
Udstillingsstedet TYS
Copenhagen, Denmark
The KRÆ (CREATURE) Syndicate is a new exhibition space located in the old Meatpacking District, “Kødbyen” that opened in the summer of 2017 This government-protected stable has essentially been preserved since the Industrial Revolution took place in Copenhagen when butchering and meat production could be effectuated and streamlined with an increased focus on hygiene to prevent infections. This stable is now infiltrated and taken over by a poetic resistance reacting to (and against) the antibacterial soap that has tried to whitewash these walls in order to eliminate the unwanted and keep the illusion of a strict distance between humans and nature. The KRÆ Syndicate works in extension of the crumbling contemporary belief that the basic democratic and humanistic structures established by Modernism has led to war, camps, and walls that divide bodies between life and death as its ultimate consequence. At the same time the basic conditions for life on our planet is threatened by the same growth and productiveness that was meant to secure its maintenance. The KRÆ Syndicate work with the connections between death in culture and the representation of the radical other; the refugee, the creature, the weed, the violence, the grotesque, the bacteria, naked life: things and bodies that represent and characterize the unwanted. KRÆ is a derogatory word for the animals once sold and slaughtered in this neighbourhood and can be used as a symbol for the things we would like to problematize through exhibitions and other interventions, a poetic criticism of the fear of and extermination of the other based on the assumption that we´re already infected. The KRÆ is you and me, us and them. It´s a beast born out of fellowship of mankind, a manifestation of our contradictory nature. The Syndicate is radical, emerging as a growl from our collective consciousness; it´s the creator of sensitive and intellectual disturbances. The KRÆ Syndicate is a group of visual artists, musicians, writers, performance artists and a philosopher that alternately curate the exhibitions and events in this space.