PRESENTATION: Dangerous When Wet

Based on water and wet environments, the exhibition “Dangerous When Wet” investigates how to implement care in a divided world, where water connects us across existence and national borders. The exhibition focuses on collective forms of love, self-love, identity, and sexuality. These themes explore how water can lead to new ways of shaping communities.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Copenhagen Contemporary Archive

Presenting works in and about water, “Dangerous When Wet” is an experimental art exhibition taking the viewer on a magical journey at a public pool with a ritual washing and purple slime. A stellar array of Danish and international artists are contributing to the show’s exploration of love, identity and sexuality.  The exhibition features everything from custom bath slippers to a synchronized swimming performance, an edible sculpture and a painting submerged in water. Set at a public swimming pool, “Dangerous When Wet” expands the space of art, opening up new experiences in a different context from the art museum. Turning the commonplace upside down, the exhibition presents new perspectives on the pool as a public space. The admission ticket to the public swimming pool is a work of art in itself: a pair of bath slippers custom-designed by the artist Filip Berg. The maze of the dressing room leads to a ritual washing of hands and feet with soaps crafted by Iben Zorn and soothing bespoke scents wafting from sculptural vessels. Next, you are led underground to emerging artist Adele Rannes’ mythical works before arriving in the cavernous hall of the pool, where you can experience paintings installed on window- panes and on the bottom of a pool. An edible artwork awaits during the intermission of a mesmerizing concert performance featuring Linda Lamignan on the diving boards. The evening concludes with a synchronized swimming performance featuring six transindividual bodies moving to a live musical composition. In addition to the main exhibition at Kildeskovshallen on 30 September  the exhibition unfolds at Copenhagen Contemporary with the award-winning performance “FIEBRE” on 1&2/10 and video works from 14/9 to 30/10, “FIEBRE” is a choreographic work departing from a fictional landscape exploring a sensual gooey material intending to imagine other ways of being together for thresholding and transformation. Eroticism becomes a source of empowerment where desire, disgust and alienation are free to coexist and feed each other. The work is built on cooperation and care, the work relies essentially on the group. Re-framing the inherited hierarchies of the different parts of labour in such a work and their respective visibilities aiming to shake up structural ways of putting cheer to the singular author.

Tamara Alegre works with dance and choreography. Born in Gran Canaria, they studied European Business and Psychology and worked as an underground music curator, DJ and tour manager until 2016. Their research revolves around sensual embodiments, fiction on sexuality and sexual organs, and liminal physical states as choreographic tools. Tamara’s dance practice is influenced by a growing passion for dancehall, attempting to understand how to position themself as a white person having access to black culture. Lately, they have collaborated with Soraya Lutangu/Bonaventure and the Kingdom Choir from Kampala as movement researcher and as choreographic assistant for Sabrina Röthlisberger on her performance «Le Sang». Elie Autin completed his training at the Manufacture in Lausanne. He has already worked with renowned choreographers as Jérome Bel, Gabriel Schenker, Mark Lorimer, Cindy Van Acker, Ioannis Mandafounis, Vincent Macaigne, Thomas Hauert, Gabriel Schenker, Mark Lorimer, Fabian Barba, Shai Faran, Pierre Mifsud, Valeria Bertolloto, David Zambrano, Martin Kilvady, Marco Berretini, Hisako Horikawa and Archie Brunet. In 2019, Elie took part in Tanzhaus Zürich’s newcomer platform SHOW-OFF. Lydia Östberg Diakité is a dancer, choreographer and union organizer who since 2013 is based in Copenhagen. Ö. Diakité is inspired by and refers in its work to popular cultural phenomena, hyper-performativity, contemporary criticism and tenderness. Nunu Flashdem has a background in various circus disciplines and currently works as a professional dancehall and Twerk dancer and teacher. She performs at different events and concerts, amongst others Kranium, Charly Black, and Cali P, and shoots music videos with other artists around Europe. Marie Ursin works with dance, choreography, curating, and organization, always based on collaborative processes and hybrid formats. She studied dance and performance at Stockholm University of the Arts (DOCH). Since 2013, she has been the artistic director of the annual experimental residency project, Scene:Bluss, in collaboration with Alexandra Tveit. Freja Sofie Kirk is a visual artist based in Copenhagen. Working across video, photography and installation, and often in connection with each other, her practice looks at the inner mechanisms and contradictions of images. Through an ongoing work with two-dimensional representations, Kirk has developed a sustained interest in the meaning of images, but also an urge to dissolve or transform them into material qualities. Melanie Kitti is a visual artist, poet and curator. She studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and The Danish Academy of Creative Writing in Copenhagen. She helped launch Destiny’s, a gallery in Oslo, which she still actively runs in partnership with three other artists. In 2021, she founded Abhivyakti, a non-profit, multidisciplinary magazine with exclusively BIPOC contributors. In 2022, she will make her authorial debut with the book Halvt urne, halvt gral, published by the Danish publishing house, Gyldendal. Linda Lamignan is a visual and performance artist whose work tells stories about the experience of floating in between different worlds. Through video, music, objects and performance, Lamignan explores notions relating to wandering and diaspora, transformation and love. With an animistic approach, they work with materials connected to the industries in West Africa and Scandinavia, and by connecting the history of those materials/commodities to bodies with similar experiences, Lamignan seeks out to envision new alternative states. Pablo Esbert Lilienfeld is a musician and choreographer. He holds a BA in Audiovisual Communication from UCM Madrid, a degree in Contemporary Dance from the RCPD Madrid and a diploma from Research Studios at P.A.R.T.S., Brussels. He often collaborates as a musician, performer and assistant with Alessandro Sciarroni.

Participating artists: Tamara Alegre, Élie Autin, Lydia Östberg Diakité, Nunu Flashdem, Marie Ursin, Kinga Bartis, Filip Berg, Tea Eklund- Berglöw, Freja Sofie Kirk, Melanie Kitti, Linda Lamignan, Pablo Lilienfeld & Federico Vladimir, Adele Marie Rannes, Iben Zorn

Photo: Pablo Lilienfeld & Federico Vladimir, Dragon, rest your head on the seabed, 2018. Photo: Andrea Beade

Info: Curator: Mette Woller, Kildeskovshallen public swimming pool, Adolphsvej 25, Gentofte, Denmark, duration: 30/9-3/10/2022 & Copenhagen Contemporary, Reshelve 173A, Copenhagen, Duration: 14/9-30/10/2022, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, https://copenhagencontemporary.org/