The community space for audiophile listening, After, has hosted the first Berlin public listening session of Silent Parties. The event follows a two-year collaboration with techno producer Sternum on benandsebastian’s sound piece about legal trials of animals and robots. In the genre-bending audio work – part talk, part techno set, part podcast, part sound art – benandsebastian discuss these trials with 16 specialists working within the fields of law, robotics, animal and AI ethics, anthropology and cognition. These remarkable cases and come to life in a quadruple dubplate set made for After and mastered by sound engineer Conor Dalton.
After is a community space for audiophile listening at Köpenicker Straße 187-188, 10997 Berlin.
benandsebastian exhibited a new, site-specific installation in Rudoph Schindler’s study at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture as part of the Autonomous Design exhibition.
Since its founding in 1994, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House has been making a unique contribution to the artistic and cultural landscape of Los Angeles. Unique in its role as a constellation of historic architectural sites and contemporary exhibition spaces, the MAK Center develops local, national, and international projects exploring the intersection of art and architecture.
benandsebastian published in the MIT journal ‘Thresholds’
benandsebastian are part of MIT’s newly released Thresholds 48: KIN.
Thresholds is the annual peer-reviewed journal produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Each independently themed issue features content from leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of architecture, art, and culture.
benandsebastian on Louisiana Channel
benandsebastian were interviewed by the Louisiana Channel in connection to the Museum of Nothing.
Louisiana Channel is a non-profit website based at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark.
benandsebastian’s book Silent Parties has been selected by the Danish Association of Book Crafts for this year’s ‘Best Danish Book design.’ The book, which has been designed by benandsebastian and Alexis Mark, is on display on the first floor of the Royal Danish Library’s Black Diamond building until the 13th of August 2024.
Silent Parties spans from a 15th century case involving a cock being tried for laying an egg, to a contemporary case examining whether life-size singing and dancing robots should be considered “live performers”. benandsebastian have collaborated with specialists working within the fields of law, robotics, ethics, anthropology and cognition, addressing ways in which nonhumans have been silent, but also revelatory, parties in legal history.
The book is published with Hatje Cantz and Roulette Russe.
benandsebastian have been talking to the writer Ellen Mara de Wachter about the process of creating Silent Parties (Tavse Parter), a permanent commission for the Court of Aarhus in Denmark. Their research into creating a work inspired by historical legal trials involving non-human defendants became a central focus of their residency at Delfina Foundation in London in November and December 2019. The interview (linked here) also features a teaser of a coming audiowork, which benandsebastian are making in collaboration with the techno producer STERNUM.
Ellen Mara de Wachter is an arts and culture writer whose writing has featured in a range of publications, including Frieze, Art Quarterly, Art Monthly and The White Review.
Delfina Foundation is an independent, non-profit foundation dedicated to facilitating artistic exchange and developing creative practice through residencies, partnerships and public programming.
Sternum is a techno producer based in Berlin.
Department of Voids, the book
Department of Voids is accompanied by a book, which is available at Kunsthal Charlottenborg , DAC, and at Butikken Art & Books in Copenhagen, or online via Kerber Verlag (see links below).
Department of Voids is accompanied by a book with essays by Cassandra Edlefsen Lasch, Michael Marder, Ursula K. Le Guin and twelve museum directors and specialists.
At 12 noon on Danish Constitution Day, the 5th of June 2022, benandsebastian’s most recent public artwork, Sovereign, was inaugurated in Herthadalen, calling for a simple but radical change to the country’s national constitution and revitalising political debate on a woodland site called Herthadalen that is considered a cradle of Danish democratic identity. Sovereign highlights a common yet striking omission in modern European constitutions: nature.
Comprising 16 Copenhagen museum vitrines transposed to a woodland near Lejre, Suveræn Souverän Suverenur Namminersortoq includes 16 suggested amendments to Denmark’s national constitution, in which the monarch’s current constitutional role is handed back to nature.
Herthadalen is a wooded kettle hole where the first Danish Constitutional Act Meeting was held in 1854 and where thousands gathered in subsequent decades to hear political speeches and debates.
benandsebastian’s ‘Department of Voids’ has been part of the exhibition ‘Where We Stand Now—In Order to Map the Future’ at the 21st Century Museum of Art in Kanazawa, Japan. The work is part of the museum’s permanent collection.
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa is a museum of contemporary art located in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan.
benandsebastian have installed a new permanent installation at the Niels Bohr Building, part of the University of Copenhagen’s new science park.
The Niels Bohr Building includes research and education activities for the Faculty of Science and the Niels Bohr Institute at The University of Copenhagen. It will be located in the University Park, as a part of North Campus, Copenhagen.
