Sitespeific Art in CBS - Planes of Thought

It is has been my aim to create a work environment that is informative and aesthetic, and to do so in a way that supports MPP’s basic values, while incorporating and visualizing its identity in a serious way. The content of the works is characterized by a durable relevance, not just a sample of a particular time. In order for the project really to take shape, it was necessary to investigate and analyze the department’s vision, values, needs, and parts of its output. This happened in various ways, primarily in close collaboration with the steering group, which consisted of Henrik Hermansen, Anje Schmidt and Jesper Bjørn.

OVERARCHING IDEA “PLANES OF THOUGHT”
In my meeting with the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, I encountered a place where knowledge and thought are dynamic, a department that constantly moves in the borderland between disciplines and grapples with many planes and perspectives, whether in the past, the present, or the future. But, first and foremost, I experienced a group of engaged people who express themselves behind the thoughts and the books in a workspace organized by correspondingly flexible boundaries and frameworks. It is this encounter that the project wants to bring to life through an artistic expression. The project has taken its point of departure primarily in the department’s own production of distinctive knowledge material in the form of statements and various books. This collected material has been used as raw material and inspiration for the building’s look and signage. It has of course been wholly fundamental to bring all three floors within a single concept so that the viewer forms a recognizable image, even as diversity is preserved.
The first thing one meets when one visits MPP in Porcelænshaven 18B is either one of the building’s two elevators. One is decorated with grass on the floor, stretching as far as the eye can see out along its sides until the grassy plateaus reach the line of the horizon. The other elevator is a yellow room of stairs where it is impossible to distinguish up from down, or which landing is highest or lowest. I have found the elevators to be completely central in the overall project, since it is precisely the elevators that are the physical expression of the connective element between the various disciplines – management, politics, philosophy, and history – that MPP is made up of and distinguishes itself from others by.

Expression – The form of thoughts
I have chosen to limit the amount of colours to three, in that I wanted to use the individual colours to represent the different floors in such a way that users can orient themselves simply and immediately. The three clear and simple colours – yellow , red and green – present themselves cleanly, clearly, and simply, establishing a space in which the content of the works can then appear. Finally, the clarity of the colours also contributes movement, dynamism and life to the spaces.
The project’s physical expression is characterized by a tight, simple, and graphic style that is repeated on every floor and in each room. The works are realized in such a way that the viewer is forced to grapple with them bodily and not just theoretically. This bodily experience can be felt, among other places, in the meeting with the three-meter high portraits, in the life-sized Plexiglas columns, and in the deep perspectives of the elevators’ interiors. But no sooner have viewers registered the physical presence of the works before them, when they are, through closer inspection, brought face to face with mass of detailed information created by MPP. This can be seen, among other places, in the figures made out of text on the Plexiglas columns, and on the “book wheel”, which has been built during an MPP workshop out of books produced at MPP.

Elevator 1
The colour is green. Very green grass is seen from a bird’s eye view and disappears down into an optical hole in the floor. Along the sides the viewer gets a feeling of standing on a plateau and looking out over a multitude of other plateaus. On the line of the horizon, the sky appears and meets the ceiling, which has also been painted the colour of the sky. The choice of grassy plateaus was made with the value of situating oneself in a particular place in mind, a place wherefrom one can survey the landscape, a point of view. The many plateaus also indicate that there are different ways of seeing the world – one may discover different things from each plateau and it is therefore important to become a traveller into the unknown.

Elevator 2
The colour is yellow, the room filled with stairs connecting several landings, seen in several perspectives that converge upon one another but never lead to a final or definite place. This space expresses the value of not believing in the ideal and the one correct truth—it shows us that everything depends on the place wherefrom one looks at things.

Second Floor
When one steps out on the second floor the yellow colour continues. The first thing that meets the eye is a photograph, 150 cm by 150 cm, with a “book wheel” behind a 10mm thick Plexiglas pane and the same thing repeats itself on the perpendicular wall over the radiators with a photograph of another “book wheel”, 100 cm by 100 cm. The back wall behind the elevators is painted yellow with illustrations of books painted in the same yellow colour. The elevator doors bear a print of a Tower of Books.
In the stairwell, the same visual expression can be experienced as on the back wall, outlined by books in yellow paint, in a graphic style, moving as a series that spreads itself around. The point of departure for using books is of course the department’s output and thereby the visual result of the work that is carried out here. A workshop with the employees resulted in a Tower of Books as an image of the fragile ivory tower of the researchers and the two “book wheels” that, like a machine, emit books in a constant drive forward.

Third Floor
The colour on the third floor is orange-red, which one meets, among other places, on the six life-sized Plexiglas columns with letter-silhouettes of persons constructed out of statements written by the employees of MPP. On the elevator doors are large prints of the department’s hallways and on top of these move orange-red life-sized figures. The back wall behind the elevators is painted orange-red with two painted Plexiglas columns, which reaches to the elevator wall. In the stairwell we find the same visual expression as on the back wall with silhouettes of persons in Plexiglas columns in orange-red. The reason that so much emphasis has been placed on persons is precisely that the employees at the department are very characteristic and unique to the place.

Fourth Floor
On the fourth floor we find three-meter high grass-green facial silhouettes. The chosen silhouettes represent history, philosophy and politics. Inside their faces we find text and statements placed there by the employees. On the elevator doors we see all employees at MPP, each represented by a little photo about 10 cm by 12 cm that seems to shoot out from the elevator doors. With the choice of the big icons all the planes – historical knowledge, trends in the future, and an expression of the research that happens right now – are brought together. That is why the employees from this epoch figure in the design, since it is an expression of the present – what is happening right now.