Open House Summer Solstice

At this Open House event we mark the summer solstice: the longest day of the year. Technically, it takes place three days earlier, but that’s a Saturday, and our brilliant builders deserve their day off. We need them on the day, you see, as they are ones who make it safe for us to invite you onto the construction site.

Anyway, perhaps Tuesdays tend to be a bit overlooked? We’re putting that right on 24 June, when the treats on offer include Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen’s performance 23.5°, a celebration of light and health. You’ll also hear the jazz duo Cort Lunde, whose work responds to the ongoing transformation of the former boiler hall. As always at these events, we’ll finish by singing a song together, led by our in-house conductor Niels W. Jacobsen. This evening, we’ll sing Alberte Winding’s ‘Lyse nætter’ from 1991.

During the event, you can buy food and drinks from our lovely neighbours at Kaffefair. We’ve seen the menu and are working up an appetite in preparation!

This is a public event; everyone is welcome.

Please note: we’re hoping for plenty of midsummer sun, but please be aware that event takes place outdoors, and the ground on the construction site consists of gravel and soil.

17.00: Co-directors Signe Jochumsen & Bibi Saugman welcome all

17.05: Community singing, ‘Lyse nætter’, led by Niels W. Jacobsen, our in-house conductor

17.15: 23.5° performance by Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen

18.15: Ånden i Glasset concert by Cort Lunde

19.00: We close the site. Thank you for coming! 

23,5° by Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen 

The summer solstice is the longest day and shortest night of the year. 23.5° is a celebration of light and health. Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, the work is a ritual that marks the positive aspects of life. Artist Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b. 1970) has written a text that has subsequently been broken into short sentences and distributed across 100 lemons. These 100 lemons represent (and quite literally are) sources of life-giving vitamins handed out to the audience. Through this act, fragments of the text are passed on to those who wish to receive them.

Ånden i glasset by Cort Lunde

For this Open House event, the jazz duo Cort Lunde performs a new work written specifically for Kunsthal Spritten. Based on field recordings from Spritten, the piece is composed for homemade instruments. Inspired by the transformation taking place inside the former boiler hall, they have built a marimba from empty aquavit bottles. It acts as a resonant sculpture, echoing the history of Aalborg and the silence of abandoned buildings.

In what amounts to a modern-day séance, Cort Lunde plays ‘Ånden i Glasset’ – literally ‘the spirit in the glass’, the Danish term for using a Ouija board to summon spirits – to make the past speak. But the gaze is soon raised further and turns towards the horizon. In the second part of the work, real-world sounds of birdsong are woven over the rhythms of the building site. A hopeful beat emerges: a sonic vision of life, change and new beginnings.