Dexter Bang Sinister

This spring, the Research Programme at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen will operate under  New York-based designers-editors-publishers, Dexter Sinister (Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt).

Together with regular collaborator Angie Keefer, they will set up a joint project with Danish thinker-curator-writer Lars Bang Larsen under the compound title Dexter Bang Sinister.

Contemporary publishing

In 2006, Dexter Sinister established a workshop and bookstore of the same name, and have since explored aspects of contemporary publishing in diverse contexts. As well as producing and distributing both printed and digital media, they have also often worked in the live contexts of galleries and museums, such as MoMA, New York, Banff Centre, Alberta, and Artists Space, New York.

These projects generally play to some form of site-specificity, where a publication or series of events are worked out in public over a set period of time.

The project at Charlottenborg will work towards producing a series of their irregular 'bulletins': concise texts freely downloadable as PDFs.

These are collected every half-year and published as a regular printed journal called Bulletins of The Serving Library.

Black-and white psychedelia

To this end, Dexter Bang Sinister will build a sensorium in which to float the idea of black-and white psychedelia. Reconceptualising recent research interests of Larsen, this room will be assembled to offer some form of stripped-down, hollowed-out, distinctly low-grade stimulation.

Its contents will combine a number of typically monochrome works by Dexter Sinister themselves, along with examples of Danish mid-20th century, achromatic psychedelic experiments collected by Larsen.

The idea of black-and-white-psychedelia is an estrangement or Verfremdung of the multicolour visuality of 1960s, signalling the rehearsal of history with a marked distance to the way it ‘really happened’.

Nine months experiment

The room will remain in situ for a period of some nine months, during which time the group will be engaged both on- and off-site, writing and publishing material that derives from and feeds the experience.

This will involve some intermittent public programming in the spring. Then, in autumn, the group will reassemble in Charlottenberg to launch the resulting printed journal.

Nearby places

Activities

• Canal Tours Copenhagen

Attractions

• Kunsthal Charlottenborg
• Sommer 2011, Charlottenborg

Food and drinks

• Leonore Christine
• Restaurant Gilleleje

Location

• Academy of Fine Arts