In Conversation with Jakob Kudsk Steensen

July 2020,
Arles (FR)

In conversation with:
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, Core Group, LUMA Arles
Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Senior Curator, LUMA Arles

Jakob Kudsk Steensen was invited to take part in the It’s Urgent! installation, presented in Arles during the summer of 2020. During this conversation, he discusses his experience at a local hypermarket in Arles and his desire to work on a different scale for the installations which he creates and to have a more poetic vision and a more intense relationship with the materials. He is interested in the way our emotions, the ecosystems and the different species are connected, both in time and space. 

In his work, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Danish multimedia artist, brings past, present and future landscapes and ecosystems to life thanks to his micro and macro view of the environment, and through the lens of virtual reality, based on a long process of research in the field and with specialists in species conservation. He was artist resident at LUMA Arles from January to June 2020.

https://www.jakobsteensen.com/

Hans Ulrich Obrist
Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London, and co-founder of 89plus, Hans Ulrich Obrist was prior to this, the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than three hundred exhibitions. He has lectured internationally at academic and art institutions, and is a contributing editor to the magazines Artforum, AnOther Magazine, 032C, a regular contributor to Mousse, Kaleidoscope, Kinfolk, Numero and Hero, he also writes columns for Das Magazin and Weltkunst. In 2011 he received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize for his commitment to the arts. In 2018, The Appraisers Association of America presented Hans Ulrich Obrist with an award for Excellence in the Arts. Ways of curating (Faber and Faber, Inc. New York, NY 2014). Lives of The Artists, Lives of The Architects (Penguin Design, 2015). The Age of Earthquakes with Douglas Coupland, Shumon Basar (Penguin, 2015). Conversations in Mexico with Patrick Charpenal, editor Karen Marta (Fundacion Alumnos47cosentino, 2016). Mondialité Or, the Archipelagos of Édouard Glissant with Asad Raza (Skira, 2017).

Vassilis Oikonomopoulos
Vassilis Oikonomopoulos is Senior Curator at LUMA Arles. His work focuses on the conceptualisation and implementation of the institution’s programme of exhibitions in close collaboration with its President Maja Hoffmann and the Core Group of Artistic Consultants (Tom Eccles, Liam Gillick, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Philippe Parreno and Beatrix Ruf). Prior to joining Luma, he worked in institutions internationally. He has been Assistant Curator, Collections International Art at Tate Modern where he worked with Tate’s Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee. During his tenure at Tate, he co-curated a number of exhibitions and commissions and worked on Tate’s collection displays. He has also held curatorial positions at Atopos Contemporary Visual Culture (Athens) and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA/AMO, Rotterdam).