Morten Poulsen
We Need Gardeners and Friends, Not Emperors or Kings
INFORMATION
Artist(s): Morten Poulsen
Type: Exhibition
Location: Skjold Contemporary
Dates: 17 Aug 2023 → 17 Sep 2023
Photographer: Morten Poulsen
IMAGES
TEXT
We Need Gardeners and Friends, Not Emperors or Kings is a socially engaged art project and sound installation that explores feminist men’s movements and listening. In a locker room in Skjold Boldklub, artist Morten Poulsen facilitated a series of workshops with a group of six cis-men from different countries to talk about masculinity norms, friendship and listening. Through conversation, caress, song and humming, they shared experiences and desires to move away from a masculinity based on dominance and disconnection, and instead cultivate understanding of interconnections, through collective self-reflection, listening and a shared space of vulnerability. Taking ideas about physical intimacy to the auditory realm, each participant wore a personal microphone, which recorded the workshops from their individual perspective. These recordings then formed the material for a six-channel sound installation, where each participant is presented in a corresponding loudspeaker, allowing the listener to choose their own listening position. The special ASMR character of the sound invites the listener into the individual man’s intimate sphere, while still being able to hear all at once. With inspiration from activist practice, stickers with the title of the project were produced and distributed, by workshop participants and audience, in and around Copenhagen. The project is inspired by feminist consciousness-raising groups and is partly a portrait of cis-men who work to actively deconstruct hegemonic masculine ideals (R.W. Connel). They criticise the narrow and rigid definitional frameworks of their gender, and seek opportunities to expand or dissolve masculinity norms. They practice awareness of the role of traditional gender norms in unhealthy and harmful cultures, and thus also how they bear a responsibility for deconstructing how this Man is not good for anyone, not even themselves.
Author: Morten Poulsen