PRIZE

Prize... for Jacob

LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND
PARA:DOX

A video compilation by Jacob Kirkegaard focusing on the voices and real-life stories of waste reclaimers highlighting their journeys, challenges and aspirations.
All films were made by Jacob Kirkegaard and produced by UN-Habitat, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and The Circulate Initiative. South Africa, Nigeria, Vietnam and India, 2023.

The videos were premiered by UN-Habitat in Kenya in November 2023 for an event focused on the voices of waste reclaimers. It was co-hosted by The Circulate Initiative and UN-Habitat in Nairobi during the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.

Hypogeum

A new work by Jacob Kirkegaard, that takes the listener on a journey in sound through the colossal Copenhagen sewer system. It is composed of sound recordings he has made of sewer pipes, storm water tunnels, pump stations, and majestic cistern-like water reservoirs.

Hypogeum reveals a vast and complex underground infrastructure, that is vital to the life and health of the city.
Spring 2024. Commissioned by New Carlsberg Foundation.

Tale of the Bee

This work draws inspiration from the now extinct and nearly forgotten European tradition; Telling the Bees, which involved informing bees about important events in a person's life or in the world by whispering or singing messages into beehives. According to the myth, as bees had access to the underworld and could act as messengers.

The artwork Tale of the Bee flips the tradition and questions whether bees have something to tell us. Jacob Kirkegaard has therefore made a 24-hour sound recording inside a beehive. The sounds of the bees are then printed on vinyl. The sound waves are ultimately transcribed back into panels of beeswax produced by the bees from the same hive.
Munkeruphus, Spring 2024. Supported by the Danish Arts Foundation.