Wednesday 2 February, 5:30–6:30 pm
At Baltic Art Center
Skeppsbron 24, Visby

Danish artist Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, who is currently in residence at BAC, will present his artistic practice and introduce the project he is working on during his residency.

Jürgensen’s project at BAC is the production of a video work, staged as a dramatised artist’s lecture, which examines the ideas of time and identity in relation to technological progress and global capitalism in contemporary culture.

The project takes its point of departure in his family history. An ancestor of the artist founded the watch-making company ‘Jules Jürgensen’ in Denmark in the mid-18th century. The company was awarded an appointment to the Crown to supply marine chronometers to the Danish merchant navy – crucial for navigation in the early days of global trade. After a near-bankruptcy, the family business was sold in the late 19th century and traded several times. It is currently owned by an American investment company, which now markets cheap watches under the name, with production outsourced to Southeast Asia. The fate of the name (which is the artist’s name) follows the trajectory of modern businesses and is, then, a parallel to the history of capitalism.

Jacob Dahl Jürgensen (b. 1975 in Copenhagen) lives and works in London. He is staying at BAC December 2010 – January 2011, and has been invited as part of the Artist-in-Residence programme supported by the Nordic-Baltic mobility programme.