ongoing artistic research project
We all gather around tables, sharing meals, ideas and disagreements, playing games, making plans. The table is a way of civilizing human interaction. It is the most common day object framing our daily routines and rituals as well as a stage for starting wars and negotiating ceasefires. It is an architectural gesture, a construction lifting the ground, establishing a framed territory for social interaction.
‘Motherboard’ forms part of an ongoing artistic research project conducted at the Royal Danish Academy between 2021-24 in collaboration with Maria Mengel in the workshop and as an assignment with a group of first year students at the BA program Taking Place. ‘Motherboard’ is simultaneously a table and a scale model of a former sea plane hangar which was until recently part of the Royal Danish Academy housing hundred and fifty students of architecture. The project is an investigation of collaboration in architecture through making and enrolling buildings, objects, and history as active co-creators.
The project has been exhibited as part of the exhibition Practices of Risk, Control and productive Failure in Brønshøj Vandtårn and the Cooper Union, New York, 2022 and at BLOCK architecture gallery in Stockholm, spring 2024
It is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and The Royal Danish Academy.
We gather around it; sharing meals, ideas and disagreements, playing games, making plans. It is a tool for civilizing human interaction. The table is the most common day object framing our daily routines and rituals as well as a stage for starting wars and negotiating ceasefires. It is an architectural gesture, a construction lifting the ground, establishing a framed territory for social interaction.
‘Motherboard’ – a central point for connection and memory – is simultaniously a physical table and a scale model of the former sea plane hangar at Holmen in Copenhagen now housing 150 students of architecture. The spatial gesture of the hangar – its large, open, flexible space invites us to experiment with teaching formats and encurage and culture of collaborative practices. ’Motherboard’ is the beginning of a conversation about this shared territory. It is an object, a memory and a place for making things – together.
The table can be folded and extended into various positions thereby changing the social dynamics around it. It is portable which makes it possible to establish the hangar territory in various external contexts. We ask: Can the table hold a memory of a unique culture which can be unfolded elsewhere. What makes ’a culture’ and what role does space and objects play?
Exhibition view of MOTHERBOARD at Brønshøj Watertower, June 2022.
From the group exhibition Practices of Risk, Control and Productive Failure (click for link to exhibition catalog)
