YOUNG PEOPLE IN GLASS TUBES

Portrait of a sculptor

- an installation about life before death

Installation set up during the ‘Youth Conference 13:24’ in October ´97 on the Town Hall Square in Copenhagen. The aim of the installation was to fan the debate of young people’s living conditions in a modern city.

Six glass tubes, similar to the ones used in laboratories and biology classrooms, were set up, each containing a naturalistic corpse of a young human ‘preserved in spirits’. The glass tubes, three metres high and 70 centimetres in diameter, were intended to spark a debate about the essential conditions of being young here and now. The aim was to attract the attention of young and old to the main issues of the conference, to highlight the state of health, physically and mentally, of young people today.

The intensity of the installation was reinforced by a piece of music created for the occasion by the young composer Nicky Bendix. The music was a constant accompaniment to the installation.

FEAR EATS UP SOULS

At the biggest rock festival in Europe, the Roskilde Festival ´98 a sculpture installation was set up in co-operation with Amnesty International to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.

The centrepiece of the installation consisted of four big ‘specimen tubes’ with ‘torture victims’ and distorted copper masks ‘in spirits’. The glass tubes were surrounded by 20 sculpturally elaborated candelabra with hundreds of candles, giving the feeling of a holy room. The exhibition was visited by about 8,000 young people who wanted to give their signature to the cause of Human Rights.