COPENHAGEN.- The latest block of
Charlottenborg’s Research Programme operates under the auspices of New York designers Dexter Sinister, working with the American writer Angie Keefer and the Danish art historian Lars Bang Larsen and employing the compound name ‘Dexter Bang Sinister’. The centerpiece of the programme is a ‘sensorium’ – a psychedelic installation that the collaborators have created in one of Charlottenborg’s galleries.
Dexter Sinister is a designer-editor-publisher duo established in 2006 by Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt. Their activities, which include a workshop and bookstore in New York, explore the possibilities of publishing in both printed and digital form – and often in relation to art production. Many of their projects are site-specific and time-sensitive, including publications and events produced live in galleries over set periods of time.
The sensorium that Dexter Sinister and their collaborators have created for Charlottenborg takes the form of a freestanding room, a ‘stimulation box’ offering an immersive experience of experimental artworks and artifacts. The contents includes a number of works by Dexter Sinister, including carpet tiles, silkscreen wallpaper and a looping 16mm film; along with examples of Danish psychedelic experiments collected by Larsen.
However, the contents of the sensorium are all in black-and-white, challenging our received notions of psychedelia. The installation offers a stripped-down, low-grade version of the psychedelic experience, and deliberately departs from our understanding of what ‘really happened’. As Larsen ponders, "The question remains, how to combine idealism with the skepticism and self-reflection that turns it into an artistic tool rather than an end in itself?"
The sensorium will remain in situ for nine months, during which time the collaborators will stage a symposium and other events, and produce a journal that reflects their psychedelic research. The latter will form part of a series of bulletins produced by Dexter Sinister and Keefer – previously in collaboration with organisations such as MoMA and the Banff Centre – under the title of The Serving Library. Texts can be downloaded as they are produced (see www.servinglibrary.org) while the final publication will be launched in the autumn.
Stuart Bailey (UK) graduated from the University of Reading in 1994 and the Werkplaats Typografie in 2000, and co-founded the journal Dot Dot Dot the same year. His work explores various aspects of graphic design, writing and editing, mostly in the form of publications made in collaboration with artists. Since 2006 he has worked together with David Reinfurt as Dexter Sinister. In 2011 he co-founded The Serving Library with David Reinfurt and Angie Keefer.
Angie Keefer (USA) graduated from Yale University in 1999. She is a writer, editor and occasional librarian whose speculative nonfiction traces circuitous routes through highly specialised information. In 2011 she co-founded The Serving Library with Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt.
Lars Bang Larsen (DK) recently completed his PhD, about psychedelia and art, at the University of Copenhagen. His books include The Model. A Model for a Qualitative Society, 1968 (2010), Grandes borrachos daneses (with Ignacio Vidal-Folch, 2011) and The Critical Mass of Mediation (with Søren Andreasen, 2012). He is currently working with director Maria Lind on the project The New Model at Tensta Konsthall, and preparing an exhibition on idiotic conceptualism for Roskilde Museum of Contemporary Art.
David Reinfurt (USA) graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1993 and received an MFA from Yale University in 1999. On the first business day of 2000 he formed O-R-G inc., a flexible graphic design practice composed of a constantly shifting network of collaborators. Since 2006 he has worked together with Stuart Bailey as Dexter Sinister. In 2011 he co-founded The Serving Library with Stuart Bailey and Angie Keefer.
