Lisbeth Hermansen, visual artist, museum manager for Hygum Art Museum and sheriff i Country Town, was among the nominees for the BKF prize Artist-run Exhibition Venues of the Year 2016.
Also in 2017, BKF is awarding the Artist-run Exhibition Places of the Year award. Nominate your favourite by sending an email with 5-10 lines of justification to bkf@bkf.dk before August 15, 2017!
The interview with Lisbeth Hermansen was published for the first time in The trade magazine Billedkunstneren #4 2016:
What role does the self-organized art scene play in the development of art life, as you see it?
The artist-run places have a decisive importance for art and cultural life in Denmark. The large state institutions have a strong focus on audience numbers and have run safe concepts. The artist-run exhibition venues are culture-developing and -creating. There are a number of artist-run galleries, exhibition venues, artist workshops and book publishers that I admire and cannot thank enough for their tremendous work. Personally, I have always felt outside the institutions - but the artist-run galleries and exhibition venues have had a decisive impact on my self-understanding as an artist and as a curator and museum manager. We can and we must ourselves, there is no one else to do it!
Which artist-run exhibition venues and projects have you participated in?
I have established Hygum Art Museum, which is built as a work of art located far out in the countryside, in the village of Lemvig in West Jutland, where the landscape is part of the museum. The collection contains works by over 100 Danish contemporary artists, who have all visited and created a work in a smaller format for the museum. Hygum Art Museum is developed as a process over many years. My passwords for the museum include:
An artists' manifesto. A picture of the times in a new millennium. An artistic expression for our time. An experiment with the museum concept and a challenge to the institutional framework. A showdown with the institutions' favoritism in relation to gender, social and geographical locations. A showdown and protest in relation to centralisation. A showdown with Blockbuster concepts and business in the museum world. A search for a new artistic practice. A showdown with the artist's role in society and in cultural life. A belief in artists. A consequence of the fact that the islems and religions have failed. An attempt to find a sustainable and more durable human development on earth. A protest against the monuments and the narrow concepts.
My role in Hygum Art Museum is to be an idea founder, craftsman, architect, sponsor, concept developer, curator, manager. But first and foremost an artist.
Over the past four or five years, I have also established the Country Town art project. It is located in an abandoned village in West Jutland, Dybe Gl. Mejeriby, which I have bought half of very cheaply. I saw an opportunity to build something new and proclaimed myself Sheriff.
There is no final goal with the project, but it opens up a lot of possibilities:
Meeting place, workshop, artists in residence, exhibition place, residence, dialogue, living community, place for experiments, music, performance, dancing, cooking, cultivating the land, bathing and looking at the landscape, playing cowboy or Van Gogh, just being yourself, doing what you want.
Centralization has meant a historic migration from the countryside to the city, and there has been a large depopulation in the countryside.
I see it as an end, but also as a new beginning. Who owns the land, water and air and how will we survive in the future? Perhaps we need to completely redefine our relationship with the country. At the same time, there have been more and more poor people, especially artists and the vulnerable, and we live more and more alone. Country Town is a search for new sustainable and experimental communities, where freedom is something we give each other.
I first proclaimed myself cowboy and later, when I bought the grocery store, also sheriff, since I had half the town at that time. Various events have been held, including: Open town (everyone could come and do what they wanted), western parties, dance evening, Elvis festival, exhibition with Elvis (on loan from the Elvis museum), the establishment of our own money system ›Vestjutske Dollars‹ and Artist Week . My passwords for Country Town are:
A new art practice, experimental village development, new communities, searching for identity and stories in an abandoned village, getting in touch with groups in society that we almost never see in art life, redefining the relationship with the earth, the air, the water, creating visions for the future.
My role in Country Town is to be an artist, museum manager and sheriff. I stand for concept and idea development, am an initiator, investor, manager, curator, village developer, social critic, debater.
Which other artist-run exhibition venues and projects have particularly impressed you in recent years?
I have to admit with shame that I have had too much to do with the places I myself have been to that I have followed enough of what is going on outside my universe. It would be unfair to come up with specific names. Hygum Art Museum and Country Town have been hard work and I have been busy surviving financially and as a person. I have lived a rather isolated life and my projects have filled EVERYTHING. It has been and is a matter of survival. But I have great respect for artists who put themselves on the line and who work for other artists – who pave the way for others, not just for themselves. Keeping an eye on each other, creating opportunities for each other. Help each other. There are enough dark forces in society that will fight us and talk us down and destroy us. Look around in life, there is art and artists everywhere, and everywhere you are needed. Remember to love, take a walk by the sea and set yourself free!
Photo: Jens Nørgaard Larsen, ScanpixDanmark.