Intro

Amager comprises many different people and cultures living side by side. I have always felt comfortable here. There is not the same pretentiousness of the inner city or Osterbro. At the same time, the hurt is not breathing on the streets but hidden in the bars, homes, and specific meeting places. Denmark tends to have this thing around privacy, and this facade holds up at all accounts. It is so different from my existence abroad- and it might be the cold- but I am not sure. The outpouring occurs at night when drink, frolicking, escapes the mouth. It is voiced openly into the environment for all to hear. Ot is seldom one hears couples fighting, but when one does, the window is left open. It can fill the entire courtyard as everything sits so quiet and still on a winter's night—The uncomfortable transience which holds the lip, the turn revealing all within one's midst. People hold back and do conventional propriety. Whenever it arises within the family, I can feel the uncomfortable moment that intercedes. It is as if revelations and honesty should not be brought to light, as it disturbs the superficiality. I am pondering the thought that this is is why it is so difficult for this society to deal with the other. As it creates that moment of discord, it interrupts this complacency allowed to live and thrive, and difference and discussion become real.

Interview med Moona

Jeg hedder Mona. Jeg kommer fra Etiopien og er opvokset i Somalia. Jeg har været et flygtningebarn i Somalia – Syd Somaliland – hvor jeg er opvokset sammen med mine forældre og mine søskende.

I 1988 begynder krigen i Somalia.

Jeg flygtede til Mogadishu, som jeg ikke kendte, sammen med nogle fra min familie. Mine forældre flygtede tilbage til Etiopien, for på det tidspunkt var Etiopien ikke længere i krig. Jeg blev forlovet, og min forlovede hentede mig fra Mogadishu, og så kom jeg til Danmark i en meget ung alder, hvor jeg ikke kendte landet, sproget, kulturen. Det var den 12. oktober, hvor jeg kommer til Danmark. Det er virkelig flot. Bladene var lidt orangefarvede, og det havde jeg aldrig set før. Og rigtig mange af æblerne var faldet ned fra træerne.

Jeg var meget ivrig efter at starte på Sprogskole. Så jeg startede i Herlev, hvor de tog rigtig godt imod os og gik derefter i 9 og 10 i Hvidovre, hvor jeg også senere læste til Social- og Sundhedshjælper, kom ind i Røde kors miljøet og fik mit første barn

Så gik der nogle år, og jeg blev selvstændig, hvor jeg havde en café, der hed ’kvindecafé’, som jeg selv styrede og søgte helhedsplanen for at få støtte. Den kørte  ca. otte år, hvor der hele tiden kom folk ind og ud. Vi kontaktede kvinder fra forskellige lande, som har haft problemer med at læse og tale eller måske havde nogle sociale problemer.

På et tidspunkt blev vi også interviewet til TV2 Lorry og samarbejdede med nogle svenskere.

Jeg har også en ny cafe i Sønderholm nu, hvor vi taler, tager på udflugter i naturen og tager på Amager Museum. Vi inviterer folk udefra. Fx politiet, diætister og alle der er faglige, og kan fortælle os hvad vi kan gøre og hjælpe med.

Dengang jeg kom til Danmark, havde jeg brug for en kvinde som mig. For at forstå mig og vi har måske noget tilfælles. Jeg giver dem nogle ting, som jeg selv har oplevet: at komme fra krig, komme fra et varmt til et koldt land og komme til en kultur, der er ret tilbageholdende og lukket.

[...]

Michelle

All families are complex, filled with secrets.

Buildings tell many tales.

In and out - multiple stories, lives, generations.

A family, the grandmother was part owner of the block with the two other families.

She lived on the 2nd floor, and she was a painter, housewife, neurotic, and self-obsessed bookkeeper.

She was also the daughter of an alcoholic.

One of her son's lives on the 3rd floor and her grandson on the 4th floor.

He is my husband. When I met her, her first remark to me was that I smelled of garlic.

A bit offhanded.

I confronted her with this thought, and there was tension for a while.

I remember that we vacated her summer home with our friends and reinstalled ourselves in a hostel in Tisvilde for the night. I cannot remember her being aggressive towards me again. It seemed to stop as fast as it started.

Some vampires like to see if they can dominate and control others, and they feed off their inability to respond and stand up for themselves. I have trained all my youth in Jamaica and Harlem, New York, for this type of upstart. People openly confronted one another with thoughts that came to their minds, and you had to have a quick remark or reply.

Every family weaves complex strings that bind generations together. Maybe some stronger bonds exist between some members. And perhaps this is how it is in larger families, and I cannot compare. However, I am guessing the distance creates a stance. When there is an inability to confront differences and disputes, the knot tightens. Unresolved feelings lie hidden and get buried.

[...]

CPH: JUNCTIONS & CHECKPOINTS, 2021 AMAGER CENTER The visual artist Michelle Eistrup draws on postcolonial references when she explores contemporary cultural nodes in the public space in the video work CPH: Junctions & Checkpoints (2021). Through a kaleidoscopic view of these places and spaces, Eistrup creates an artistic and critical commentary on the boundaries and non-boundaries that prevail between colonial architecture, contemporary movement patterns, and cultural nodes.

CPH: Junctions & Checkpoints (2021) is in itself a hub that is in constant motion. Here, historical sites and contemporary narratives and events are relentlessly intertwined through experimental imagery of rotating mosaics. Places and spaces formerly reserved for the elite are now occupied and used by people from other economic and cultural divides. These places appear at the same time as both recognizable and foreign, and it is, among other things, this duality that Eistrup works actively with. The transformative qualities of the video work appear in an almost hypnotic way through the constant movements, which at the same time function as a reflection of the cultural nodes that intertwine our past with our present.

The work continues methods that Eistrup developed for the Metropolis project Wal (k) ing Copenhagen 2020.