TALES OF A NOMADIC CITY Christian Vium 14.03–20.04.2024

past exhibition

28 Feb

Announcement

Oblong is excited to present Tales of a Nomadic City, an exhibition by anthropologist and artist Christian Vium (b. 1980).

Join us for the opening on Thursday 14th March, 17:00-21:00

The exhibition runs 14.03 - 20.04.24

Tales of a Nomadic City is supported by Politiken Fonden, Aarhus University, Wenner-Gren Foundation, The Velux Foundations, CPH:DOX, Ny Carlsbergfondet and Det Danske Institut i Damaskus

Curator: Jonathan Lieb

Coordinator: Casper Cosmus Alsøe

Graphic Design: KVELL OFFICE

Related Programming

Opening on Thursday 14th March 17.00-21.00

The opening is sponsored by A Can Shop

Exhibition Statement

Tales of a Nomadic City is a palimpsest of material from the ongoing research-based project by anthropologist and visual artist Christian Vium.

For two decades, Vium has been doing anthropological research in Nouakchott, the capital city of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, one of Africa's fastest growing cities. For the first time this project, which has been shown world-wide, is exhibited in Denmark.

Tales of a Nomadic City is a kaleidoscopic meditation on urbanisation, history, and archives. Through a series of interrelated elements comprising a VR prototype (made with Mauritanian filmmaker Med Lemine Rajel), archival film, new film recordings, photographs, sound, physical objects, and printed publications, the exhibition offers an invitation to visit a unique, nomadic city.

Taking a cue from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's reflections on nomadology and the conflation of smooth and striated space (Mille Plateaux, 1980), Tales of a Nomadic City presents an organic mapping of a city in perpetual transformation. The exhibition assembles a compilation of fragments and traces that evoke the interstitial landscape between the nomadic and sedentary, between desert and city.

Concerned with what he calls 'vernacular aesthetics', Vium explores the material qualities of private family photographs, rare and unseen archival film, newsprint, local photographic archives and obscure records and reports. By juxtaposing these disparate elements, a certain poetics of the everyday emerges, which pays tribute to ignored and marginalised aspects of life in Nouakchott.

The material presented here is largely produced on the basis of workshops with residents of the city and other collaborative interventions. Tales of a Nomadic City aims to revision the history of Nouakchott and contribute to more democratic forms of knowledge production, archiving, and sharing.

The exhibition coincides with CPH:DOX Film Festival, where the VR component is developed as part of the CPH:LAB incubator 2023-2024.

Artist

Christian Vium (b. 1980) is a visual artist and Associate Professor in Anthropology at Aarhus University (DK), where he directs the Multimodal Anthropology Lab and coordinates the Multimodal Anthropology MSc-track. Vium primarily works on long-term research-based projects based on in-depth collaboration and participatory approaches. His work has been exhibited worldwide and encompasses immersive film installations, sound, repurposed archive material, and an experimental approach to image production. In 2023-24, he is an Associated Research Fellow at the Film Studies Center, Harvard University (US) and part of the CPH:LAB incubator for experimentation and collaboration in creative, cross-disciplinary partnerships across film, the creative arts, science, technology, and social entrepreneurship.