Photo

Ville Laurinkoski

Location

Den Frie Udstillingsbygning

Time

10/10 2024

Genre

Artificial Optimism performance program

Fin de section

by

Ville Laurinkoski

Performance happens together with a performance by Jessica Ekomane

Ville Laurinkoski (*1996, FI)

Fin de section, 2024, Performance

Ville Laurinkoski works with literature and voices, objects and spaces, acting with and through exaggerated speech, screams and song. Other elements in their works include worn mattresses, discarded domestic objects and commercial music, all revolving around states of loneliness and intimacy but also comfort and bliss. Their series of performances Fin de section is inspired by the French author Guy Hocquenghem’s transgressive short story collection from 1975 bearing the same title. The book is about being queer in the socio-political climate of the 1970s and failing to meet the demands of normality, while the title can be loosely translated to ‘the last stop’, for example on a journey. The book’s short stories also constitute an effort to think about the directionless nature of everyday life after times of revolution, making them relevant to our present day, particularly to our diffuse sense of ‘now’ and unclear picture of the future. Ville Laurinkoski’s installations and performances generally revolve around rediscovering or re-establishing a relationship with what has been effaced or forgotten – such as the collective as unconsciousness or a special way of being together. Perhaps the Futurists can be said to have done the opposite: seeking to erase the past, even though this erasure was never complete.

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ABOUT VILLE LAURINKOSKI (FI)

Ville Laurinkoski (b. 1996) is an artist and performer based in Copenhagen. Laurinkoski works with suggestive interiors and chamber pieces that comprise mass-produced objects and misfit materials that are being imbued with sound and voice, live or recorded, supplied with worn-out literature, commercial music, and different genres of autobiographical writing to painting, stained mattresses and partitions, transforming the unwanted states of loneliness and intimacy to collective scenes of relief. Reflecting not only a subjective position, but society at large, the artist’s work takes in this way infrastructure critical turn. Alongside studying at Ed Atkins’ class at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts (BFA, MFA), Laurinkoski has graduated from The University of the Arts Helsinki, Academy of Fine Arts (MFA) and completed Maumaus Independent Study Programme in Lisbon in 2021. Laurinkoski has previously exhibited in Amos Rex (2020), Kuva/Tila (2022, 2023, 2024), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (2023), the Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design (2024) amongst others, and performed at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art (2023), O—Overgaden (2024), Art Hub Copenhagen (2024) to mention a few. They are part of artist collective Jennifee-See Alternate.

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ARTIFICIAL OPTIMISM PERFORMANCE PROGRAM

Artificial Optimism is an exhibition about the resonances of futurism in contemporary art, which can be experienced at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning from Aug. 24th – Oct. 27th 2024. During the exhibition period, performances and concerts by the exhibiting artists will be regularly held. Performance was central to futurism and the program is inspired by the evenings and afternoons that the futurists held between 1909 and 1914, where they presented combinations of readings, sound art, happenings, etc. Participation in the performance program is free when the ticket to the exhibition has been paid.

The exhibition’s performance program has been developed under the auspices of Toaster, a collaboration between Husets Teater and Den Frie.

Photo

Ville Laurinkoski