On the Art of Reading in the Folds of a Place
Essay book, 36 pages
Initiative and publishing: Sigrids Stue, 2024.
Part of Sigrids Stue’s publikation series Neighbourhood Remarks.
The book can be bought by contacting me or Sigrids stue and the digital version can be found HERE. (Danish only)
The book was created on the basis of an invitation from the social art platform Sigrids Stue, which is rooted in Gellerupparken, and whose circular and caring practice has inspired the work with the text. In the book, Helene Johanne Christensen explores five interconnected sites in Gellerupparken using various methods, including writing exercises, clay collection, and site-specific collages, which are included in the book.
She reflects on how one comes to know a place, and she found herself to be echoing the writer Nan Shepherd: “What is to be known grows with knowing.” Places are inexhaustible—especially a complex and politically charged area undergoing rapid change, such as Gellerup.
In the book the figure of the fold is used as a way to understand the place and to maintain awareness that the past is still present—folded into the present—and that the present will, in turn, fold into the future. It is also a figure that may be useful for more caring urban development. Instead of creating sharp ruptures—demolishing, removing, building anew—we might instead fold the existing in new ways, creating temporal, material, and emotional continuity; recognizing the resources already present in the place—both material and immaterial—and folding them into the reshaping/transformation of the site.