Artist talk with Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind and Marie Berg Christensen

How do we write histories of resistance, absence and presence – and who has the right to define what is remembered and what is erased from history?

Taking Sansour’s sculptural installation Archaeology in Absentia as a point of departure, we will ask how archaeology, fiction and myth can be used as tools to create – and challenge – the narratives that shape our understanding of the past and possibilities for the future.
The talk is in English and moderated by Stine Hebert from HEIRLOOM center for art and archives.

In Archaeology in Absentia, Sansour has buried hand-painted porcelain plates with the traditional Palestinian resistance pattern in various locations in Palestine and Israel – from Jerusalem and Ramallah to Haifa and the Dead Sea. The coordinates of these secret burials are embedded in bronze sculptures, modeled on a Russian Cold War atomic bomb, and displayed in vitrines as archaeological artifacts, as evidence and as resistance.

“We are depositing facts in the ground for future archaeologists to excavate” as the main character in the video work In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain states. The work revolves around how fiction and myth can become political tools for creating new realities. The film follows a resistance group burying porcelain with the aim of creating a future, fictional people – an invented history that may one day become an archaeological reality for generations to come.

The conversation this evening will revolve around how archaeology and storytelling can be used both to preserve, suppress and reshape memories – and how art can create new spaces for rethinking history.

Participants:

Larissa Sansour 
Larissa Sansour lives and works in London. She has studied Fine Arts in London, New York, and Copenhagen. Sansour’s work has been exhibited at numerous art institutions worldwide, and she represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale in 2019. Most of the works in These Moments Will Disappear Too are created in collaboration with Danish writer and director Søren Lind.

Søren Lind
Søren Lind has a background in philosophy and has published novels, short story collections, and several children’s books. In collaboration with Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind directs and writes scripts for their joint films.

Marie Berg Christensen
Marie Berg Christensen holds an MA in Prehistoric Archaeology, an MSc in Conservation and Restoration, and a PhD in Critical Cultural Heritage Studies from the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with the National Museum of Denmark. Her research explores the transnational and cross-sectoral dimensions of cultural heritage in the context of security policy, employing interdisciplinary methods that draw on political science, sociology, cultural heritage studies, and critical museology. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen, working on the project Museums Under Fire Exploring How Modern Conflicts Affect Danish Museums’ Collections and Exhibitions, funded by the Augustinus Foundation. Christensen serves on the advisory board of the Nordic Center for Cultural Heritage and Armed Conflict (CHAC) and is a board member of Blue Shield Denmark.

Stine Hebert
Stine Hebert is a curator, researcher and art historian. She has previously functioned as dean of the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo, rector of Funen Art Academy and acting director of BAC – Baltic Art Center in Sweden. She has also held curatorial positions at Kunsthal Charlottenborg and Malmö Art Museum and has practiced as a freelance curator for a number of years. Hebert is co-founder and co-director of HEIRLOOM center for art and archives and associate professor at PASS Center for Practice-based Art Studies at University of Copenhagen.