Primer

Lav Diaz, Storm Children, Book One, 2014.
As part of The future hides that it hides nothing, curated by Bjarke Hvass Kure. 2019.

Primer

Primer is a collaboration between Diakron and Aquaporin. By bringing together science, humanities, technology development and visual art, Primer seeks to explore histories, imaginaries and the aesthetic dimensions of emergent technological systems. Our activities are long term collaborations with artists, thematic exhibition projects, public private partnerships in collaboration with Aquaporin, workshops and events, collaborations with external partners and network activities.

“Our technology has been developed and proven by working with an open innovation mindset for more than a decade. In close collaboration with governments, research institutions, system integrators, end-users and even the world of art, we are striving to solve the world’s long-term water crisis through partnerships.”

Peter Holme Jensen, CIO & Founder of Aquaporin
The future hides that it hides nothing, curated by Bjarke Hvass Kure.
Installation view, 2019/20.
Kristine Kemp, Before Normal II, 2014
As part of the project Strata by Kristine Kemp, 2019.
Kristine Kemp, Operatio, 2019.
As part of the project Strata by Kristine Kemp, 2019.
Novo Nordisk, Promotional Material, 1967-70
As part of the project Self Passage by Rasmus Røhling, 2017.
The future hides that it hides nothing, curated by Bjarke Hvass Kure.
Installation view, 2019/20.
Novo Nordisk, Promotional Material, 1967-70
As part of the project Self Passage by Rasmus Røhling, 2017.
Dora Maar, Portrait d'Ubu, 1936.
Synthetics, curated by Søren Andreasen. 2017/18.
Cecilie Skov, Snakeskin, 2017.
As part of the project Ripe by Nanna Abell, 2018.
Kristine Kemp, Operatio, 2019.
As part of the project Strata by Kristine Kemp, 2019.
Kristine Kemp, Before Normal II, 2014
As part of the project Strata by Kristine Kemp, 2019.

Exhibitions

Since 2017 Primer have held seven exhibitions at Aquaporin. You can browse the projects here. In 2018 The New York Times published an article, introducing the thinking that led to Primer, as well as the exhibition on display at the time. Later on in 2019 we published a text, introducing select projects and methodologies developed in the first two years. In 2019 Primer exhibited at Moderna Museet, as part of the exhibition Mud Muses.

Moderna Museet, Mud Muses.
Primer, installation view, 2019.
Kristine Kemp, Operatio, 2019.
As part of the project Strata by Kristine Kemp, 2019.

Artistic Development

At the time of writing, we have three long-term collaborations with artists Jenna Sutela (FI), Emily Jones (UK) and Emil Rønn Andersen (DK). The collaboration with Emily Jones has been delayed due to Covid-19 and will open late 2021. With Jenna Sutela we are developing a set of bio-mimetic wearables in collaboration with Aquaporin as well as a number of industrial and artistic partners due to be released in 2022-23. Emil Rønn worked at Primer from late-2019 to late-2020, while developing a novel light-setting and visual simulation technology, he has worked on since 2014.

Together with Emil Rønn Andersen we developed a commision for the 13th Shanghai Biennale. The project is called Scries and was produced in collaboration with environmental researchers from DTU Environment, The Niels Bohr Institute and dept. of Geosciences at Copenhagen University. The work is made up of an ongoing stream of short video clips, that frames a reflective sphere in its relationship to a set of environments. The work comes out of a series of artistic experiments using Emil Rønn Andersen’s technology to explore aesthetic qualities within climate science.

Emil Rønn Andersen, DK179913, 2019/20.
Diakron and Emil Rønn Andersen, Scries, 2021.
13th Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art, Shanghai.

Research and Development projects

In 2018 David Hilmer Rex received a PhD scholarship, for the project “Artistic Practice and Systems Change” funded by The Novo Nordisk Foundation. The project elaborates a framework for a mission-oriented sector of art, focusing on increased specialization of the sector of art, as guided by articulate missions. We will link to the work here, when finalized later in 2021.

Since 2019, we have been working to initiate an international network of organizations and practices working across technological development, scientific research and arts. In 2021 Aslak Aamot Kjærulff was awarded a three year postdoc position, funded by the New Carlsberg Foundation, to further pursue this work. The postdoc is hosted at Medical Museion at Copenhagen University, and is a collaboration with Serpentine Galleries in London and Primer.

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