MEDIATIONS AND REMEDIATIONS IN THE 18th CENTURY

In the gardens of Fredensborg Palace north of Copenhagen lies Nordmandsdalen – a monumental sculpture park comprising 70 full-figure sandstone sculptures of Norwegian, Sámi, and Faroese fishermen, peasants, and other laborers. Erected between 1764 and 1784 at the initiative of King Frederik 5, the sculptures were carved by the court sculptor Johann Gottfried Grund. Yet this is only one among many mediations of Nordmandsdalen. The sculptures were based on a series of wooden dolls and ivory figures made by the Norwegian mailman Jørgen C. Garnaas in Bergen. These figures were subsequently also reproduced as copperplate engravings and as porcelain figures, and more recently, in new versions in sandstone, plaster, and concrete.

With a starting point in Kode’s exhibition on Nordmandsdalen this seminar offers critical reflections on processes of mediation and remediation in the 18th century, focusing on mediality as materially and infrastructurally entangled with histories of trade, colonialism, and extraction. Bringing together scholars and curators, the seminar examines how materiality shaped cultural expression, how coloniality was embedded in media transfers, and how power relations informed understandings of form and material. Finally, it considers the afterlives of the 18th century and the ways this period has been re-mediated over the past two centuries.

The seminar is organized by Helene Engnes Birkeli and Tonje Haugland Sørensen (NorWhite: How Norway Made the World Whiter (Norwegian Research Council), and Mathias Danbolt (Moving Monuments: The Material Life of Sculpture from the Danish Colonial Era (Novo Nordisk Foundation), together with Kode Art Museum and Composer Homes.

Programme:

Thursday June 19: Nordmandsdalen: Art, Materials, and Power in 18th Century

11:00: Coffee and welcome

11.30: Tour of the exhibition Nordmandsdalen: Art, Materials, and Power in 18th Century by the curator team Tonje Haugland Sørensen, Mathias Danbolt, Helene Engnes Birkeli, Morten Spjøtvold and Peder Valle

13.00: Lunch

14:00-15.30:  Panel: On curating research-based exhibitions: Nordmandsdalen as a case

– Morten Spjøtvold: «Creatures of the North: The museology of the Nordmandsdalen           
   figures in Kode’s collections»
– Tonje Haugland Sørensen, Mathias Danbolt, Helene Engnes Birkeli: «Meditations on  
   Mediations: On researching Normandsdalen»

16.30: Public lecture by Lauritz Dorenfeldt, «Et kongelig prestisjeprosjekt Københavnsk porselen på 1700-tallet» (in Norwegian)

Friday June 20: Mediation and Remediation 

9:00: Coffee

9.30-10.30: Session 1: Circulation and Mediation

– Emil Elg (University of Copenhagen): «The Multimedial Omnipresence of the Royal  
   Danish Order of the Elephant»
– Thomas Slettebø Daltveit (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences): «The
   Greenlandic Procession in 1724» 

10.30-10.45: Break

10. 45 - 11.45: Session 2: Transformation and remediation

– Inga Henriette Undheim (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) and Beatrice
   Reed (Universitetet i Oslo): «18th century in Sámi Contemporary Literature»

 - Peder Valle (Kode Art Museum and Composer Homes): «Creatures of the North: The museology of the Nordmandsdalen figures in Kode’s collections»

11. 45- 12.00: Break

12.00-13.30: Session 3: Materialities of placemaking

– Christian Lechelt (Director at Museum Schloss-Fürstenberg): «The dominion on 
   the table. A Fürstenberg service for duke Carl I. of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel»
– Amalie Skovmøller (University of Copenhagen): «Traveling Marble: Monuments and   
   Infrastructures in Fredensborg Palace Garden»
– Peter Hatlebakk (Universitetet of Bergen): «Nordmandsdalen at Fredensborg, Julianehøj at Jægerspris and Herthedalen at Ledreborg in Lejre: Cultural Landscapes and Political Historiography, 1737–1814.