Future de ContinusOnus

The multi-faceted artwork is part interactive website, part public sculpture, part video installation, and was first presented in the exhibition Yet, It Moves! at Copenhagen Contemporary art centre in 2023.

Yet, It Moves! was supported by:
Bikubenfonden – Udstillingsprisen Vision, Det Obelske Familiefond, Carlsbergs Mindelegat for Brygger J.C. Jacobsen, Statens Kunstfond, Frame Finland, Goethe-Institut Dänemark, The Embassy of the United States of America in Denmark, Københavns Kommune – Kultur- og Fritidsudvalget, William Demant Fonden, Koda Kultur

The artwork Future ContinuOnus (2023) is projected onto a semi-transparent, freestanding scrim in the centre of a darkened gallery space, the video opens with a scanning view of Carte de Tendre and is backed by a soft, rhythmic piano instrumental. After a moment, a soothing, disembodied female voice begins to tell the story of the Carte’s origins. She then makes a call: ‘The time has come to create another collective map. A map visualising what we in the present remember that we want the future to remember. An attempt to intentionally leave traces that might move those who come after. As an act of our love.

The voiceover continues over a dreamy interweaving of nonlinear, associative imagery: close-up views of mnemonic knots, a slow pan of vegetal roots in soil, the scene of a woman caressing a soft cloth, which is perhaps an object that holds a personal memory. Some short scenes are sampled from the internet, some are family footage, while others are staged in seemingly floating spaces. A few principle characters rotate in and out of the frame, and the video ends with a view zooming out from Helene’s expanded Carte de ContinuOnus as the music starts to distort.

The sculptural component of the project, titled Hippocampus Hippocampi (2023), is the same 3D digital form from the website represented in real space, this time made of wood, polystyrene, and acrylic plaster and painted with a deep pink sheen.

The hippocampus is the part of the human brain that controls not only one’s long-term and spatial memory, but also one’s ability to make new memories and envision things. During the exhibition Yet, it moves!, three editions of the sculpture were placed on plinths in three different locations: in the foyer of Copenhagen Contemporary art centre, in front of the Niels Bohr Institute, and at Ofelia Plads, which is a busy tourist site at Copenhagen harbour. On the front of each plinth stood the question, ‘What do you want the future to remember?’ Below it was a QR code that led viewers to a website where the same question appeared, now with the option to type a response and engage with Carte de ContinuOnus.

The hippocampus also controls spatial orientation. Placement of the sculptures in multiple sites meant that the responses collected from people would be inflected by their different contexts. Helene made the sculptures identical so they would seem as one sculpture traveling across the city. And while they all led to one website that could itself be considered placeless, they emphasised situatedness by all feeding that one map; rather than representing one place, the map is entered and constructed from many specific localities and perspectives.

The exhibition Yet, It Moves! was a combined research and exhibition project which featured artworks both presented at Copenhagen Contemporary and in the urban spaces across Copenhagen. Overall the artworks explored the concept of movement.

For a period of two years the artists involved in the exhibition worked with research institutions from around the world to create their artworks. The works all unfolded ways to uncover the theme of movement and motion as an ever-present phenomenon. As such, the artworks explored ways to make us aware of the complex and multi-faceted movement patterns we are intertwined in. Everything is moving all the time – with us and around us.

The artworks were exhibited at Copenhagen Contemporary in 2023 in the group exhibition Yet, It Moves! The exhibiting artists were Ryoji Ikeda, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Jenna Sutela, Ligia Bouton, Helene Nymann, Nina Nowak, Jens Settergren, Black Quantum Futurism, Cecilia Bengolea and Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm. Yet, It Moves! was curated in collaboration with external curator Irene Campolmi.

More information on Future de ContinuOnus can be found here and more information on Carte de ContinuOnus can be found here. More information on Yet, It Moves! can be found at Copenhagen Contemporary.

Additional reading

Michael Levin, "Self-Improvising Memory"

Daniel Schacter, "The Cognitive Neuroscience of Constructive Memory"

Interview with Helene Nymann by Stine Lundberg Hansen in Art Matter, Helene Nymann: "Den viden, der kommer ud af kunst, er reel viden"