copenhagen 09

a brush and ink drawing in accordion sketchbook, original size about 17 by 288 cm

Please scroll below to the right to see the whole panorama.

The untitled sketchbook is a travel log of a trip from Hamburg to the Copenhagen Queer Festival in 2009. The Copenhagen Queer Festival is a yearly do-it-together festival that has been organized by radical queer activists since 2006 and attracts between 200 and 300 participants primarily from Europe, Australia and North America.

The sketchbook can be looked at as a regular book by turning the pages and seeing the scenes subdivided on double pages, or it can be unfolded completely to stretch out to its full 113 inches length. The unfolded drawing is a panorama and a timeline at the same time, recording both space and time as the scenes blend into each other from one end to the other.

At the very right we see the beginning of the trip, the three friends I was traveling with heading north on the Autobahn in a remodeled Volkswagen van, with its seat covers made of fake tiger skin, the "HOMO" Sticker on the dashboard, and a dangling little skeleton in the window. The interior of the van blends into the ferry terminal in Puttgarden in Germany, smoking ship chimneys, a lifesaver, hair in wind and baggy pants illustrate the passage to Rødby in Denmark. Upon arrival, coffee is being served in universal Latte glasses besides a homegrown avocado plant in some friend's kitchen. The next day people swim in the waters of Copenhagen's harbor off Islands Brygge, there are cargo pants and hairy legs in the foreground and the buildings of gentrified waterside neighborhoods in the background. In the next scenes the lines of the water becomes people speaking into mikes and fixing bikes, watching screens in an art exhibition, gathering in groups and hanging out with lots of hoodies and caps.

I used a brush-pen in an accordion sketchbook to make the drawing and the quality of the ink-brush on the rough surface of the paper adds a somewhat nostalgic texture to scenes. There are hardly any lines and areas rendered in flat black, instead the frazzled lines and white specks in the heavy black brush strokes correspond with the reel of scenes and emphasize the sense of movement and vibrancy. In contrast to this formal aspect, however, the figures are strangely static, most of them just sitting and looking at each other or the viewer – few are visibly engaging with each other.

The sketchbook is a subjective documentation of a summer trip to an alternative festival that is all about meeting people and being in contact, about discussions and workshops, performances and music and video and dressing up and partying and politics and activism and sex. At this festival taking photos is not well seen, due to an longstanding anti-surveillance impulse in these leftist contexts that aims to protect the identity and privacy of the participants and prevent photos from falling into the wrong hands. In this light, the abstraction and subjectivity of drawing makes it a perfect medium to render an overall impression of the festival without tying it down to recognizable individual.