DIVA-apartment of the Bikuben Foundation in Frederiksberg.
(1) In the past twenty years urban politics in Copenhagen have changed: from an agenda of redistribution to an agenda of growth, from an introverted perspective to an extroverted approach and to the involvement of private enterprises into decision making, while the public sector has adapted entrepreneurial forms of organization. See: Anders Lund Hansen, Space wars and urban governance: creative and inhumane urban transformation, in: Urban Governance, Berlin 2007
(2) The Danish International Visual Exchange Program was established “…to help build valuable networks for Danish artists, art mediators and art institutions, while at the same time indirectly improving the knowledge of Danish art abroad.”
In Quest of the Perfect Location
In the summer of 2006 newspapers published the results of a worldwide survey that indicated the Danes are the happiest people in the world. The unemployment rate dropped to under 4% and the birthrate was 1.74 children per woman. One saw a strikingly large number of families pushing baby strollers through the cityscape, and a restrictive migration policy ensured that the population remained predominantly blond. Copenhagen's urban development was a direct expression of the economic boom. Where just a few years ago industrial wastelands had been like gashes in the urban fabric, property prices were going through the roof. The real estate sections of newspapers grew as thick as telephone books, and on the weekend people took pleasure in visiting model condos or shopping for furnishings. In Ørestad people still had to find their way between mobile buildings and excavators, and the new Amager Beach resembled a technoid playground after a nuclear explosion. Nevertheless, a lucid, segmented world of individual wealth and comfortable living standards was already asserting itself; it was evident in the architecture, the designed waterscapes, a driverless subway, and lavish designs for public spaces. (1)
The summer was unusually hot, and an algae plague was choking Copenhagen's water arteries. Our search for the perfect location brought us to this city, where we wanted to explore the heterotopias Christiania and Tivoli—the free town and the amusement park. What interested us about these two converted military bases were their differences from the norm, and their strict dichotomy between inside and outside, which provides ideal conditions for studying the perfect location. Why this fixation on space? Hasn't the search for the perfect relation long since superseded the search for the perfect location? Even if a nomadic lifestyle between temporary partnerships of convenience is increasingly becoming the standard, the built environment is still associated with ideology. Regional planning not only represents social groups but also prescribes courses of action. Routines and habits are inscribed in space. The question, "Is it about a practice or a place" divides conditions that are closely related. Our research thus went hand in hand with the question of "the good life" which oscillates between individual happiness and collaborative self-realization. A we/you constellation and its attendant reflexes of demarcation enables and therefore reinforces feelings of belonging. We found this conflicting constellation in Copenhagen in almost picture-book form, and the simultaneity of the contrary models meant that the existing orders are not irrevocable but rather negotiable.
Denmark's first grant for international artists, DIVA (2), had just been established. It financed our stay and provided housing in a guest apartment owned by the Bikuben Foundation in Frederiksberg. The wife of the director of the Bikuben Bank had decorated the interior with Arne Jacobsen, Louis Poulsen, and Carl-Henning Pedersen. From the fully equipped kitchen to the laundry dryer she had thought of everything.