Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones 

Solo exhibition at Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 14–August 25 
Performance Is it Genuine?, August 8, 5.30-6pm, 25 min: Molly Haslund performed Christina Hagen’s poetic, hard-hitting exhibition text in the shape of a love letter. Directed and composed by Molly Haslund, performers Steffen Galster, Sophie Pucill, Sigrid Dyveke Muraour and Haslund,  interpreted the text using voices, musical features, objects from the exhibition, and interaction with the projected VR-video about social processes, society values, and lived lived.
Performance Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones, June 14th, 6pm and 7pm, 30 min: Eighteen teenagers hung out by the entrance of Overgaden, each of them eating an ice cream, looking at their audience, the audience looking back at them.

During the summer of 2019 in Copenhagen at Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Haslund's solo exhibition Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones was on. She showed 16 new titles; From objects made of 18 carat gold, readymades, photography, to costumes, performances, video, and the imaginative virtual-reality work in which the character Hedera Helix (Latin for ivy) meets the group Gekisai Dai Ichi (Japanese for smashing and destroying) for a ritualized karate match in the backyards of Nørrebro, which could be experienced by visitors at close quarters. Scale displacements and architectural interventions in the exhibition highlight how we constantly, through external influences move into social hierarchies and situations, and how everyday rituals are used to ascribe our selves and others identity and status. All this, could also be experienced in the live performance Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones, performed during the preview.

Children on Coat Racks (2019)
In the video work Children on Coat Racks Haslund focuses on the autonomous lifeworld of children by critiquing restrictions on their spontaneity and freedom of movement in contemporary Western society. The camera pans slowly across nine children performing simple tasks together, such as saying ”yes, yes, yes”, “woof, woof, woof,” or singing an alphabet song while hanging from the pegs of an oversized coat rack. Despite the absurd, difficult situation they are in, their body language and voices are playful and spontaneous. Right up until the very last sequence, where they silently follow the camera with their eyes. The marked shift in their behaviour points to the insensitivity of an educational system based on the misunderstood ideals of the adult world. The young performers remind us of their individuality and need for space to think and act free of surveillance and expectations. The video is exhibited with the over-dimensioned coat rack, which embodies and brings a child’s perspective into the exhibition space.

Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones (2019)
A group of teenagers hang out at the entrance of an art museum, partially blocking it as they eat ice creams. Absorbed by their ice creams, they do not talk to each other, communicating solely through body language, facial expressions and the looks they exchange with each other and the audience. The performance Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones lasts until the ice creams are eaten, creating a sense of intensified attentiveness to the small, subtle elements that connect, include and exclude in social contexts. Who is looking at who, and whose behavioural norms apply here? Each performance of the work is accompanied by a site-specific, pre-documentation photograph already on display in the art institution. Printed in black and white, the image creates a sense of déjà vu from the austere documentation of performance works in the 1960s and 1970s. Haslund’s articulation of the temporal as well as hierarchical relationship between live acts and their representation addresses the challenges of preserving and presenting transitory forms of art.

Hedera Helix (Gekisai Dai Ichi) (2019) 
The VR work Hedera Helix (Gekisai Dai Ichi) is set in the backyards of the Nørrebro area of Copenhagen and consists of two narrative tracks. The version projected and experienced by the rest of the audience is determined by whoever is wearing the VR headset. One narrative track presents the mystical character Hedera Helix with her 10-metre-long plait stealthily making her way through urban space wearing a gold clown nose and an ivy-print camouflage suit. The other track follows a group of karate women who act as a close-knit group with their coordinated gold wigs, body language and actions. In the mid-section of the work, Hedera Helix and the karate women meet face to face. They stand opposite each other, demonstrating their skills. They imitate each other and stage a karate battle, which has a different outcome in the two tracks. Status symbols are flashed on both sides. In addition to wearing gold wigs, the karate women scrape scratch cards in the hope of fast money, whereas Hedera Helix seems more ambiguous with her 18-carat gold nose: a clown displaying her wealth at the risk of losing it to the group, but also a clown who stands out as an eccentric loner, for example when using her clown nose as a hand puppet that speaks a language only birds understand. Alone in her battle for recognition whilst maintaining her integrity, Hedera Helix is in an exposed position in relationship to the group. Like a virtual docudrama, the work mixes the hyperreality of the city with references to gang wars, dogma films, and the Dadaist Emmy Hennings.

53 Chairs Found in the Bulk Waste Sections of Five Backyards in the Nørrebro District of Copenhagen, April-May (2019)
Every morning for two months Haslund takes a tour of the backyards in the area surrounding her studio. Among the piles of junk set out for collection, she finds 53 discarded chairs. In the work they are set out in rows, as if to seat an audience or as a display at a design trade fair. This formation gives the chairs an air of authority and satire they did not possess when found one by one in piles of junk. Each chair is different in shape, colour and condition, raising questions like: Who owned them, and why have they been thrown out? Did someone die, move or get evicted? Some of the chairs look as if they have been in a fight, others as if an animal has scratched or bitten them. Many of them are simply worn out. Like a gallery of portraits, they speak to us, giving us a glimpse of the life lived where they were found. Each of them has a story to tell, a story about wealth, poverty, social status, and aesthetic and cultural codes.

Read Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones – Invitation text by Merete Jankowski linked to the web archive of Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art. Here you can also download the exhibition folder, a handwritten letter by the Danish author Christina Hagen udstilling/teenagers-eating-ice-cream/

List of works in the exhibition:

53 chairs found in the bulky waste sections of five back yards in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, April-May, 2019 (2019)

View, extended windowsill/ elevated floor, 2019 (modules, veneer)

Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones, Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, 2019  (site specific performance, 10-20 min and a B/W site specific photography))

Black Floating Mattresses, 2019 (twill)

Black/White Confetti versus Ashes, 2019

Coat Rack, 2019 (wood, metal)
Children on Coat Racks, 2019 (video loop 8 min)

Children performing on Coat Racks: In the video projection seven children are performing five simple vocal tasks for video camera. – By contacting Molly molly@mollyhaslund.com you can receive a link and a time limited password and watch and listen to the full 8 min video.

Hedera Helix Costume, 2019 (photographic print, twill)
Ten Meter Braid Wig, 2019 (polyester)
Clown Nose (Unexpected Behavior), 2019 (18 carat gold)

Hedera Helix Floating Mattresses and Duvets  (Soft Arena), 2019 
(mattresses, duvets, photoprint on cotton and silk))

MIO gang Schratch-off, 2019 (textile)

Peek to Backyard Through Superficial Wall, 2019

Is it Genuine?, 2019 (performance, 25 min.)

Hedera Helix (Gekisai Dai Ichi), 2019
– Two track VR video: Hedera Helix Meets the Gang (VR loop 12 min) and The Gang Meet Hedera Helix (VR loop 12 min)
The VR work Hedera Helix (Gekisai Dai Ichi) consists of two 12 min. VR-tracks: Hedera Helix Meets the Gang and The Gang Meets Hedera Helix. The two tracks have different beginnings, a meeting seen from two different angles in the middle section and two endings. While those of the audience wearing VR glasses can freely choose where they want to look as they follow the performance in the 360 ​​degree VR movie, the audience in the exhibition space can follow their gaze directions through two huge projections.

THANK YOU  for the great support: 15. Juni Fonden, Statens Kunstfond, Beckett Fonden, Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, Overretssagfører L. Zeuthens Mindelegat, Billedkunstrådet Københavns Kommune

THANK YOU  members from København Karateklub, Roskilde Karateskole and Køge Karateklub, performers  participating in the VR video Hedera Helix (Gekisai Dai Ichi): Laura Kirstein, Pauline Elgård, Josefine Chmeis, Tatjana Nielsen, Nina Johannessen, Mollie Eggertsen, Nini Chila Nielsen, Marousca Helqvist, Maria Larsen, Piia Kirkensgaard Pannbacker

THANK YOU  all performers participating in the staged photography, and the live performance Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones on June 14th: Frida, Villy, Otto, Mina, Karl-Oscar, Petrine, William, Naja, Rio, Milan, Cecilia, Olivia, Storm, Ejgil, Toke, Jakob, Lulu, Kaja, MathildeTHANK YOU  all performers participating in the video Children on Clothes Racks: Jens-Frederik, Theodor, Bror, August, Uma, Lulu, Sif, Harald, Luka

THANK YOU  Anders Morre for co-producing and collaborating om the VR-movie Hedera Helix (Gekisai Dai Ichi) + the video work Children on Coat Racks

THANK YOU   Steffen Galster, Sophie Pucill, Sigrid Dyveke Muraour for performing in Is it Genuine?

THANK YOU  Christina Hagen for writing Is it Genuine? 
THANK YOU  Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art
THANK YOU  The Danish Arts Workshops
THANK YOU  Goldfingers

THANK YOU  Anna Holm, Matilde Helnaes, Mette Truberg, Signe Rørdam Thomsen, Rosa Marie Frang, Toke Martins, Katrine Pedersen, Anna Rosa, Dorte Krogh, Matilde Haaning, Anders Sune Berg, Matilde Haaning

Photographer Dorte Krogh, photo 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, studio photos of clown nose, costume, and photos of work 
Photographer Anders Sune Berg, photo 3, 6, 13, 15, photos of work 
Photographer Nana Reimers, photo 17-23, performance Teenagers Eating Ice Cream Cones
Photographer Matilde Haaning, 24-37, performance Is It Genuine?