Silent Parties Concerts
benandsebastian will be holding a series of concerts from Friday 9th to Sunday 11th of June at the Court of Aarhus. The concerts will be a unique opportunity to experience their artwork about legal trials of animals and robots, Silent Parties, while dancing to a spoken word techno concert in a law court.
The concert is the result of years of collaboration with techno producer Sternum and seventeen specialists, including space lawyers, animal advocates and witch trial experts. benandsebastian’s artwork within Hack Kampmann’s architectural gem will be illuminated by Dark Matters.
ARoS, linked below, are distributing tickets for the concerts.
The Court of Aarhus has moved into the former city library created by architect Hack Kampmann and artist Hans Reistrup between 1898-1902. The Silent Parties artwork is in former library’s reading room at Vester Allé 12, 8000 Aarhus C, open Mon-Fri 08:30-15:00.
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 from 1st of May – 12th of September 2021.
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 are releasing their book, Silent Parties, at ARoS on the 9th of June at 6.30pm. The book is based on the artists’ public commission for the Court of Aarhus.
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, published with Hatje Cantz and Roulette Russe, will be available at a discounted rate for Silent Parties concert guests.
To register for the talk and book launch please write ‘TILMELD’ to digital@aros.dk
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.
