Nightingale
Emil Keller Skousen (DK)
09/11 - 15/11/2026
A mother of twelve screaming children empties a bucket containing mussel shells,
remnants of ergot-infected bread, and other household waste out of the window and into
the open raw sewage channel running through the streets. Hundreds of years later, all that
remains of this everyday scene is a fine, thin layer of soil, a slightly different shade of
brown from the other layers of earth visible through a glass panel in an archaeological
display in a Danish provincial town.
I was born in 1987. In 2000, Nelly Furtado released the massive hit single "I'm Like a Bird".
We were the first people in a thousand years to experience the calendar shift from 9 to 0.
From something to nothing, or from something to just more of the same. Remember that T-
shirt?
In early spring 2023, I went with my wife and son to look at a house in the industrialised
agricultural countryside. It was the cheapest house listed, and we probably weren't going
to be able to afford it anyway.
The previous owner had recently died in the house, leaving all their belongings behind, as
well as their tenant. It was evident that the house had gradually declined into some
strange, old mash of a place.
Piles of containers were stacked around the kitchen - beer, clonazepam and VHS tapes. A
few cherished memories had been laminated and hung on the fridge. All the while, that
very Nelly Furtado song was playing on the clock radio.
The works in this exhibition are versions of other things that have come before.
Emil Keller Skousen, aka “Grill”, “Ting”, aka Mr. Szinck, et al., is a Danish visual, sound
and performance artist living and working in Copenhagen.
His work has recently been shown at Malmö Art Museum, Den Frie – Centre of
Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Inkonst, Malmö, and Kontula Electronic, Helsinki, among
others.
He is involved in several collaborations, including The Wingdings and (Noodles) Online
Institute of Arts and Music with Shaun Ytterland.
Exhibition supported by SCCF, Valmiermuižas alus