Danes With Wolves
Why do wolves evoke such powerful emotions in us? Do we have room for wolves in Denmark? Do we even have room for wild nature? These and many other questions are put into perspective in our upcoming exhibition “Danes with Wolves” – Denmark’s first large exhibition about the relationship between humans and wolves.
“Danes with Wolves” is based on cultural and historical myths, current debates about wolves, rumors about wolf killings and research on the movement of wolves in Denmark. The exhibition inspires the audience to reflect on their own views on nature and offering insights into why the wolf splits the opinion among the population of Denmark.
The wolf’s close biological relationship with dogs is also brought into focus through an exhibition of wolves and dogs. In the meeting between wolves and Danes, the exhibition will provide insight into why the predators have come to Denmark, and most importantly, how they affect us.
The exhibition is aimed at all ages – children, however, should preferably be accompanied by adults, as it features both dramatic scenes and authentically preserved wolves and dogs.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events at the Round Tower.
“Danes With Wolves” is presented in collaboration with the Natural History Museum of Aarhus, and is generously supported by A.P. Møller og Hustru Chastine Mc-Kinney Møllers Fond til almene Formaal, Aage V. Jensen Naturfond, Region Midtjylland, 15. Juni Fonden, Beckett-Fonden and Toyota-Fonden.
The exhibition has previously been shown at both the Natural History Museum of Aarhus and Holstebro Museum.
Opening of Family Exhibition: “The Rose Cannon – the King’s Enchanted Garden”
Join us for the opening of the floral family exhibition “The Rose Cannon” – a Saturday full of surprises for the entire family awaits!
We are excited to present our upcoming family exhibition. “The Rose Cannon – the King’s Enchanted Garden” is an immersive exhibition for children, intended to stimulate the senses, awaken creativity and curiosity, and offer a poetic, enchanted version of the old tales about King Christian IV who built the Round Tower.
The exhibition opens on Saturday the 4th of February. Drop in early for some sweet snacks and refreshments, and take a garden stroll in the whimsical floral world created by artist Signe Kejlbo. Watch the dancing flower creatures, add your own paper flowers to the rose cannon’s floral explosion and see if you can catch a glimpse of old King Christian IV as he walks among the flowers in his lovely garden.
About the exhibition
Christian IV was a king who valued growth. Before letting the Round Tower sprout up in the heart of Copenhagen, he created the King’s Gardens where he placed his loveliest rose: Rosenborg Castle. He even made a cannon adorned with rosebuds!
With a spark of inspiration from his rose cannon and floral objects from Rosenborg Castle, Signe Kejlbo creates an enchanted garden where children and adults can immerse themselves in a secretive world of flowers. Here, paper flowers and poetic stories will unfold among breezy garden tents and secret pathways.
The exhibition is inspired by objects and locations from King Christian IV’s life and Rosenborg Castle. Experience “The Rose Cannon” in the Round Tower between February 4th and April 16th.
Read more here.
Regensen: 400 Years of Student Life
One of Denmark’s oldest colleges, Regensen, celebrates its 400th anniversary in 2023. The occasion is marked with an exhibition at the Round Tower. Visit the Library Hall and explore 400 years of student history.
The college known as Regensen was built in 1623. Since then, students from the University of Copenhagen have lived behind the red brick walls just across the street from the Round Tower. This exhibition tells the students’ spectacular stories, mirroring 400 years of change in Copenhagen, at the university, and in the life of students in general.
Through sound, tableaux, and installations, the exhibition stages the story of how Regensen has developed from a strict educational facility to a diverse social community.
Life at Regensen has changed dramatically as the servants moved out and the female students moved in. Through four centuries, the students have fought for the survival of their college in times of economic crisis, disastrous fires, and threats of demolition. They have also developed a distinct identity, which lives on at the college today.
The story of Regensen is also a story about the Round Tower: Here, the students have gazed at the stars from the Observatory at the top, poured over the books in the old Library Hall and listened to services in the student church Trinitatis.
The exhibition is produced by artist collective Vontrapp and historian Louise Depner and presented in collaboration with the Round Tower.
Regensen’s 400th anniversary is sponsored by:
A.P. Møller Foundation
Augustinus Foundation
Knud Højgaards Foundation
Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Foundation
Debate: Organizing Architecture
Works+Words and Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur presents the debate Organizing Architecture in relation to the current architecture biennale in The Round Tower. The talk will be held in English
This evening, architecture is viewed as a professional field with an organizational infrastructure, theories, discourses, interests and power structures. A field in continuous transformation through the influence of multifarious actions, events, and initiatives. Two such initiatives, respectively Works+Words 2022 Biennale in Artistic Research in Architecture (W+W 22) and Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur Nr. 4: Faglig organisering (MBK 4), join forces for a discussion on incentives and strategies to impact architecture.
The event plays out as an open discussion between contributors from Works+Words 2022 and Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur 4 and welcome participation from other attendees. The focal point is how architecture transforms through the organization of events and production of works. The discussion will be opened by editor for MBK Morten Birk Jørgensen and curator of W+W 22 Peter Bertram.
Attending contributors include among others:
Peter Bertram, Kgl. Akademi
Initiator and curator of W+W 22
Christine Bjerke, Building Diversity
Contributor to MBK 04, ROOM TO BE, ROOM TO ACT
Yuxiang Li, Kgl. Akademi
Contributor to MBK 04, FREJA – SOCRATIC YET HEDONISTIC
Anne Romme, Kgl. Akademi
Exhibitor at W+W 22, METAPHORICAL HOUSES: IMAGINING FEMALE RESIDENCIES
Morten Birk Jørgensen, Kgl. Akademi
Editor of MBK 04: FAGLIG ORGANISERING
The Rose Cannon – the King’s Enchanted Garden
Join us for a magical pleasure stroll for the whole family as artist Signe Kejlbo transforms the Round Tower’s Library Hall into a fantastical flower garden poetically inspired by King Christian IV’s Rosenborg Castle.
Christian IV was a king who valued growth. Before letting the Round Tower sprout up in the heart of Copenhagen, he created the King’s Gardens where he placed his loveliest rose: Rosenborg Castle. He even made a cannon adorned with rosebuds!
With a spark of inspiration from the rose cannon and floral objects from Rosenborg Castle, Signe Kejlbo creates an enchanted garden where children and adults can immerse themselves in the secretive world of flowers. Here, paper flowers and poetic stories will unfold among breezy garden tents and secret pathways.
Come, walk among the king’s flowers and help build the Rose Cannon’s flower explosion by adding your own paper flower creations at the craft tables. All materials are provided by the Round Tower.
About the artist
Artist and designer Signe Kejlbo works with flowers, exploring their colours, shapes and textures in her creations. In 2022, she took part in an exhibition at the Round Tower in which she created a tableau of paper flowers. For “The Rose Cannon” she takes over the entire Library Hall with her floral works. Signe looks forward to presenting a new exhibition combining her floral fascination with the innovation, curiosity and creativity of King Christian IV who built the Round Tower. And to show children of all ages what you can accomplish with paper and imagination!
“The Rose Cannon – the King’s Enchanted Garden” runs from February 4th until April 16th 2023. The exhibition is presented in a collaboration between artist Signe Kejlbo and the Round Tower.
The Round Tower and the artist extends a special thanks to Rosenborg Castle for their help and guidance related to the exhibition.
Works+Words
The 3rd Biennale for Artistic Research in Architecture presents contemporary artistic works of architecture from across the world.
Architecture tries to intervene positively in society. It addresses urgent issues and aims to leave the world a better place.
Artistic practice in architecture is not about finding new solutions. It investigates the fundamental conditions for architectural practice through open-ended experiments with architectural drawings and models. It is a crucial part of innovative professional practices and demonstrates its significance when a building suggests a new understanding of architecture and a different way of living. Artistic practice is about asking the right questions in the field of architecture.
The exhibitors have been selected from submissions to an open call addressed to architects working at architecture schools and research institutions across the world. In addition to the selected works, the biennale has invited architectural practices with a strong artistic profile to show their work and further the dialogue between different forms of artistic practice in architecture. It shows how the entirety of the field is necessary to produce relevant answers to current challenges.
During the exhibition period, selected architects are invited to talk about their contribution to the biennale and debates on the role of art in architecture. Children can participate in creative workshops, where we use some of the most basic tools of the profession.
WORKS+WORDS 2022 is kindly supported by the Dreyer Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation and the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation.
The exhibition is arranged by Christina Capetillo, Peter Bertram og Thomas Harboe and curated by Peter Bertram and Christina Capetillo.
The biennale was held in 2017 and 2019 at the Royal Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation. The exhibition is also a contribution to and a kick-start of Architecture Year23, where Copenhagen is the capital of architecture and selected as host city by UNESCO.
SPACE Science Festival
Rundetaarn marks Science Year22 with three weeks in space, where cosmos, light and sound occupy the tower’s Library Hall. RUM Science Festival first offers a journey of discovery to our cosmic neighbor planet Mars and then the space in the Library Hall is transformed by the work of art Contra. Through a series of talks, exhibition and music, the space between art and science is explored.
Rundetaarn was built as an astronomical observatory and has been the center of science for centuries. Art has since taken the place of books in the Library Hall, while stars and planets are still viewed from the top of the tower.
Our cosmic neighbor
The planet Mars is the center of the first part of the science festival. In collaboration with astrophysicist Tina Ibsen, a mini exhibition is shown about our cosmic neighbor, which in these years is the subject of major research projects and hides secrets that science is trying to uncover.
Pure photon energy in art
A scene change takes the audience from the journey to Mars back to the space in the Library Hall, where art meets science in the light installation Contra. The work was created by the artist collective Vertigo and consists of pure photon energy, i.e., the small energy packets of electromagnetic radiation that light consists of. Created out of light and smoke, a changing, architectural object emerges in the room, which the audience can both view from the outside and step into. The physical form in Contra is two triangles that stop the light so that the figure’s shapes and colors stand out clearly. Along the way, Vertigo talks about the technique behind and how they created Contra.
Walk the planet path
Finally, a special challenge awaits the tower’s smallest guests. Children are welcome to run, jump or how about walking backwards on the curvy planet path up along Rundetaarn’s spiral ramp, which is divided at points into distances, exactly corresponding to the solar system on a very small scale. The seven planets are illustrated and explained along the way to the top.
when the world becomes our body
The artists Benjamin Skop & Amund Bentsen investigates the relationship between human and nature. In four grand video projections the human body and the tidal landscape meet each other, blurring the boundaries between our body and the world.
In a world where sea-level rise and climate change are difficult to relate to, the tidal landscape can show us that dramatic changes can occur so gradually that they go unnoticed – in a few hours the tidal water rises enough to swallow us completely. In the exhibition when the world becomes our body, the familiarity of the human body is at the center of the pictures, while the body’s physical activity is minimized; thereby it becomes nature’s rhythm, temporality and weather, which dictates the creation and development of the pictures. In this way the human presence is supporting nature in its lead role.
Reflections at the Foot of Heaven
Photographer Janne Klerk has created an exhibition about immersion, nature and cosmos. As part of the Danish Science Year 2022, the exhibition brings nature into the city centre and the Round Tower with Janne Klerk’s series of large photographic reflections.
According to Janne Clerk, these reflections are not just a visualization of the brief moments that occur. It is also a play with the light as it unfolds in the colour space that unfolds between the atmosphere and the subject below and above the water surface. The reflections in the water play together and form a fascinating picture of how we humans also contain several layers in our dialogues and when we are among each other.
The project “Reflections at the Foot of Heaven” will be realized as both an exhibition and a book. Having been on the way since 2016, it is based on photos or the same location during several years and through the changing seasons of the year.
Read more about Janne Klerk
Maxi Reload In Unknown Depth
A sculptural exhibition by artists Clara Black Starck and Kristine Hymøller about society approaching The Fourth Industrial Age.
The Third Industrial Revolution has opened up the digital world to us. But computers and the internet have long been commonplace. Ahead of us awaits the Fourth Industrial Age defined as a total integration between the digital and the physical world – for instance through robots that are going to change the world as we know it.
The exhibition “Maxi Reload in Unknown Depth” is about the love-hate relationship to the age we are living in and the unknown world we are entering. The artists Clara Black Starck and Kristine Hymøller occupy the Round Tower’s Library Hall with sculptures and objects that reflect their ambivalent relationship to innovation, architecture, machines, and technology.
The works of Clara Black Starck and Kristine Hymøller examine the urban infrastructure in a broad sense as a connection and a communication between points of the city, buildings, and people. The works are juxtaposed in order to create a dialogue between the artists’ individual and common interpretation of the persistent acceleration of the Third and Fourth Industrial Ages with the Library Hall as the setting for a narrative about the development of our society.
About the Artists
The works of Clara Black Starck (born 1978) confront the mechanical usage and industry. She is interested in production methods and their reflection in different societies by installing machines that are running their own sequences and thus making the product justify the machine and the production. Clara Black Starck creates a narrative in which infrastructure becomes an anthropological study and society is portrayed as a caricature.
Kristine Hymøller (born 1972) examines the relationship between our own identity and the urban space we move in. She addresses the position we take on the decay of urban space and how renewal is linked to the human need to embellish and retouch. Kristine Hymøller works with architectural models based on urban development and urban transformation, in which buildings and construction meet cosmetics.
The exhibition is kindly supported by
Statens Kunstfond (Danish Arts Foundation)
Rådet for Visuel Kunst (Copenhagen Visual Arts Council)
Konsul George Jorck og Hustru Emma Jorck’s Fond
