britt hatzius

[life_of_Objects]

 

in OVERGARDEN gallery, Copenhagen:

• with Objects nr. 3-26 left in the streets of Copenhagen during the Cotemplation Room Project (from 24th of may to 24th of june 2002 in the Overgarden gallery of the Danish Cultural Ministry).
• Sent over from London, they are being placed on pavements around town by various people. Following 'site-and placing instructions', which are sent over with other necessary 'accessories' or 'tools' to Copenhagen and will remain in the gallery on show, each object will be placed and left with its label, as a gift to a possible passer-by.
• This object will remain with that temporary owner for a while, a description (+position) sent to
• >postmaster@britthatzius.co.uk or
• >britt hatzius PO Box 33674, London N16 OYQ, UK

and then in the future be passed on from one home to another. The label attached to the object is to kept and given on, together with that particular object.

"lost" in the streets of Copenhagen may\june 2002 (a project that begins in Copenhagen and shall expand: connecting to other cities such as London, Berlin or Heidelberg (Germany) and beyond.

 

Any city is marked by a "population of passers-bu, a temporary universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of places". If then "a space is a practiced place" [Michel de Certeau], then the temporary universe of rented spaces are practiced places, places that are used and physically carry the traces of those everyday practices.

As the streets carry ever-changing marks of practices, so do objects. Both speak of the complex realationship between us and our surrounding world. What charachterizes the spaces of a city are the traces that these practices, actions, activities and uses leave behind. So does the object speak, shall be spoken of, cared for, paid attention to and become a starting point for seeing, looking twice and observing carefully.

 

In using hidden spaces of the city to create a personal or intimate encounter or relation within a public space, each object is a temporary gift from me to a possible passer-by. 'lost' in the streets of Copenhagen, asking to be kept for some time before being given on to someone else.

An experiment of sending the object on a journey, whose position, place and individual description shall be, over and over again, redefined by each temporary owner.

The objects' moving and traveling will be traced, with the purpose of a vital, inquisitive investigation of making still unknown traces visible, creating worlds around the lost and the found, to bring a nomadic object alive.

 

"They were merely descriptions of objects. and each story dealt with only one thing", "they were the situation", the one-thing-tales of capturing a single thing in its being "as accessory or scene of action". [Peter Handke, The jukebox and other Essays on Storytelling, 1994]