I met Søren in 2002 while we were both studying at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. We ended up collaborating on a project there for their 'Rundgang' exhibition. In 2005 Søren invited me to be a visiting artist in the photography department where he was teaching at the time; Krabbesholm, in Skive Denmark. We did a successful collaboration with his students and their work was exhibited at Senko Gallery in Viborg, Denmark. I invited Søren to be one of our workshop leaders for Picture Berlin based on our previous collaborations with art students.
Søren graduated from The Royal Danish Art Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2003. Søren uses photography as a starting point and very often moves into the direction of sculpture and installation. Since graduating he has been exhibiting internationally; most recently in China, Italy, Canada, the US and Germany. Søren has also been doing curatorial projects, in addition to teaching workshops in Denmark over the last few years. His most recent curatorial project was at the Fuglsang Kunstmuseum in Denmark in the summer of 2009. He has also been consistently teaching photography workshops at AErø Kunsthøjskole for the last 3 years. Prior to that, Søren was head of the photography department at Krabbesholm in Skive, Denmark.
Søren will be heading a workshop during the third week of Picture Berlin; 19 July - 24 July.
I asked Søren a few questions :
What is it like for you to be an artist in Berlin?
In my experience it seems that people in Denmark pay are more attention to my work because I am living abroad. I am in a privileged position because I can get funding from Denmark to do my work but I live here. The flip side of that though is that my career resides for the most part outside of Berlin or Germany for that matter. Nevertheless Denmark is very close to Berlin. It is almost like my backyard. It is very convenient and probably the reason why there are so many Danes living and working in Berlin. But it is not glamorous to be here. It's a myth to think that this place should be or would be more open due to how many art oriented people there are here. It might be to some but for me it's not. It's the age old question about how to get someone into your studio to see your work. That doesn't seem to change no matter where you are located.
How has Berlin and its history made an impact, if any, on your work?
Architecturally the city is very fragmentary and sometimes even chaotic due to it's tangled history. In Berlin there are constantly streets being renovated, houses being demolished and new ones erected, and I am sure that this has shaped the work I do. In a more direct sense, several of my recent projects have taken a starting point in historical now demolished buildings and anecdotes connected to the history of Berlin. In one of my projects, for instance, I reconstructed a 1:1 scale mock-up of a fragment of The New Reichs Chancellery, the building where Adolf Hitler received all his foreign guests and where the Führerbunker was also situated. A very notorious and mythical place designed down to the last door handle by Albert Speer to represent the power of the Third Reich. Today you will find a rather anonymous GDR concrete building complex at the site where the building was.
Abendland
Site specific installation, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
Styrofoam, wood, plywood, approx. 10 x 4 x 6 m, 2008
What do you think Berlin offers you that other places might not?
The complexity, the transitory condition, the international art scene and the large amount of interesting galleries and museums concentrated in one place.
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