The Syndicate Of Creatures

tSoC is an art and intervention group based in Copenhagen. Initially organized around the exhibition and performance platforms TYS and KRÆ. In recent years, we have restructured to work in a broader field and more collaboratively with other organizations both locally in Copenhagen and internationally.


tSoC is built around a core of three artists/curators/researchers and art theorists, and we collaborate with a wide range of professionals. tSoC consists of visual artist and art theorist Nanna Gro Henningsen, human ecologist and performer Michelle Appelros, and visual artist and curator Signe Vad.


We create exhibitions, events, workshops, and intervention projects on topics related to our main focus: rethinking how we inhabit this planet. Our primary approach to this theme is to work with poetic, sensory-based, mystical, and scientific methods.


the Syndicat of Creatures manifest:

We are KRÆ. We are creatures. We are a syndicate of creatures who believe that the world needs radical rethinking.

While the capitalistic autocannibliism devours our nature, feasts on all living creatures and living growths; while we humans becomes a bottomless gap of insatiable needs, in a splintered world, where reflection hurts as the world is spinning in the wrong direction; we turn into disturbing creatures – we become KRÆ – creatures identifying with critters and growths, emerging as beings of the earth.

The Syndicate of Creatures gathers around exhibitions, events, rituals and conversations. We work with events that revolve around inter-connectedness to the past, the future, to the nature of multiple creatures and species, to each other and in the common world.

We want to create an experimental non-profit environment for rethinking; we start by dealing with the grotesque, the absurd, the rejected, and the elements of nature, the roots, the robots and death.

We use art and poetic collaboration as a gateway to disturb our fossilized mind-sets and awaken numb senses.


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.


The KRÆ is you and me, us and them. A beast born out of fellowship

of humankind, 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.

 

Marie Eline Hansen (DK) performing 2019
In front of a collaborate work by Naja Ryd Ankarfeldt and Elena Lundquist Ortíz (DK)

Empedocles Ghost - KRÆ Syndicate exhibition curated in collaboration with Noysky Peojects (US), 2019.

Degrowth Festival #1 and #2,  2023 and 2024

ART / UTOPIA / NOW 5 seminar/workshops for the art world about how to think art in a transformative and regenetive future.

The KRÆ Syndicate manifest 2019

tSoC er en kunst- og interventionsgruppe med base i København. Oprindeligt organiseret omkring udstillings- og performanceplatformene TYS og KRÆ. De seneste år har vi omstruktureret for at arbejde på et bredere felt og mere i samarbejde med andre organisationer både lokalt i København og internationalt.

tSoC bygger på en kerne af tre kunstnere / kuratorer / forsker og kunstteoretikere; og vi samarbejder med en bred variation af fagfolk. tSoC er billedkunstner og kunst teoretiker Nanna Gro Henningsen, Human Økolog og performer Michelle Appelros og billedkunstner og kurator Signe Vad.

Vi laver udstillinger, events, workshops og intervenerende projekter om emner, der vedrører vores hovedfokus: at genoverveje, hvordan vi bebor denne planet. Vores vigtigste tilgang til dette tema er at arbejde med poetisk, sansebaseret, mystisk og videnskabelig.


the Syndicat of Creatures manifest:

”Vi er KRÆ. Vi er skabninger. Vi er et syndikat af væsner, der mener, at verden har brug for radikal nytænkning

Mens den autokannibalistiske kapitalisme fortærer vores natur -nærer sig på alle levende væsner og vækster, mens vi mennesker bliver til bundløse huller af umættelige behov, i en splintret verden, hvor refleksion gør ondt og verden spinder i den forkerte retning;

omdannes vi til foruroligende skabninger - vi bliver KRÆ - skabninger, der identificerer sig med alle væsener og vækster, skabninger der opstår af jorden på jorden.


Vi samles omkring udstillinger, begivenheder, ritualer og samtaler. Vi arbejder med events, der drejer sig om forbundenhed til naturen, verden, fortiden, fremtiden og ikke mindst til hinanden.

Vi ønsker at skabe et eksperimentelt miljø for nytænkning.

Vi beskæftiger os med det groteske, det absurde, det afviste, naturens elementer, det organiske liv og døden.

Vi bruger kunst og poetisk samarbejde som en gateway til at forstyrre vores fossile tankegang og vække lammede sanser.


KRÆ-syndikatet arbejder i forlængelse af den smuldrende nutidige tro på de grundlæggende demokratiske og humanistiske strukturer; strukturer etableret i modernismen, som har ført til krig, lejre og mure, strukturer der deler kroppe mellem liv og død i sin ultimative konsekvens. Strukturer der er de grundlæggende betingelser for, at livet på vores planet er truet.


KRÆ-syndikatet arbejder med forbindelserne mellem døden i kulturen og repræsentationen af den radikale anden; flygtningen, skabningen, ukrudtet, volden, det groteske, bakterierne, det nøgne liv: ting og kroppe, der repræsenterer og karakteriserer det uønskede.


KRÆ er dig og mig, os og dem. Et udyr født af fællesskabet med menneskeheden, en manifestation af vores modstridende natur. Syndikatet er radikalt og fremstår som en hvæsen fra vores kollektive bevidsthed; en skaber af sanselige og intellektuelle forstyrrelser.”

'Birth Earth and Dawn - LEFTOVERS' 
by Malwina Migacz (DK) 2018

The flag Death to the Death Star, in a collaborative version between tSoC/ Michelle Appelros & Signe Vad and LA-based exhibition space Noysky Projects
At the end of it's journey it is back in nature somewhere in Utah

Voices of Pythia

16 performances in public space. The artist as the oracle placed at the sidewalk giving a speech.

Inspired by speakers` corner and the need in contemporary times to imagine new solutions, tSoC created a performance platform outside Office of Emergency and facilitated 16 performances from Nov. 2020 to Nov. 2021. 

All performances were documented and is now available at www.voicesofpythia.zone

Talking Change – Towards a Sustainable Art World

A conference for the artist-run sector.

The conference was part of a Creative Europe project Artist-Run Network Eutope and a collaboration with Juxtapose Art Fair

Zine produced for the Exhibition:
Empedocles' Ghost – an exhibition about exploring science and mysticism's forgotten relationship
LA-based Noysky Projects and the Syndicate of Creatures in Collaboration, Curated by Sean Noyce
Artists: Naja Ryd Ankarfeldt and Elena Lundquist Ortíz (DK), Michael Carter (US), Jenalee Harmon (US), Alexander Holm (DK), Larry and Debby Kline (US), Sean Noyce (US), Camilla Reyman (DK), Samuel Scharf (US), Katya Usvitsky (US), and Melissa Walter (US)
Performers: Alexander Holm/Mads Kristian Frøslev (DK), Mycelium (DK), Francesca Burattelli(DK), and Family Underground (DK)

Office of Emergency - A climate and conversation hub.

How Do We Deal With the End of the World, tSoC workshop by Michelle Appelros and Signe Vad for AIM (Artist Initiative Meetings), Plovdiv 2019

Exhibitions in the old stable space we had from June 2017 to July 2019

1. Extremophiles1                                            2. Upside Down

Performances by Mycelium at the KRÆ Syndicatet