Experience the spectacular encounter with art and science in CC’s large new exhibition Yet, It Moves!  The pathbreaking research and exhibition project featuring a stellar array of Danish and international artists presents works at CC and in urban spaces across Copenhagen exploring the universe’s only constant: movement!

Over two years, specially selected artists have been working with some of the world’s most prominent research institutions. Now, the result is a range of spectacular works unfolding the theme of motion as an omnipresent phenomenon and raising our awareness of the many complex movement patterns we are all entangled in.

Nothing stands still. Even things we consider immutable are in constant motion – within, above and all around us. Motion is a fundamental premise of everything in the universe, from the tiniest atomic particles to the human body and the macrocosm of the stars. Recognized in glimpses, this greater, moving whole is embodied in spectacular artworks giving shape and form to complex phenomena like black holes, star formation and gravitational waves – from the macro scale of the expanding universe to the micro scale of atomic explosions and particle.

Yet, It Moves! is curated in collaboration with external curator Irene Campolmi.

The exhibition is organized in partnership with:

Audemars Piguet Contemporary
Performa, NYC
Bloom Festival
Clear Channel
The Skjolds Plads Urban Renewal Project
HAM Helsinki Art Museum/Helsinki Biennial 2023
Almine Rech Gallery
EER, Experimenting, Experiencing, and Reflecting

The exhibiting artists are Ryoji Ikeda, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Jenna Sutela, Ligia Bouton, Helene Nymann, Nina Nowak, Jens Settergren, Black Quantum Futurism, Cecilia Bengolea and Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm.

Since 2021, the artists have engaged in dialogue with researchers at the exhibition’s four scientific research partners: DARK at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen; Arts at CERN in Geneva; the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University; and ModLab (Digital Humanities Laboratory) at the University of California, Davis. This meeting of the minds has produced artworks with perspectives ranging across fields like astrophysics and quantum physics, brain and cognitive sciences, anthropology, and technology and performance studies.

In CC’s biggest hall, the world-renowned Japanese artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda will present his monumental trilogy dataverse for the first time in Scandinavia. In three giant video projections, Ikeda composes a sensory explosion of images and sound, sampling open source data on motion obtained from scientific institutions, including CERN, NASA and the Human Genome Project. The huge audiovisual installation represents three worlds: the microscopic natural world of atoms, molecules, DNA and cells that is invisible to the human eye. The human world we live in on Earth with our brains and bodies, other organisms, cities, climates, internet, air traffic, satellites and so on. And finally, the macroscopic world – from our planet to the solar system, galaxies, the observable universe and potential multiverses.

It is dizzying to think that all life originates from the same point in the earliest beginning of the universe, and that all parts of it are linked together by movement. Explosions of elements are constantly taking place in the universe. Giant stars blow up, forming the heavy elements and particles that we and everything around us are made of.

In Pond Brain, the Finnish artist Jenna Sutela offers a sensual experience through the image of the human brain as a pond teeming with processes and communication pathways, accompanied by a soundscape of processed recordings of cosmic motion that links humanity to the universe.

In 3D animations, VR, AR, sound and immersive installations, the acclaimed Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen creates poetic interpretations of overlooked natural phenomena, often in collaboration with biologists, composers and writers. Kudsk Steensen’s large-scale installation for Yet, It Moves! reflects his interest in time, wetlands and the states of water – from liquid to crystal. The work studies the complex forms of life inside a glacier in Switzerland, and poetically records the slow movement of nature in the rare and unique ice formations and their current decline.

The title of the project is a statement attributed to Galileo, who was forced by the Catholic Church to deny that the Earth moves around the sun, which would have robbed the Earth of its spot at the centre of the universe. Galileo bravely defended his theory, declaring, “Yet, it moves!” He was referring to the now universally known fact that, no matter what humans do, the Earth still moves as part of the greater movement of the universe, affecting us and the world we move in every day.

Yet, It Moves! is curated in collaboration with external curator Irene Campolmi.

The exhibition project will stay “in motion” with new works and conversations introduced over its run and will extend into the cityscape, including the inner city, Copenhagen Airport, the borough of Nørrebro, the Inner Harbour and Søndermarken Park – places where Copenhageners move around every day.

The 17th of August CC presents four major art installations across Copenhagen by the artists Jens Settergran, Cecilia Bengolea, Cecilia Waagner Falkenstrøm and Black Quantum Futurism at Refshaleøen, BLOX Havnepassage, Sifs Plads and by Søpavillonen, at Peblingesøen. Experience the artistic interpretation of the many intricate movement patterns giving shape and form to complex phenomena like exploding stars, time as a spatial dimension and how we interpret our ever-moving surroundings. Read more about the works here.

Arts at CERN
Arts at CERN is the arts programme of CERN in Geneva, created in 2012 to foster dialogue between art and physics. Artists across all creative disciplines are invited to experience the way the big questions about our universe are pursued by fundamental science. Our goals are to inspire significant exchanges between art & physics, and to participate in an international cultural community eager to connect with CERN

ModLab
The UC Davis ModLab is an experimental laboratory for new media and technology research and digital humanities. The lab offers a dynamic experimental environment for post-disciplinary modes of research including gaming, improvisation, collaborative virtual reality, and experimental science-art projects. UC Davis Performance Studies PhD program focuses on critical interdisciplinary performance-based scholarship and practice as research by mid-career artists.

DARK
Established by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), the Dark Cosmology Centre opened September 1st, 2005 in the Rockefeller building, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, which was initially funded by the DNRF for a duration of ten years (2005-2015).
Today DARK continues to receive funding from a variety of sources, including the Villum Foundation, the European Union/European Commission, Nordforsk, the Carlsberg Foundation, and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.
DARK constitutes the cosmology research group at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) , which means that several of its staff are permanent faculty members at the NBI, cooperating on the delivery of the astrophysics curriculum at the bachelor’s and master’s level, and contributing to the overall teaching and research aims of the NBI. The DARK team currently consists of 30 research staff, science support, 11 PhD students, and a number of MSc students. The team members bring in key expertise and interact closely on a daily basis.

Interacting Minds Centre for the Study of Cognition, Communication and Choice

Specific abilities for interaction are key to being human. Interactions affect our bodies, our minds, our brains and the world we live in. We are, however, only beginning to understand even the most basic mechanisms. Successful interaction is critical for cooperation, coordination and learning. When this fails, confusion and conflict abound. In many clinical disorders, interactions that otherwise seem automatic may be difficult or outright impossible.

The Interacting Minds Centre (IMC) provides a transdisciplinary platform to study human interaction. It involves researchers from the humanities, social sciences, cognitive sciences, biology and clinical research. This is necessary, because through interactions, humans construct worlds that are at once physical, economic, symbolic and normative. We will therefore study the interplay between three related topics: cognition, communication, and choice. Bringing these fields together to bridge topics related to human interaction makes IMC a unique methodological and theoretical centre of research and inquiry.

Bikubenfonden – Udstillingsprisen Vision
Det Obelske Familiefond
Carlsbergs Mindelegat for Brygger J.C. Jacobsen
Statens Kunstfond
Frame Finland
Goethe-Institut Dänemark
The Embassy of the United States of America in Denmark
Københavns Kommune – Kultur- og Fritidsudvalget
William Demant Fonden
Koda Kultur