Five new talents within art research receive a total of DKK 6.6 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has just awarded two PhD scholarships and three PostDoc fellowships to a new generation of young researchers who will influence Danish art research in the years to come.
Peter Norgaard Larsen is chair of the review committee and research chief at the National Gallery of Denmark. He says:
– A common interest for many of the projects this year is to find out if and how art can change society. A common interest that signifies the new generations of scientists within art research in later years: A greater interest in the art as criticism and as an agent of societal change.
– The purpose of the scholarships is to give talented young scientists an opportunity to contribute to art and art history research in Denmark. I am sure that this year’s recipients will have a great influence on the future of art research.
The grants are the Mads Øvlisen PhD Scholarships and Mads Øvlisen PostDoc Fellowships. They are awarded to support art history research, art and arts-based research as well as art, bio- and natural sciences research. The grants are awarded in open competition.
The two PhD scholarships are each DKK 1.5 million over a period of three years and the three PostDoc Fellowships are each DKK 1.2 million over a period of two years.
THE FIVE GRANT RECIPIENTS AND THEIR PROJECTS
MADS ØVLISEN PHD SCHOLARSHIP WITHIN ART HISTORY RESEARCH
Birgitte Thorsen Vilslev
Mag. art in art history
Age: 35
PROJECT TITLE
Experimental film rediscovered
An art historical analysis of Danish experimental film in an international perspective
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Danish experimental film is an overlooked field in art historical research. The project will contribute to the description and inclusion of films made by Danish artists in art history and in an international avantgarde context. The project concerns early Danish experimental film from the 1940s (e.g. Freddie, Roos, Jacobsen, Mertz and Winther) and follows the development of the experimental film through the 1960s and 70s, including for example the group ABCinema and the contemporary experiments with 8mm and 16mm cameras. The intention is that research in the early experimental film will provide a historical fundament for the understanding of the exchanges between film and art with relevant perspectives for contemporary art today.
PLACE OF RESEARCH
The National Gallery of Denmark, the Danish Film Institute and the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.
MADS ØVLISEN PHD SCHOLARSHIP WITHIN PRACTICE-BASED ART RESEARCH
Katarina Stenbeck
MA, curator
Age: 40
PROJECT TITLE
The eco-aesthetics between ambiguity and relevance
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The project aims to analyse the critical potential of contemporary art and the media of the exhibition. It discusses the possibilities of art to thematise the radical environmental changes we are confronted with. The project is partly theoretical and partly practice based. The theoretical part will discuss how contemporary art and the exhibition format can exceed the ambiguous statements privileged by contemporary art and then respond to the implications of the ecological crises. The practical part of the project will explore how the media of the exhibition can generate knowledge, discussion and new perspectives, which can point towards new horizons through series of exhibitions and public events.
PLACE OF RESEARCH
The department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.
MADS ØVLISEN POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP WITHIN ART HISTORY
Kerry Greaves
PhD
Age: 38
PROJECT TITLE
On the Edge: Reconsidering Danish Art Collectives
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The project contends that the tradition of the artists’ collective in Denmark, as a professional structure and creative method, contributed to original and progressive approaches which can expand the international art historical discourse. The project will scrutinize the unique, native phenomenon of artist consolidations and their synergistic interactions with both official and more radical spheres of Danish and international culture in the twentieth century. As working and cooperative collectives, the artist consolidations often reflect contradictory social, professional and artistic modes that go beyond the traditional binary concepts such as cultural avantgarde versus cultural retrograde. In this way an ubiquitous blind spot in Danish art history has occurred. It is exactly this ambiguous position between systems of institutional hegemony and more provisional artists which is the reason that the project frames the artists’ collectives as indices of the larger cultural and political issues in Denmark.
PLACE OF RESEARCH
The Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.
MADS ØVLISEN POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP WITHIN PRACTICE-BASED ART RESEARCH
Peter Ole Pedersen
PhD in Art history from University of Aarhus
Age: 37
PROJECT TITLE
Contemporary Art and Documentary Culture
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Through a series of eight exhibitions, the Postdoc-project brings into focus the historical and critical relation between art and documentation. Important socio cultural phenomena like surveillance, mass-communication and the writing of history are under a comprehensive transformation in our current net-based media landscape. Cameras are ubiquitous and information is constantly exchanged between amateurs and professionals.
The exhibitions in the project will examine the societal changes and challenges produced by this new documentary culture. Danish and international art of high quality will be shown and a wide range of artists, researcher and authors that works with documentary in different media will participate. The ambition is to combine the curatorial initiatives with more traditional research and in this way create an innovative “art history of documentary”.
PLACE OF RESEARCH
The research programme in Mediality, Materiality and Aesthetic Meaning, University of Aarhus.
MADS ØVLISEN POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP WITHIN ART & BIO- AND NATURAL SCIENCES
Lisbet Tarp
PhD in art history
Age: 35
PROJECT TITLE
The Visual Laboratory: Alchemy, Instrument and Hybridity in the Early Modern Period
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
This project aims to challenge our understanding of the possible interrelationships between the natural sciences and art by studying the visual culture of 1600s and 1700s. In this period of early modernism, the early scientific practices met the artistic, and notions such as hybridity and creativity were examined and expressed through text, images and objects. It is this visual imagery and its concepts that will be the foundation of this project’s investigation of the early modern aesthetic and didactic elements of the scientific communications strategies that arose in the wake of the fall of alchemical practices.
PLACE OF RESEARCH
Department of Aesthetics and Communication, University of Aarhus.
