Testing Grounds Episode 8: ‘Art Hub Copenhagen – Repairing the City’ now available

How might a philosophy of repair change our approach to planning and architecture?

Art Hub Copenhagen is NAARCA’s Danish partner, and the only member residency located in a major city. It opened in 2019 as a place for artists, curators and creative professionals to gather, network and collaborate.

Jacob Fabricius is the Director of Art Hub Copenhagen. He tells us about Art Hub’s development, including its upcoming move to a new – old! – building that’s being refurbished with an emphasis on reuse, recycling and sustainability. Jacob also introduces us to our contributors, Søren Nørkjær Bang and Emmy Laura Pérez Fjalland. Søren is a curator with a background in art history and philosophy – and a passion for architecture – who now works for Copenhagen Architecture Festival. Emmy is a Danish-Colombian cultural geographer, writer, researcher and teacher with a deep interest in human-landscape relationships.

Emmy and Søren explore the potential for more collaborative, humble and regenerative approaches to architecture and planning, the idea of “repair”, and the power of author Ursula K. Le Guin’s “carrier bag theory of fiction”.

Find out more:
Art Hub Copenhagen (https://arthubcopenhagen.net/en/)
Copenhagen Architecture Festival (https://www.cafx.dk/)
Thoravej 29 – Art Hub’s Future home (https://thoravej29.com)

Contributors:
Jacob Fabricius, Director, Art Hub Copenhagen
Emmy Laura Pérez Fjalland, cultural geographer, writer, researcher and teacher (https://emmylaura.info/)
Søren Nørkjær Bang, Curator, Copenhagen Architecture Festival

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

A captioned version of this episode is available on YouTube.

Featured in this episode:

Jacob Fabricius (he/him)
Director, Art Hub Copenhagen

Director at Art Hub Copenhagen. Artistic Director of the Korean Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennial. Artistic director for Kunsthal Aarhus until June 2021. Before that, director of Malmö Kunsthal, Sweden, and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. Has recently concluded the Busan Biennale in South Korea, where he was artistic director.

In addition, founder of Pork Salad Press and the Old News newspaper project. Has worked with many different exhibition formats in public spaces and was for the period of 2016-2019 a member of the Committee for Visual Arts Project Funding for the Danish Arts Foundation.

Emmy Laura Pérez Fjalland (she/her)
Writer, Scholar & Lecturer

Emmy Laura (PhD) is a Danish-Colombian writer, scholar and lecturer in cultural geography. She works with landscapes and landscaping practices, and is deeply engaged with how humans are—and have been—interacting with the natural and social environments they live in, with, and along. Since 2020 she has been writing the weekly letter Jordbo together with the Danish media Føljeton, and has been writing for Danish and international journals, magazines, newspapers, and digital media.

Søren Nørkjær Bang (he/him)
Curator

Søren Nørkjær Bang, b. 1993, Curator, editor and MA in Art History from University College London (UCL).

Katie Revell (she/her)

Katie Revell is a Glasgow-based freelance audio producer and (lapsed!) filmmaker with a particular interest in food, climate change, and relationships to the land. She grew up on the southeast coast of Scotland and has also lived in Germany, India and the USA. Since 2016, Katie has been part of the team behind the award-winning Farmerama Radio podcast, which shares the voices of regenerative and agroecological farmers in the UK and beyond. Katie was lead producer of Farmerama’s first series, Cereal, which explored the history of bread and profiled the UK’s “new grains movement”. She also co-produced Landed, a personal exploration of land ownership and colonial legacy told by a farmer’s son as he returns home to his family farm. Katie believes passionately in the need for creative responses to climate change, and is delighted to be on the NAARCA team.