Perhaps best known for his collaborations and artistic affinities with notable artists such as
Joseph Beuys and
Fluxus members like
Nam June Paik and
Dick Higgins, Christiansen, who worked primarily on the remote Danish island of Møn, moved beyond his Fluxus-oriented roots to create a vast, often ineffable body of work that spanned music, performance, film, and visual art over the course of a fifty-year career. Yet Christiansen's work has remained under the radar, even in the ten years following his death: only a few of his recordings were available until recently, and his prolific compositional and visual outputs have rarely been performed or exhibited in the United States.
Freedom is Around the Corner—the exhibition, the performance series, and the journal—seek to present Christiansen's life and work in a holistic, varied manner that befits his dynamic practice.
Like previous issues of the Blank Forms journal,
Henning Christiansen: Freedom is Around the Corner collects a combination of newly discovered, never-before published, and newly translated materials; in this case, many of the materials were found in the Henning Christiansen Archive during the exhibition's curatorial process. The artists and writers featured in this issue include Henning Christiansen, Thomas Groetz,
Diedrich Diederichsen,
Dick Higgins, Lars Morell, Per Kirkeby, Bjørn Nørgaard, Helmer Nørgaard, Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen, Anton Lukoszevieze, Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Michael Glasmeier, Ute Wassermann, Stíne Janvin,
Werner Durand, Mark Harwood,
Lucy Railton, Cosam Lamb-Eubanks,
Graham Lambkin, Áine O'Dwyer, Lia Mazzari, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Francesco Conz, and Emily Harvey.
Blank Forms' journal brings together a combination of never-before published, lost, and new materials that supplement Blank Forms' live programs. It is envisioned as a platform for critical reflection and extended dialogue between scholars, artists, and other figures working within the world of
experimental music and art.
