BILLBOARD FESTIVAL INSTANBUL
October 5 - 8, 2020
The billboard project is the idea and concept developed by the Danish visual artist Hanne Lise Thomsen. Thomsen has curated and realized BILLBOARD FESTIVAL CASABLANCA in 2015, the Billboard project WE ARE FROM HERE in Ramallah in 2012, and the citywide billboard project WOMEN2003 in Copenhagen and Malmö in 2003.
The FESTIVAL includes a 5 day long festival program which will be open to the public. The program includes a number of the already participating artists, and will consist of various events such as: artist talks, video screenings, performances and panel debates. The dissemination will take place through the project’s own website and other social platforms.
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www.billboardistanbul.orgHanne Lise Thomsen
Book Release - May 29, 2019
Really Simple Syndication Press, Copenhagen 2019
The book Hanne Lise Thomsen offers an overview of Hanne Lise Thomsen’s public art works produced in numerous locations in Denmark and around the world over the last 20 years. Drawing on the interventionist urban art that developed internationally during the 1980s, Hanne Lise Thomsen’s work takes inspiration from political protest movements and the experiments artists began making with new media. By inviting many contributors into her projects, working with local residents and professional photographers alike to articulate these hidden stories on the participants’ own terms, Hanne Lise Thomsen uses the photography of others much like a curator or film director, uncovering obscured histories and revealing them to the viewer in all their complexity.
Essays by Ditte Vilstrup Holm and Mette Sandbye
Book Design by Jeanne Betak
The publication can be ordered here:
MEMORIES 2018
Competition proposal, Tartu, Estonia
MEMORIES will involve the residents of the neighborhood around RAASMATUKOGU, creating a social space where individual residents interact with their own photographs with their personal history. The past, the present, the familiar and the daily, the personal memories, immediately different, but often parallel, are transformed into a visible diversity.
In this way, MEMORIES will put experiences in relief and challenge the perception of the city’s cohesiveness. The alternating images will shed light on the buildings and create a mood that alternates between the intimate and the epic. The light projections will incorporate windows and doors into the building and together form a kaleidoscopic universe.
PASSAGE 2016 Copenhagen
August 1 - 31, 2016, under Dronning Louises bridge
The project gathers and exhibits photographs of Syrian refugees to focus on the story of the individual person by showing what they look like, how different they are to each other – and how alike we all are.
PASSAGE focuses on open and inclusive communication in public space, and represents a commentary on current, public debates on the situation of refugees in Denmark.
In the form of a visual montage, PASSAGE presents a series of narrative and visual representations of refugees based on their own stories and living spaces. Around 75 posters will tell the stories of their experience of leaving their families, friends and homes to begin a new life in an unfamiliar part of the world.
PASSAGE is located in the tunnel under Dronning Louise’s Bridge on Nørrebrogade. Here the tunnel itself and adjoining walls will be used to display a montage extending around 180m. The tunnel itself is a passage between the two sides of Copenhagen Canal, and therefore an optimal site to tell a contemporary story of people forced to flee war and destruction.
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INSIDE OUT ISTEDGADE
Publication, 2016
Visual artist Hanne Lise Thomsen has researched and collected material for INSIDE OUT ISTEDGADE, by selecting and visiting 40 apartments in Istedgade.
Residents who have lived in the street for several generations, as well as young families with children who have moved here, help create a common visual narrative that challenges our perception of the urban space.
The publication contains image documentation of the video installation Inside Out, which was projected in Istedgade in September 2015 on the gables of the Gasworks Road school. As well as pictures and stories from Istedgade residents, shop owners and professional actors about life in and around the street.
The publication was created with the support of the Danish Arts Foundation and the City of Copenhagen’s grant to the City’s beautification and general good. The steering group behind the project consists of representatives from the the Danish Arts Foundation and the City of Copenhagen: Teknik- og Miljøforvaltningen, Vesterbro Lokaludvalg og Københavns stadsarkitekt.
INSIDE OUT ISTEDGADE 2015
August - September, 2015
A site-specific video installation by visual artist Hanne Lise Thomsen.
Inside Out Istedgade will be shown in August / September 2015 and has been launched by the National Arts Foundation and the City of Copenhagen.
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BILLBOARD FESTIVAL CASABLANCA
April 1 - 7, 2015
Billboard Festival Casablanca 2015 focusses on dialogue between Nordic and Arabic women artists. The intercultural dimension adds dynamic and exciting nuances to the billboard theme, since both Morocco and each Nordic country have their own visual and artistic traditions and approaches.
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WORKING CLASS HEROES
Video project, Damascus, 2010
Throughout Damascus, the image of President Al-Assad faded on the city’s facades and billboards. To counteract this one-sided expression, the project’s idea was to portray the street vendors in Damascus and let them appear in a video animation that focused on their individuality. By incorporating buildings in Damascus, the Working Class Heroes were visible to all and at the same time added a new spatial dimension to the site.
(Video projection was stopped by security police)
INSIDE OUT SHUFAT CAMP
Video projections, Jerusalem, 2011
25.0000 Palestinians live in the Shufat Refugee Camp, which was established in 1966 and is situated 4 km north of Jerusalem. The camp is entirely surrounded by Israeli settlements as well as the apartheid wall which isolates it from Jerusalem. Shufat Refugee Camp residents are daily exposed to assults from the Israeli occupaing forces, for instance closing of water supply, raids and demolishing of neighbourhood houses.