Open lecture: Stine Marie Jacobsen

On Monday the 9th of January at 13:00 an artist talk by Stine Marie Jacobsen will be held at the department of Fine Art, Laugarnesvegur 91. The artist talk opens a two week seminar course on the topic of conversation involving students from all departments of the Iceland Academy of the Arts.

Working with film as a participatory tool, Stine Marie Jacobsen designs educational projects that deal with ethics, identity, control, fear and trust and aim to raise solidarity and civic engagement through community involvement.

Jacobsen will present and discuss how she has conceptualised and worked on a number of participatory projects like for example Direct Approach, where participants are asked to retell their most violent film scene memory and choose whether they would play victim, perpetrator or bystander and why.

In a recent project Law Shifters, participants write their own laws, rejudge real court cases to discuss and compare original verdicts with their verdicts and in German for Newcomers, a German language workshop project​ for ​refugees, immigrants and expats, they write teaching material for themselves and others, sharing their personal experiences, observations in self made up German grammar explanations.

German for Newcomers is a continuation of Jacobsen's first self authored book German for Artists, 2015, a hybrid pocket grammar book and an artist's humorous reflections on the more philosophical aspects of the German language. The book looks at contemporary art through the optics of language teaching, educates the reader about art and German grammar at one and the same time.

German bureaucracy and cross-language ​translation​ is the main focus​ of both German for ____  and Law Shifters, which challenges the authenticity and exposes the violence and politics of language to raise awareness of cultural domination and homogeneity.

Jacobsen is based in Berlin and Copenhagen, has a BFA from CalArts, a MFA from The Royal Danish Art Academy and has had residencies at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Air Antwerpen, Residencias Artisticas in Bogotá. Since 2012, she has organised many Direct Approach workshops internationally and in 2014 she ran a 7 month workshop at District in Berlin in collaboration with her long term collaborator social streetwork organisation Gangway and was jury selected for Berlin Art Week. In 2015, Jacobsen was awarded an innovative educational grant from Node curatorial studies in Berlin and in 2016 she received a peace fellowship and professional Conflict Resolution certificate from the Rotary Club and won the Berlin Art Prize.

The Open Noon lectures at the IAA are free of charge and open to all. The lecture will be held in English.

Image: Stine Marie Jacobsen, DIRECT APPROACH, workshop at District, 2014, Photo Malene Korsgaard Lauritsen