Tommerup, Christine Horwitz. “Hvorfor født slavegjort! Om overvejelserne bag en titelændring: Hvorfor født slavegjort! Om overvejelserne bag en titelændring.” (2021) [PDF]

Tommerup, Christine Horwitz. “Hvorfor født slavegjort! Om overvejelserne bag en titelændring: Hvorfor født slavegjort! Om overvejelserne bag en titelændring.” Periskop – Forum for kunsthistorisk debat, no. 25, 25, Aug. 2021, pp. 150–69.

Fra indledning:

I Glyptotekets samling findes en hvid marmorbuste af den franske billedhugger Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-75) [1]. Busten, som er modelleret i 1868, forestiller en kvinde, der kigger med et direkte blik ud i rummet. Ansigtsudtrykket er både ekspressivt og udført med en stærk realisme, hvilket ses tydeligt i den spændte muskulatur i panden og kinderne. Og det er ikke en ukompliceret repræsenta-tion, der er tale om. For selvom Carpeaux har arbejdet med et stærkt individuelt udtryk, hvorved busten til dels får karakter af et portræt (omend vi ikke ved, hvem kunstneren brugte som model), så er det samtidig en stereotypificerende og seksualiserende repræsentation af en kvinde fra Afrika eller diasporaen. Kvin-dens bryster er blottede, hvilket fremhæves af den måde, hvorpå hun er bundet af et reb. Rebet er med til at tydeliggøre, at busten skal forestille en slavegjort kvinde, der kæmper mod sin bundethed, og dette understreges yderligere af inskriptionen på bustens sokkel: “Pourquoi naître esclave!”, hvilket kan over-sættes til: “Hvorfor født slavegjort!”. Det er med andre ord en fremstilling af en sort kvinde som slavegjort, erotisk objekt. Tilsammen bidrager alle disse detaljer til, at skulpturen bevæger sig mellem allegori, etnografisk skildring og portræt, og den afspejler samtidig de komplekse forhold mellem antisorthed og antislaveri, der karakteriserede det franske imperium i den tid, hvor værket er skabt.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/periskop/article/view/128292

Pushaw, Bart. “Blackness at the Edge of the World. Making Race in the Colonial Arctic: Blackness at the Edge of the World. Making Race in the Colonial Arctic.” (2021) [PDF]

Pushaw, Bart. “Blackness at the Edge of the World. Making Race in the Colonial Arctic: Blackness at the Edge of the World. Making Race in the Colonial Arctic.” Periskop – Forum for kunsthistorisk debat, no. 25, 25, Aug. 2021, pp. 60–75.

From introduction:

John Savio’s print Hoppla, We’re Alive! is an uncomfortable image [1]. In a lush black-and-white tropical landscape of palm trees and rolling hills, jubilant figures dance, jump, kiss, and flail their arms. Their sharp black profiles evoke silhouettes. Closer inspection reveals insidious forms that are all too familiar. Drawing our attention is the figure on the bottom right corner of the image, the only human given any facial detail. Savio carefully carved the negative space in order to accentuate two features: the lips and the whites of the figure’s eyes. By making visible these two specific details, Savio recalls the pictorial modes of exaggeration specific to blackface imagery: the juxtaposition of bright eyes and teeth with inflated lips and dark skin. Contorting their bodies into jagged, angular poses, these tropical dancers are racist caricatures of Black performance.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/periskop/article/view/128289

Birkeli, H. E. ‘Den svarte «barnepiken» og rasismens melankoli: Den svarte «barnepiken» og rasismens melankoli.’ (2021) [PDF]

Birkeli, H. E. (2021). Den svarte «barnepiken» og rasismens melankoli: Den svarte «barnepiken» og rasismens melankoli. Periskop – Forum for kunsthistorisk debat, 25, 28–45.

Fra indledning:

Inntil ganske nylig var dansk-norsk kolonihistorie lite synlig i det nordiske ordskiftet, og flere har til og med beskrevet det som en kulturell amnesi (Andersen 2013, 57–76). Niels P. Holbechs (1804–89) maleri Lille Marie på Nekys arm utfordrer denne stillheten ved å visualisere kolonialismens nære relasjoner som både konkrete og følbare [1]. Samtidig som det dyrker frem ulikheter, frem-stiller maleriet også «den Andre» som legemliggjort og individualisert. Den malte relasjonen mellom de to uttrykkes i berøring som et spill mellom motsetninger, der overflater møtes som inversjoner av hverandre, og dette har implikasjoner for gullalderens forestilling om Danmark som et «hvitt» og homogent rom.Fra puffermene på Nekys kjole til den krumme ryggen til barnet, fyller figurene nærmest hele rommet i Holbechs komposisjon. Møysommelig jevne fargetoner gjør malingstrøkene usynlige og skaper skarpe, smidige skygger og former som nærmest presser seg frem fra overflaten. Holbechs dobbeltportrett er preget av ambivalens. Begge figurer ser ut til å motstå klar emosjonell tolkning: Neky bærer et forsiktig halvsmil, synlig ved rynkene som strekker seg langs kinnet, mens hun titter usikkert til høyre for bilderammen. Maries hevede øyenbryn og halvåpne munn virker som om hun er på randen til å lage lyd, men tilskueren får allikevel lite innblikk i hennes følelsestilstand.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/periskop/article/view/128293

Whitmire, Ethelene. ‘Landscapes of the African American Diaspora in Denmark’. (2019) [PDF]

Whitmire, Ethelene. ‘Landscapes of the African American Diaspora in Denmark’. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Informationsvidenskab Og Kulturformidling, vol. 8, no. 2, 2, Dec. 2019, pp. 84–91.

This imaginary exhibition is based on the archive of items collected to write the book manuscript for Searching for Utopia: African Americans in 20th Century Denmark. Professor Ethelene Whitmire used the method of curatorial dreaming to design this exhibition and was influenced by African American expatriate Walter Williams’s landscape paintings that reflect the themes in the book.

doi:10.7146/ntik.v7i2.118483.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/ntik/article/view/118483.

‘Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk’. (2017)

‘Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk’. Slagmark #75: Koloniale Aftryk, 2017.

 Indhold:

Myter og realiteter i Jomfruøernes historie af Arnold Highfield 

Dansk Vestindiens helte og heltinder af Rikke Lie Halberg & Bertha Rex Coley 

Toldbodens nye dronning – den danske kolonialismes im/materielle aftryk af Emilie Paaske Drachmann 

Tingene sat på plads: Om afrikaneres bidrag til etableringen af byen Christiansted på St. Croix af George F. Tyson 

Museale formidlinger af fortiden som kolonimagt på danske og britiske museer af Vibe Nielsen 

 ”Let’s Put the Background to the Foreground!” – nostalgi, turisme og iscenesættelse af en dansk kolonial fortid på de tidligere vestindiske øer af Pernille Østergaard Hansen 

I kølvandet – levedygtighed og koloniale økologier ved havnen på St. Thomas af Nathalia Brichet & Frida Hastrup 

Kærligheden og de druknedes land – interview med Tiphanie Yanique af Astrid Nonbo Andersen & Sine Jensen Smed 

https://www.slagmark.dk/slagmark75

Abstracts: https://www.slagmark.dk/abstracts-75  

Forord: https://www.slagmark.dk/koloniale-aftryk

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Race Matters in Intersectional Feminisms. Towards a Danish Grammar Book’. (2020)

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Race Matters in Intersectional Feminisms. Towards a Danish Grammar Book’. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 28, no. 3, July 2020, pp. 224–236.

In this article, we ask: “how does race matter when working with intersectional feminism in a postcolonial Nordic context?” We take our cue from feminist and postcolonial scholars who have pointed out that minoritisation and majoritisation processes in the Nordic area are entangled in ongoing racialization processes. Working with and around the video installation Black Magic at the White House by the artist Jeanette Ehlers, we hold on to the particularities of racialization processes in the Danish context, as well as their insertion in a global racial ontology. We establish a conversation between Ehlers’ installation and the work of two black American scholars from the humanities: Sylvia Wynter and Hortense Spillers. These scholars have not been influential in the European uptake and further elaboration of intersectionality, but we argue that engaging with their work opens up a perspective that focuses on affect, absence and disappearance rather than only representation, identity and recognition, thereby worlding intersectionality differently than standpoint theory. Experience is also constituted through affective encounters, the ephemeral, forgotten and bypassed qualities and intensities. We conclude the article by drawing a preliminary sketch of elements in what we, paraphrasing Spillers, call a Danish “grammar book” of the racialized and gendered ordering of the human that again complicates the stories we may tell about how race matters and what Nordic intersectional feminism may look like, as well as the interventions this may open up.

doi:10.1080/08038740.2020.1758206.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2020.1758206.

Jane Jin Kaisen, ed. Loving Belinda, (2015) [PDF]

Jane Jin Kaisen, ed. Loving Belinda, Forlaget * [asterisk], 2015.

The Loving Belinda project began in 2006 with the video Adopting Belinda in which Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, a supposedly Asian-American couple in Minnesota, are being interviewed by a Danish TV host for a series on Danish heritage because they have just adopted Belinda, a white girl from Denmark. Everything appears ordinary with the exception that the racial and cultural dynamics are reversed.

The Loving Belinda Project employs the mockumentary genre, appropriating documentary features to destabilize reality with subversive effect. By staging and reversing the racial “order” within transnational adoption, the works expose some of the uneven economic, racial, and cultural relations of power that are embedded within the practice but that tend to remain unspoken.

The videos Revisiting the Andersons and Loving Belinda as well as the photograph The Andersons from 2015,portray how the family is coping now whenBelinda is nine years old in the midst of changing discourses around transnational adoption.

In the Loving Belinda publication, the fictional universe is contextualized by conversations between the individuals involved in the project, whom in reality are all engaged in critical discourse around transnational adoption, anti-racism and whiteness in Scandinavia. 

Contents:

LOVING BELINDA

Adopting Belinda

Revisiting the Andersons

Loving Belinda

The Andersons

CONVERSATIONS

Tobias Hübinette & Jane Jin Kaisen: Transnational Adoption in the Context of Colonial Repression, Race Relations, and the Right-wing Turn in Scandinavia,

Morten Goll & Jane Jin Kaisen: Reflections on Art, Asylum Politics, Racism, and Transnational Adoption

Lene Myong & Jane Jin Kaisen: The Emergence of Adoption Critiques among Transnational Adoptees in Denmark

ESSAYS / PRESENTATIONS

Marianne Ping Huang: Artistic Research as Critique in Jane Jin Kaisen’s Loving Belinda

Louise Wolthers: Framing the Migrant Body

Tone Olaf Nielsen: Curating Anti-Racist, Pro-Migration & Decolonial Projects

http://janejinkaisen.com/loving-belinda-200615

PDF: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5539922fe4b03e1f32a65bc3/t/557bf05ee4b00283cf1e1590/1434185822742/Loving+Belinda+publication.pdf

Odumosu, Temi. ‘Open Images or Open Wounds? Colonial Past and Present in the City of Copenhagen’. (2016) [PDF]

Odumosu, Temi. ‘Open Images or Open Wounds? Colonial Past and Present in the City of Copenhagen’. Openness: Politics, Practices, Poetics, Ed. Susan Kozel, Living Archives, 2016,

It started with the drawn head of an anonymous brown-skinned girl with a cornrow hairstyle, who piqued my curiosity as she began to appear randomly on a poster here and there, emblazoned on shopper bags under the arms of Danish students, and then in a visual cacophony at the co-operative supermarket where she took her place on the packs of the coffee brand she represented, and was used liberally to decorate ser- viettes, paper cups and even the faces of clocks. Drawn in profile with a small rounded nose, sullen eyes, and elegant high cheekbones, I remember thinking that she looked like me as a child: quiet, serious, and highly aware. The “Cirkel Kaffe Girl” was the first of many visual assaults that wrought havoc with my emotions and sens- es, whilst the months and years ensued. Her ubiquity as a design motif within a largely homogenous Europe- an culture agitated my embodied sensibilities; as a scholar who works on race and representation but more directly as a Black woman commencing the slow and gradual project of dwelling in a new city—attempting to make the unknown and unfamiliar into something approximating home. The following photographic chronicle seeks to express what was difficult to say openly in moments and encounters I experienced whilst roaming in Danish public space over the last three years (2012–2015). What you will see are my hurriedly captured snapshots of discomforting objects, signs or images that restaged colonial visual strategies, recalled the plantation or the slave ship, and reproduced anachronistic racial motifs that seemed to me entirely out of place in a modern and progressive city.

PDF: https://livingarchives.mah.se/files/2015/01/openness_final.pdf.

Odumosu, Temi. ‘What Lies Unspoken’. (2019) [PDF]

Odumosu, Temi. ‘What Lies Unspoken’. Third Text, vol. 33, no. 4–5, Routledge, Sept. 2019, pp. 615–629.

This article provides a reflective overview of What Lies Unspoken: Sounding the Colonial Archive, a sound intervention which I initiated and produced in collaboration with curators at the Statens Museum for Kunst and Royal Library of Denmark, whilst conducting artistic research within the Living Archives Research Project at Malmö University. The project was part of commemorative activities during 2017, marking the centennial of the sale and transfer of Denmark’s former Caribbean sugar colonies (St Croix, St Thomas, and St John) to the United States. The intervention aimed to address the uncomfortable silences surrounding institutional and societal engagements with colonial history in Denmark. In the article I describe how and under what particular cultural conditions this project was developed, share some of the thinking that underpinned its making, and finally reflect on the realities of what it takes for cultural heritage institutions to share interpretive power.

doi:10.1080/09528822.2019.1654688.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2019.1654688.

Vitting-Seerup, Sabrina. ‘* ’Flygtninge’ på scenen – dilemmaer og potentialer’. (2018) [PDF]

Vitting-Seerup, Sabrina. ‘* ’Flygtninge’ på scenen – dilemmaer og potentialer’. Peripeti, vol. 15, no. 29/30, 29/30, Oct. 2018, pp. 127–137.

Through a reparative reading and by ‘staying with the trouble’, this article looks into four Danish performances from 2016-2017 that have worked with inclusion of people with refugee-experience. The text thereby identifies some of the dilemmas, questions and hopes that the different approaches to inclusion bring about.

https://tidsskrift.dk/peripeti/article/view/109637.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/peripeti/article/view/109637/158983

Vitting-Seerup, Sabrina. ‘Working towards Diversity with a Postmigrant Perspective: How to Examine Representation of Ethnic Minorities in Cultural Institutions’. (2017)

Vitting-Seerup, Sabrina. ‘Working towards Diversity with a Postmigrant Perspective: How to Examine Representation of Ethnic Minorities in Cultural Institutions’. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, Routledge, Aug. 2017, pp. 45–55.

This article presents ways for researchers and cultural workers to find and examine versions of representation in cultural institutions through a postmigrant perspective. The starting point is Denmark—a European nation state with, like many others, a diverse composition of citizens. This diversity is, however, poorly represented in Danish cultural institutions and the problem is difficult for many cultural workers to discuss due to the hesitation large segments of the Danish population feel about using terms associated with race and religion. Since much of the research regarding representation is strictly critical in its approach, it is also challenging to find the proper tools and language to discuss and correct the current skewed situation. This article is intended to provide balance in representation, first by presenting a model of four levels for potential positioning of diverse representation in cultural institutions and, secondly, by addressing the problems of access and depiction in regards to representation.

doi:10.1080/20004214.2017.1371563.

PDF: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/20004214.2017.1371563?needAccess=true

Engberg, Maria, Susan Kozel, and Temi Odumosu. ‘Postcolonial design interventions: mixed reality design for revealing histories of slavery and their legacies in Copenhagen’. (2017) [PDF]

Engberg, Maria, Susan Kozel, and Temi Odumosu. ‘Postcolonial design interventions: mixed reality design for revealing histories of slavery and their legacies in Copenhagen’. Nordes 2017: DESIGN+POWER, no. 7, 2017,

This article reveals a multi layered design process that occurs at the intersection between postcolonial/decolonial theory and a version of digital sketching called Embodied Digital Sketching (EDS). The result of this particular intersection of theory and practice is called Bitter & Sweet, a Mixed Reality design prototype using cultural heritage material. Postcolonial and decolonial strategies informed both analytic and practical phases of the design process. A further contribution to the design field is the reminder that design interventions in the current political and economic climate are frequently bi-directional: designers may enact, but simultaneously external events intervene in design processes. Bitter & Sweet reveals intersecting layers of power and control when design processes deal with sensitive cultural topics.

PDF: https://livingarchives.mah.se/files/2015/01/EngbergKozelOdumosu.pdf.

Danbolt, Mathias, and Tobias Raun. ‘Hornsleths Un/Fair Trade – Æstetisk Evangelisme Og Nykolonialistisk Etnografi i Samtidskunsten’. (2008) [PDF]

Danbolt, Mathias, and Tobias Raun. ‘Hornsleths Un/Fair Trade – Æstetisk Evangelisme Og Nykolonialistisk Etnografi i Samtidskunsten’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, no. 4, 4, Dec. 2008.

Kan man gøre og sige hvad som helst i kunstens navn? Kontroversielle kunstprojekter som Kristian von Hornsleths Hornsleth Village Project Uganda har skabt debat om for-holdet mellem det etiske og det æsteti-ske i den socialt engagerede samtidskunst. Kunst behøver ikke at være etisk forsvarlig for at være relevant, men hvorfor repeterer grænseoverskridende kunstneriske provokationer ofte sexistiske, racistiske og koloniale strukturer?

doi:10.7146/kkf.v0i4.27943.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/27943.

Danbolt, Mathias. ‘Striking Reverberations: Beating Back the Unfinished History of the Colonial Aesthetic with Jeannette Ehlers’ Whip It Good’. (2016) [PDF]

Danbolt, Mathias. ‘Striking Reverberations: Beating Back the Unfinished History of the Colonial Aesthetic with Jeannette Ehlers’ Whip It Good’. in Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories, Eds. Amelia Jones and Erin Silver, Manchester University Press, 2016.

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/16462395/Striking_Reverberations_Beating_Back_the_Unfinished_History_of_the_Colonial_Aesthetic_with_Jeannette_Ehlers_Whip_it_Good.

Danbolt, Mathias, and Lene Myong. ‘Det her skal alle da opleve: Racial transformation som erkendelsesproces og mangfoldighedsværktøj i dansk anti-racistisk performance’. (2018) [PDF]

Danbolt, Mathias, and Lene Myong. ‘Det her skal alle da opleve: Racial transformation som erkendelsesproces og mangfoldighedsværktøj i dansk anti-racistisk performance’. Peripeti, no. 29/30, 2018.

Hvordan bliver racialisering og racisme fremstillet og forstået i anti-racistisk performance i Danmark? Denne artikel nærmer sig dette spørgsmål gennem en analyse af det selverklærede “anti- racistiske” performanceprojekt Med andre øjne (herefter MAØ), som blev initieret af skuespiller og projektleder Morten Nielsen i 2011 og som var virksomt frem til foråret 2018.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/peripeti/article/download/109631/158977.

Cramer, Nina. ‘Hvad Bliver Synligt i Tomrummet?: Kritiske Fabulationer Og Video-Vodou i Jeannette Ehlers’ Black Magic at the White House’. (2018) [PDF]

Cramer, Nina. ‘Hvad Bliver Synligt i Tomrummet?: Kritiske Fabulationer Og Video-Vodou i Jeannette Ehlers’ Black Magic at the White House’. Kunst Og Kultur, vol. 101, Oct. 2018, pp. 133–148.

Denne artikel undersøger omhyggeligt udarbejdede lakuner i Jeannette Ehlers’ videoværk Black Magic at the White House (2009). Her udgør det visuelle felt på én gang en arena for kunstnerkroppens udviskning og stedet, hvor en konfrontation med kolonihistoriske udeladelser finder sted. Artiklen argumenterer for, at dette opnås gennem en fabulerende kunstnerisk praksis, hvor grænserne mellem det autentiske og inautentiske utydeliggøres.

doi:10.18261/issn.1504-3029-2018-03-02.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328435281_Hvad_bliver_synligt_i_tomrummet_Kritiske_fabulationer_og_video-vodou_i_Jeannette_Ehlers%27_Black_Magic_at_the_White_House.