Denmark – Urban Focus on Migrating Birds, Vestamager, Copenhagen

Copenhagen hosts an important migrating zone for birds on Vestamager, a wetland area just outside the city centre. This Nest will be about the interconnectedness and meetings between humans and birds in the places where the birds migrate through human habitation. Through looking at the history of human/birds relations in this urban context, questions arise of how we plan cities and make changes to include the birds as well as humans.

The Nest will be interrelated with the project NaTur i Byen (Nature in the city), a project that entails creating new spaces in Copenhagen where humans can interact with nature. The work will be carried out in collaboration with Andrea Fjordside Pontoppidan at the curatorial and publishing collective Laboratory of Aesthetics and Ecology and with bird expert Nikolaj Noel of the Danish Society of Ornithology at the University of Copenhagen LIFE sciences and the Danish Conservationist Society. The Danish artists invited to participate are Nana Francisca Schottländer, dancer and choreographer, Alexandra Buhl,, photographer and Maiken Bauer, sound artist.

This Nest is focusing on the theme Territory/space and will explore how to increase sensitivity to the place, looking into human/nature relations and how to bridge different opinions in a place. The overall approach will be about exploring with participatory means what entanglement means in this place with workshops and walks and art forms such as movement/body; photography; sound; encorporated mapping, and text. For the moment we will approach other important local partners, such as Naturstyrelsen and the NatureCenter Amager, in order to be present on sites and in action. The Nest is planned to be carried out in fall 2020 and the finalized work will be produced in different formats, that can be shown as part of the exhibition and online. The residency will be divided in two periods and in between there will be an open residency with guided tours, open explorations where the public are invited and the artists also meet and exchange experiences so far, entangling their different disciplines at another level of inderspecial ecologies. The four artists will work in different areas of Copenhagen; Refshaleøen, Vestamager, Assistens Kirkegård, and a residential area (possibly Sluseholmen/Teglholmen).

This Nest will be co-curated between Ulrika Jansson and action philosopher Oleg Koefod, manager of the organisation Growing Pathways.