Witness Stand Refshaleøen

How do we understand who we are through listening?

Welcome to Witness Stand Refshaleøen Witness Stand is a collective listening experience, where we attune together to the sounds of this island, both past and present, to imagine possible futures. In collaboration with Metropolis, we invited each artist to create site responsive works that consider the acoustic proximities, particularities and resonances, both acoustic and cultural, in their works.

This experience lasts for three hours, with approximately 20 minutes at each site and a walking traverse in between.

Maria Bertel leans into the sound signal of the lighthouse: the maritime codes of short and long blasts, the marker of paying attention, through slow movements of long, low tones. Our gaze sweeps real and imagined horizons, as islands take shape before our eyes, and cormorants emerge to steal fish and ruin nets.

Ragnhild May connects with the verticality of water, from the depths of swimming in dirty water as a metaphor for where we are in the 21st century, to the surfaces temporarily covered by the rain, invoking a visceral response. We sit within temporal fluctuations, as Ragnhild hints towards positive trends and the persistence of artistic expression, in this place and everywhere.

Katrine Garup Elbo responds to the dissolving natures of bodies of water and materials, inviting us to a place of empathy, as humans with water bodies. Beneath the surface lies an opportunity for collectivities, a slow, relentless process where each drop makes a difference; transformative repetitions.

P.O. Jørgens’ deals with the processes of change: a passageway in flux, through a series of invitations for audiences to listen and to play. A lifelong fascination for the potential music within discarded or neglected materials is transferred into re-purposed and expressive possibility, literally sounding the material transformation of Refshaleøen itself.

Jørgen Teller builds a world from a small object, and an instrument re-configured, an intersection that is built between his moving body and the implications of sound on and within architectures. A portative spatiality intersects with the stationary echoes from epic structures whose time must surely come soon.

MT sit within the aspen trees and look out to the building of the future, calibrated by the voices of those witnessing. Whispers spring from the growing woodland

As part of our process together, we invited each artist to audio describe their site: you can hear these descriptions here on the Echoes app, with some short excerpts of their work.

Thanks to the Metropolis team who care so deeply about their place and the role artists have in building complexity and empathy for possible futures: thanks to the incredible artists who work in the ephemeral field of sound, spending their time bringing impossibilities and change to the spaces we inhabit together. Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey

The sound journey is a continuation of the performances Radio Free Mermaid (Metropolis 2015) and Stemmer, Strøm og Støj på Slusen (Metropolis 2019), where the musicians transformed Copenhagen’s harbour into a fascinating soundscape that could be experienced both on water and on land.

Witness Stand is supported by Koda Kultur, William Demant Fonden and the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. . Metropolis’ summer programme is supported by the City of Copenhagen and the Danish Arts Foundation.

https://www.metropolis.dk/en/witness-stand/