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Video ab Acht
Simone Aaberg Kærn
October 27 - November 18, 2001
presented by Rosanne Altstatt
VIDEO AB ACHT (VIDEO AFTER EIGHT) is a series of exhibitions in which screenings and installations will be shown at the Schnitt Ausstellungsraum throughout the year 2001. The emphasis is on young artists who use video as important element in their works.
Simone Aaberg Kærn (born 1969 in Copenhagen) employs a variety of electronic media in her installations, which create a link between technology and humanity. Since the late-90s her works have related to the social and cultural implications of the airplane. Specifically, Aaberg Kærn's is most well-known for her videos, painting and sound installations on the subject of female WWII fighter pilots - their dreams of flying, the careers and post-war life flight gave them, and the perceptions of women who fly.
For Schnitt Ausstellungsraum Aaberg Kærn has taken the subject of flight up above the stratosphere and into outer space. There is a certain ideal that has been attached to both air flight and space flight since the 60s and 70s. This was accompanied by the concept of being able to
control one's own destiny, and also having the power of a (military) machine in one's hands. But today, a short time after the flight attacks of 9/11, the scales have tipped, plunging air and space flight almost completely into the context of war and weaponry.
Despite this development (or perhaps because of it), Aaberg Kærn attempts to claim a frontier that has not yet been inhabited - outer space. After a short lull in the international development in space technology, the world's national and economic powers have renewed the race to claim the heavens. Instead of making space a military goal, Aaberg Kærn questions what kinds of places might be created amongst the stars. Who will have access to outer space? Can U.S. or Russian technology propel civilians into space? Perhaps we can develop "space parasites", capsules that lodge onto military rockets carrying civilians to the stars.
But then who will actually live in outer space? Would it be a paradise or a place for those we do not need on earth? Aaberg Kaern reclaims space for the imagination instead of military apparati - above and beyond any clear-cut and utopian ideals from a bygone era.
Simone Aaberg Kærn lives and works in Copenhagen.
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2001 Skive Kunstmuseum 2000 Project Room, Arco, Marco Noire Contemporary Art, Madrid 1998 Jyllands Postens Exhibition Space, Copenhagen
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2001 Get that Balance, K2 Hamburg 2000 Pusan International Contemporary Art Festival, Korea 1999 Biennale di Venezia; Site Santa Fe Biennale 1998 Nordic Normads, White Columns, NY; Come Closer, Liechtensteinische Staatliche Kunstsammlung; Nuit Blanche, Musée d'Art Moderne Ville de Paris; 1995 Wild at heart, Joussé Seguin, Paris
Supported by NPC, Düsseldorf; Kulturamt der Stadt Köln; Danish Contemporary Art Foundation.
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