artistic research project in collaboration with Maria Mengel at the Royal Academy of Architecture 2021-2024
We gather around it; sharing meals, ideas and disagreements, playing games, making plans. It is a tool for civilizing human interaction. The table is the most common day object framing our daily routines and rituals as well as a stage for starting wars and negotiating ceasefires. It is an architectural gesture, a construction lifting the ground, establishing a framed territory for social interaction.
‘Motherboard’ – a central point for connection and memory – is simultaniously a physical table and a scale model of the former sea plane hangar at Holmen in Copenhagen now housing 150 students of architecture. The spatial gesture of the hangar – its large, open, flexible space invites us to experiment with teaching formats and encurage and culture of collaborative practices. ’Motherboard’ is the beginning of a conversation about this shared territory. It is an object, a memory and a place for making things – together.
The table can be folded and extended into various positions thereby changing the social dynamics around it. It is portable which makes it possible to establish the hangar territory in various external contexts. We ask: Can the table hold a memory of a unique culture which can be unfolded elsewhere. What makes ’a culture’ and what role does space and objects play?
Exhibition view of MOTHERBOARD at Brønshøj Watertower, June 2022.
From the group exhibition Practices of Risk, Control and Productive Failure (click for link to exhibition catalog)