Ursuppen
J&K / Janne Schäfer and Kristine Agergaard
Ursuppen
Water research on boat and in ocean, performance on shore, 1h
Svartlöga and Den Grænseløse Festival
2022
After a 1 week residency on boat of the sailing exhibition platform Oxer – Svartlöga, J&K and a crew of performers of mixed ages sailed from Ebeltoft harbour to Den Grænseløse Festival in Djursland traversing Hjelm Dyb, one Denmark’s deepest sea waters. During the residency and sailing tour they explored the ocean as a living entity through a series of sensory and interactive experiments and reflected on the depth of the sea as a place of the mysterious unknown as well as a potential dumping place for the discarded, the ignored or the undesired.
Arriving at the shore of the festival, the group of performers was picked up in a small boat and entered the festival from the water in a performative gesture. At the beach a participatory water ritual was performed in which text, movements and sensory water investigations took place while a group of children was brewing and serving a soup created with edibles from the shore.
The project was supported by Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology and marked the beginning of Vandvenner, a 3 years pedagogic and artistic research period into water bodies as living entities as part of the project Hosting Lands. This research is leading into the development of Unshore, a larger body of work comprising a performance, an installation and a publication that J&K will unfold throughout 2026.
Co-performers: Morten Dalhoff, Sonja Kokkonen, Philip Roitmann, Cosmo Roitmann, Juniper Roitmann, Beatrice Steimer
All images: J&K, Ursuppen, water research and performance, Svartlöga and Den Grænseløse Festival, 2022, photos: J. Sims