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Henrik Andersson, 2014

Photo: Henrik Andersson 2014

The Scandinavian Mutant Summer Camp

The Scandinavian Mutant Summer Camp seminar brings together artists and researchers to further investigate the legacy of the Scandinavian Institute Of Comparative Vandalism (Skandinavisk institut for sammenlignende vandalisme – SISV) founded by Danish painter and writer Asger Jorn.

Asger Jorn founded SISV together with a scholarly group in 1962, following his break with the Situationist movement. SISV was intended to operate both as a publishing house and as a research centre bringing together different disciplines ranging from archaeology, art and cultural history to the visual arts in order to revisit the legacy of pre-Christian Scandinavia, within the European context. Jorn was working towards what he called “’10,000 years of Nordic Folk Art” (10 000 års nordisk folkekunst), a series of 32 books with photographs of historical artifacts based on his research and documentation.

Photo: Gérard Franceschi 1964. © Donation Jorn, Silkeborg

The seminar is aimed at inventorying the archives while at the same time questioning the accumulated material, its history, and its past and current status and context, as well as the aesthetic and political implications of Jorn’s encyclopaedic comparative method – his work as an artist-historian operating in the field of scientific historical research, with the research itself as his artistic material.
Together with Jacqueline de Jong, who accompanied Jorn on Gotland in 1964 August, the seminar also revisits different locations and sites that had been photographed by Gerard Franceschi and Ulrik Ross for the Institute.

The Scandinavian Mutant Summer Camp seminar is co-organized by BAC and Henrik Andersson accompanying his exhibition “Scandinavian Vandalism” at Gotlands Konstmuseum with the kind support of Konstnärsnämden.

JACQUELINE DE JONG is a Dutch painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In 1959 she became involved with Danish artist Asger Jorn. Through him she was introduced to Situationist International and became a member in 1960. De Jong had become acquainted with the artist Constant and other Dutch members of the I.S. – Armando and the architect Har Oudejans – while working for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. After De Jong was excluded of the SI in 1962 she went on to publish the The Situationist Times, an international multi-cultural revue mainly based on visual material accompanied by texts by artists, architects, scientists, and poets, making it an experimental platform for visual research.

JAKOB JAKOBSEN is a politically engaged visual artist, educator and activist. He was part of the Copenhagen Free University from 2001 to 2007, was co-founder of the trade union Young Artworkers (UKK) in 2002, and the artist run television station tv-tv in 2004. He was professor at the Funen Art Academy from 2006 to 2012. Recent exhibitions include `Billed Politik` at Overgaden, Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen and “This World We Must Leave” at Kunsthalle Aarhus in 2010 and `Trauma 1 - 11: Stories about the Copenhagen Free University and the surrounding society in the last ten years` at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde in 2011. Most recently he participated in And And And at dOCUMENTA13 with the The Antiuniversity Research Project from 2012. One of his most recent projects `33 Lectures of Asger Jorn` was made in cooperation with Jorn Lab 2014 Silkeborg. Their collaborative work with María Berríos `The Revolution Must Be a School of Unfettered Thought´ is currently on view at the 31st Bienal de São Paulo.

MATHIAS KOKHOLM is an independent publisher and curator. He has a background in Nordic Language and Literature and Art History from Aarhus University. His main focus is the publishing projects with the small press Antipyrine and the art magazine Monsieur Antipyrine, both focusing on language based art and radical theory. Furthermore he works as a curator, collectively or alone, in smaller project spaces or at kunsthals like Kunsthal Aarhus where he recently curated the exhibition `Reading Machines` (summer 2013) and opened the bookstore/reading room Antipyrine bookstore. Beside these activities Kokholm is a member of the art-press *[asterisk] and Swedish magazine OEI. He works as a freelance editor/designer, lecturer and teacher primarily in language based art and works on a master-class program in art writing as artistic director.

ELLEF PRESTÆTER is a freelance writer, researcher and curator. He works at the University of Oslo and writes regularly on art and literature for Klassekampen, Vinduet and Kunstkritikk. He is the editor of the publication project `Rett Kopi´. He recently translated The Invention of the Bright Day by José de Almada Negreiros from the Portuguese into Norwegian. Prestsæter is the director and curator of the exhibition project `The Gutenberg Galaxy at Blaker` and a co-founder of the Scandinavian Institute of Contemporary Comparative Vandalism (Museum Jorn, Silkeborg) with artists Nicolas Malevé and Michael Murtaugh, members of Constant.

INES SCHABER is an artist and writer from Berlin. Her artistic work addresses the complexity of image-making by investigating the hidden layers of historical evidence. Since 2005 she has been engaged in the working archive, a series of case studies, texts, and artistic works through which she examines and tests notions of the archive. Usually triggered by a photographic record, her often collaborative projects explore the construction of memory and how new readings are generated over time. Often constructed as mixed-media environments, her installations are designed to offer different positions from which an image can be viewed and analyzed as visual and social documents. Among her recent projects are unnamed series, in collaboration with the artist Stefan Pente (2008–ongoing), where if not us—participatory design and its radical approaches, in collaboration with the architect Mathias Heyden (2013), and keywording, in collaboration with the filmmaker Madhusree Dutta (2013). Her collaborative project The Workhouse (Breitenau Room) with Avery F. Gordon was shown at dOCUMENTA (13) and is being published as a book by Walther König.