Opening for Køge Haven in Denmark

Hello from Copenhagen!

I am taking part in a collaborative art project in Denmark, with Hartmut Stockter and Katja Jakobsen, on view from September 5-November 29, 2009. It is organized by the KØS Museum for Art in Public Spaces, and is called KURS: The Harbor. Our piece titled "Køge HAVEN" is part of the KURS: HARBOR exhibition, which is itself part of a larger effort by 5 regional museums. There is a full-color catalog for the 5-museum show.

Once again, Katja Jakobsen, Philip Simmons, and Hartmut Stockter have installed a collaborative art installation next to a harbor. (You may recall what we did in June 2009 on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. That project can be seen at: havengowanuscanalbrooklyn.blogspot.com). This time, the harbor is in Køge, Denmark, which is a town outside of Copenhagen. We have created a full-size pilot house, such as one would typically see on a fishing boat. Inside the pilot we have created individual art pieces which together create a unified experience. Our intention is to evoke the experience of being at a point between coming and going, between the desire to travel and the desire to go home. The pilot house is installed on the end of a very long jetty, which forms the entrance and exit to Køge Harbor.We built a pilot house, and installed and modified elements usually seen in pilot houses, things like instrument panels, radios, maps, and the pilot wheel itself. Katja created 3 video installations which are housed in an old radar scope, and a marine radio on the instrument panel, and in one of the windows of the house. I have modified another old marine radio to play a sound piece I created for the interior of the house, which you can hear in the background of the attached video. I also drew and re-imagined maps which will go on the inside walls, and created a riff on the traditional "ship in a bottle", with a scale model of our Gowanus Haven raft project instead. Hartmut is modifying the ship steering wheel, with a construction of cogwheels and gears, to be a sort of directional steering device. He also created a bottle piece, and a "taxidermy" bird made of bits of found flotsam foam. We have Hartmut to thank for much of the preliminary construction of the house, which he began soon after returning from our Gowanus project. Also a big thanks to Katja's husband Jakob for several days of construction labor on the roof.

Because our project is in an isolated spot at the edge of the harbor, we mounted a telescope in the inner section of the harbor, through which visitors can see our pilot house, and hopefully be intrigued enough to make the journey out onto the jetty.

Køge is a charming and old harbor town located 30 minutes by train from Copenhagen, if you happen to be in Denmark in the next few months. We hope you can visit!