The Danish artist's project enables the establishment of a new structure inside the museum that will become the basis of a space created and activated by the visitors—an open space surpassing the fine lines between public and private, between observation and participation. Collective Strings is an invitation to join the creation of a sculptural structure of strings while making the grounds for changing lifetrails.
Collective Strings disrupts bodily patterns of movement in the city, literally by inviting everyone to track colored traces of string between elements and thus create new spaces and ways of moving. People are offered new pathways in their biochemistry by turning themselves upside-down and getting in touch with each other. By encouraging intuitive emotional actions, usually suppressed by the norms of behavior and the formalized welfare society, the project lies on the stones of action performance, which first appeared in the 1960s, when, questioning the existent structure of society, the situationist made a platform where the individual was able to liberate themselves from the “past, present, and future” paradigm.
In this piece Karoline H. Larsen reveals creative strategies inherent in ourselves, nudging us to open and activate our body and mind in a unknown space. As Larsen explains, Collective Strings is a project for “an opportunity to renegotiate how each individual can be part of a community.” Working on two levels, individual and collective, it exploits the level of consciousness with which we approach daily life, reminding us that action towards something different is possible. “I wanted to stop taking the same route from A to B,” says Larsen, “and to find forgotten pathways and new traces in my mind. I was curious to experience myself from a new angle, open new impulses inside me, and feel something different. I was adamant that the experimental character of art was necessary for change and personal development.”