Stendampen
Sculptural installation with text-based sound work (5:58 min.) and three sculptures in steel and bronze. Exhibited at the Round Tower in Copenhagen as part of the group exhibition The Lost Runestones curated by Kællingstenen.
2025
In the exhibition, 9 artists were invited to create works respon- ding to or reflecting on the 9 rune stones that were lost in the 1728 fire of Copenhagen. Back then, the rune stones had been placed behind the Round Tower and we don't know what happened to them during the fire. Maybe they were taken and used to rebuild the city – maybe they were destroyed bt the high temperatures. My work is an installation with a poetic sound piece and three bronze casts of witches' brooms from birch trees resting on steel legs.
The work relates to the Avnslev stone, which at the time of the fire was already a fragment with only a few runes preserved. A text on its way towards dissolution. In the sculptures, I further fantasize about this aspect of the stone, creating a science fiction and folklore-inspired story about the stone's fate during and after the fire: The Avnslev stone and its runes melt and become a mist that lifts over the houses and flies beyond the city. Eventually the stone mist settles in the birch trees, and enters their bark and branches like writing. Today, this writing is visible on the white, paper-like surfaces of the trunks and in the branches as the wild witches' brooms, which dot the crowns of the birch. The sculptures can be seen as reincarnations of the Avnslev stone: In the process of making the casts, the witches' brooms had to burn up – effectively evaporating like the stone mist in my sound piece – in order to create a hollow shape for the liquid bronze to fill. This process seems fitting, like a mirroring of the transformation that happens in the story.
Witches' brooms may look like messy bird's nests from a distance, but are actually galls formed in birch trees by the fungus Taphrina Betulina. The fungus causes a chemical reaction in the new shoots, which results in excessive growth. The galls are harmless to the tree, which lives just fine even with many witches' brooms in its crown.
Close-ups of one of the bronze casts, where the exaggerated growth structure of the branches is visible.
The sound piece, which is part of the installation.
Duration: 5:58 min. Language: Danish