by doctors Christina Buse, Daryl Martin and Sarah Nettleton from the Department of Sociology of Wentworth College, University of York UK, which includes the art project.

The 18th of September 2018, the project and video was also presented by Steve Frazer and myself within the Fine Art Lecture Series at Academy Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

 

Man lånte jo ikke nåle i Herning / And one did not borrow needles in Herning 

This two-sided work responds to an invitation from the New Carlsberg Foundation concerning a public artwork for the city of Ikast Brande, in Denmark.

Context

The invitation was extended in 2017 to three artists – Cai Ulrich von Platen, Jørgen Carlo Larsen and myself – each asked to elaborate additions to a complex building, the new Cultural House of Ikast-Brande, Hjertet/ The Heart, designed by architects C F Møller (DK).  From 1991 – 2005, we constituted the core of an artist run platform, called TAPKO, pioneering site specific art in Denmark by realizing more than 20 exhibitions in in-and outside of the exhibitionary complex, including works of participating colleagues from Denmark and abroad.

Thus, as a point of departure, the invitation was linked to TAPKO and to site-specificity, and as a consequence to the town in which the Cultural House was built – Ikast.  This is a minor town in the region of Jutland, famous for its booming textile industry during the 1900s. This boom grew in harsh competition with a similar boom in the neighboring town, Herning – hence the title of the project.

One work – Two versions

The work consists of two versions of the same content – a selection of recorded enquiries among locals and local agents of the town of Ikast. From these dialogues, the artist chose 176 quotes, subsequently used in two different ways:

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As parts of a physical artwork on site: Individual and subjective quotes from the taped dialogues were anonymized, and adapted to be engraved 4-6 mm deep into the slabs both of the indoor and outdoor “floor” of the new Cultural House. Indoors, the black ceramic tiles are rectangular. On the outside, the large white slabs, chosen by the architects, are five-c

ornered and irregular, in order to make up a complex pattern. Each quote was adapted, to fit the format of a chosen slab. By then also giving each quote a specific font and font size, it acts a singular “voice” and when grouped, a sort of dialogue or a poetic meaning through association, can be generated between the different statements.

The176 text fragments now appear on site, as a stream of subtle and varied sum of “voices”, spread irregularly over the entire surface of the large new square and meandering in through the interior of the imposing building. As they pronounce informative, dry, odd, funny and melancholic opinions on life in the town of Ikast, they mechanically incite visitors / inhabitants to self-reflective dialogues. Through this process, the semi-private square can over time be reclaimed as a commons, open to a local publicness.

The subtle nature of the engravings adds an ever changeable aspect of the work; In mid-day sunshine, concrete goes light and dry. The texts then almost disappear. On a rainy day, the text in the concrete becomes evident and black. On windy days, most of the fragments are covered or filled by sand, trash or leaves. Indoors, the text fragments are placed right in the middle of areas used for activities. They will  gradually be erased and traces of life are gradually added on  – rust spots, wine spots, chewing gum and car tracks  – all of which gradually will  transform the floor of the square to a Book of Life.

 

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As an app:  In order for visitors on site to identify the individual and subjective quotes, I have had created an app, which includes a GPS function. For the visitor at home, the quotes are also listed alphabetically. Clicking on a quote, connects you to a short poetic text by the artist and an image connected to its meaning. These texts ponder upon the essence of the quote in question, and/ or relates it to historical events of the local area, going back as far as 10 000 years. This part of the project is elaborated in collaboration with professionals at the Textile Museum of Herning, local archives of the region and the local paper Herning Folkeblad. The mixture of old and new, imaginary and factual, as well as the highs and lows of the quotes themselves, proposes a redefinition of the role of artist in contemporary society. It claims the artist as a transitory figure or ultra-attentive listener, calling for others to gather on a surface of contact, to engage in actually hearing and seeing each other again. “Know yourself”, as a strategy of resilience. A short video finally introduces the entire concept and method, for the app user. It can can be seen here.

A pdf showing app content for the entire 176 quotes here. You can choose to download the app: Search for Kunst til Hjertet, where you usually download apps. 

 

Credits

This project was realized in collaboration with artist Marie Rosenkilde Lindberg, and with Ikast-Brande Kommune; CF Møller Architects; Valand Academy;  Ikast Stenhuggeri Midt-Jyllands Museum and Tekstilmuseet in Herning; Herning Folkeblad; Ikast Lokalhistorik Arkiv; Omslev Kolt Lokalhistorisk arkiv and Lokalhistorisk arkiv Herning. App production by CMP Company / Hanna Bergman design.

The work is published in the home pages of Tekstil Museet and of New Carlsberg Foundation.

 

 

 

The PARK LEK project was a durational multidimensional participatory art project I realized from 2010 – 2014. It contested and ultimately transformed the planning procedure of two urban areas of the city of Sundbyberg, just outside of Stockholm in Sweden.

From April to September 2019, it was included in a group exhibition DET ANDET STED/ The Other Place, at the Danish National Museum of Art in Public Places KOES. Included artists/ artworks were also Katie Paterson with Future Library, Ragnar Kjartansson with Figures in Landscape, Alex Hartley with Nowhereisland, Héctor Zamora with Zeppelin Swarm, and AVPD with Light Tower, Time Light, Gravity Lamp.

The exhibition was curated by Ulrikke Neergaard. Her aim was “.. to present.. six art projects, that during the past decade have revolutionized our understanding of what public art can be and created radically new encounters between contemporary art and the public. Each of the six projects rethinks central factors that play a key role in public art: time, place and participation. Each of them creates remarkable, poetic and pertinent new connections, bringing the capacity of art to spark the imagination to life, and taking us to other places.”

Ulrikke Neegaard introduced the PARK LEK project with the following:

PARK LEK is a visionary social art project by Swedish artist Kerstin Bergendal, rethinking urban planning in three phases of development and implementation in the Stockholm suburb of Sundbyberg from 2010–2014.

​Sundbyberg is the most densely populated suburb in Sweden. Despite which, in 2010 a new urban development plan was on the cards – a plan that would mean the few remaining green areas between the neighbourhoods of Hallonbergen and Ör being swallowed by even more housing and an even higher population density, as well as segregating them.

​Invited by the Marabouparken Art Gallery in Sundbyberg, Bergendal started the project PARK LEK, where she worked with residents, staff in the local youth club, shopping centre and football clubs, as well as urban planners, developers, politicians and many, many more over the next four years. Bergendal kickstarted, facilitated and documented the exchange and negotiation of different values, interests, needs, and points of view on the development of the area.

​The video interviews were shared on social media during the first and second phase of the project – PARK LEK I and PARK LEK II – and led to endless meetings, focus groups and brainstorming sessions. This generated the third phase the project, PARK LEK PARLIAMENT. Here different groups – based in a corner of the local shopping center painted in pink, and often gathered around a large architect-built model of the area – rethought its future from asocial, cultural and planning perspective. Gradually a new plan emerged, a plan made by the people whose lives it would affect, either directly or indirectly.

This third phase of the project was managed and funded by the local authorities, who agreed to channel the collated experiences and expertise of the hundreds of participants in PARK LEK I and PARK LEK II into the council’s plans and strategies.

In May 2014 PARK LEK culminated with the local council deciding to implement the new model for the area that had been collectively developed during the project’s four-year process of negotiation. Since then a new youth club has been established, a community centre have been built, and there are now two parks in the area between the blocks of flats originally slated as a built-up zone.

This kind of influence on urban planning through an art project is unprecedented. Its strength, but crucially also its method, makes PARK PLAY one of the most significant European contributions to public art dedicated to generating social change through long-term, participatory processes.”

 

 

 

 

In 2018, I participated in a series of urban interventions entitled Artwork Ongoing, commissioned by Art Inside Out in Halland, Sweden.

The project was initiated through an invitation to 20 professionals,  each with their role in and relation to a redevelopment of a central square in Halmstad – Österskans. I invited them to meet and collectively to recap the process, and consider what led to what?

By in addition inviting the film maker Kristina Meiton to document the process of reflection and my own mode of enquiry, I also aim to initiate a proces of reflection regarding my own role as an artist, in such an enquiry.

The above version of the film is a short introduction to the then ongoing project, produced for a presentation at Halmstad Konsthall in May 2018. The video below is an introduction to the described dialogue, sent to the municipal professionals prior to the dialogue.

 

 

 

 

 

      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.