Chapter 15: Study Tour to Aarhus

This past week was core course week, and I spent the second half traveling to Aarhus in eastern Jutland. I was super excited to go because last semester we went to Southern Denmark, and I heard from so many people that it was a great town.

I’m on the train headed back to Copenhagen as I write this, and I’m still smiling from our last activity this morning. Because of that, I’m going to write about my experience starting from the end.

Today (Friday, Feb. 10th)

We visited Morten Barker earlier this morning, a well established photographer that invited us into his home in the suburbs. His house was well designed, incredibly clean, and nicely furnished. It felt cozy and intellectual some how, and he welcomed us inside with open arms. He walked us through his photography career in his home studio, which was super interesting: in one exhibition he took screenshots from films and overlaid the images to turn them into new ones. In his installation at an art gallery he even had a live tree brought in! Afterwards we had lemon cake and drank coffee in his living room, just chatting and getting to know each other.

Afterwards we took a walk through the fields behind his house, which was beautiful but admittedly very cold.

The best part was getting to hold his pet bunny DJ. I was a little afraid of holding him at first, but I took one look at his little face and couldn’t resist.

Thursday (Feb. 9th)

On this day we had a meet up and q&a with film director Christian Andersen and producer Hanna Rosland of Swullifilm. They told us all about what it is like to run a film company, their productions, and their upcoming works. As someone considering going into the film business, it was very cool to learn about the process of majing + planning films. we watched audition tapes of actors, and one of their short films.

Next we went to an independent cinema called Øst for Paradis/East of Eden. I drank a dirty chai ( chai + espresso) and sat in a private theater with my class to watch The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t really get what the hype about the film was, and it was a little hard to understand them with the Irish accents with Danish subtitles, but I was still glad to see it.

Here’s the cafe in the cinema where we got our drinks:

Afterwards my friends and I went to a live music bar and watched people sing poorly but with passion, and I found that to be very sweet.

Wednesday (Feb. 8th)

On our first day in Aarhus we went to AROS, a famous museum of modern art after a long train ride.

Our first stop was a famous installation on the top of the building by Olafur Eliasson called Your Rainbow Panorama that is essentially a colorful circular glass tunnel. When the light comes through it paints everything you see in whatever color the glass at that point is, and since it’s a rainbow as you walk everything transforms around you.

The other art in the museum was very strange but also very intriguing. Some were traditional paintings or sketches, and others were sculptures or full body sensory experiences. We spent hours there, which was great. There were a LOT of stairs, however, and I was definitely tired by the end.

For lunch we had traditional Danish Smørrebrød at Langhoff & Juul. I’m not typically a fan of the open faced sandwich, but I had a seafood salad one at this place that was delicious.

__________________________________________________________

So core course week was awesome. I loved getting to know the people in my core course and making new friends, and it was refreshing to get to be around so much art and talk to brilliant creators. There’s nothing better than listening to someone who is passionate talk about what they do, and it made me feel inspired to get back to doing the art that I love.