Alexis Mark Presents
Beyond The Compressed Present
31.01.2026–12.04.2026
VERNISSAGE:
31.01.2026,14:00–16:00
Tranens nye projekt Beyond the Compressed Present er et bibliotek iscenesat af designstudiet Alexis Mark, der samler udstillinger på Tranen gennem 7 år. I perioden 2018 til 2025 har alle projekter på dette udstillingssted været præget af en enkelt ide. Som et rum for samtidskunst har ambitionen været at præsentere kunst, der peger hinsides samtiden. Måske et sådan program paradoksalt giver det bedste billede af vores samtid – eller mangel på samme.
I dag bliver fremtiden hurtigere nutid og nutiden hurtigere fortid. I en verden, der forandrer sig hurtigere og hurtigere, taler man om, at vores samtid trækker sig sammen eller skrumper. Det perspektiv på vores tid fandt man tidligere bl.a. hos tyske tænkere som Hermann Lübbe, Reinhart Koselleck og Hartmut Rosa. I dag er det en del af diskursen i Silicon Valley. Som Dario Amodei, direktør for AI firmaet Anthropic, formulerede det i et opsigtvækkende essay fra 2024: ”Min grundlæggende forudsigelse er, at AI-baseret biologi og medicin vil gøre det muligt for os at komprimere den fremgang, som biologer ville have opnået i løbet af de næste 50-100 år, til 5-10 år. Jeg vil kalde dette for det »komprimerede 21. århundrede«.”
Mange kunstnere har som konsekvens opgivet at forsøge at gribe og indfange de omskiftelige tider, som vi lever i. Et eksempel er den dagsordenssættende forfatter Kim Stanley Robinson, som i et online interview på Tranen i 2025 nikkede genkendende til tendensen. Videooptagelsen af interviewet, der blev optrykt i to artikler i e-flux notes sidste år, præsenteres nu her i sin fulde længde betitlet: ”To Capture the Present Moment, You Either Write Historical Fiction or Science Fiction.” Megen samtidskunst er med andre ord ikke længere kunst om samtiden. Den er ikke længere kontemporær, altså ”med tiden.” I stedet er den ekstemporær i betydningen ”ude af tiden.” Stadig flere kunstnere interesserer sig for fortiden, fremtiden og andre og større tidsligheder.
Da Tranen i 2017 planlagde programmet for de kommende år var fokus især på to områder under hastig forandring, nemlig naturen og teknologien. Tranens væsentligste eksempler var dengang henholdsvis klimaforandringer og kunstig intelligens. Begge områder er præget af bl.a. eksponentiel vækst og selvforstærkende processer, hvor udviklingens hastighed øges. Ligesom inden for udviklingen af AI er man i mellemtiden begyndt at tale stadig mere om hundredårshændelser, der nu indfinder sig med ti eller et til to års mellemrum. Men det var først med det såkaldte ”klimavalg” i 2019 og lanceringen af ChatGPT i 2022, at disse forandringer for alvor satte politisk dagsorden og opnåede bred mediedækning. Tranens profil gennem 7 år minder i dag mere om andre kunstinstitutioners. Mange af de danske kunstnere, som lavede deres første institutionelle soloudstilling her i landet på Tranen, sætter i dag også deres præg på den danske og internationale kunstverden.
Megen ekstemporær kunst, der flyer dagsaktualiteten og altså i øjeblikket kan virke politisk irrelevant, er med tiden blevet det modsatte. Tranens udstillinger af Anton Vidokle i 2019 og Stine Deja i 2021, der begge kredsede om udødelighedsforskning, kunne for eksempel ses i et andet lys, da man i sommers overhørte Vladmir Putin og Xi Jinping diskutere deres egen interesse i emnet. Siden 2018 er det blevet stadig sværere at afskrive selv de vildeste forestillinger om fremtiden som ren uforpligtende spekulation. Ikke blot fordi, at nogle af dem kan blive til virkelighed. Også fordi vi alle er tvunget til at spekulere mere i en verden, hvor troen på fremskridt er sønderrevet af acceleration med konsekvenser, som ingen kan overskue.
Som professor i statskundskab Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen talte med Tranen om på Gentofte Folkemøde 2025, slår hans lærebøger ikke længere til. Andre fortællinger om verden søger han derfor stadig mere i science fiction. I forlængelse af sin bog Krisesamfundet foreslog han, at den danske statsminister under bl.a. Corona ikke burde efterstræbe en vej tilbage til normaltilstanden. Man burde efterlyse fantasi og altså tænke i alternativer.
På gruppeudstillingerne ECO-FAN og Speculative Evolution i 2024 satte Tranen blandt andet fokus på genrer som fantasy og science fiction. I dag gennemsyrer sådan tidligere sub- og lavkultur nu masse- og højkulturen. Dyrkelse af tidligere tiders natursyn, som er en rød tråd i fantasy, og spekulationer om fremtidig teknologi, som kendetegner science fiction, har længe virket verdensfjern. De er blevet affejet som flugt fra virkeligheden. Man har kaldt det eskapisme, og i dag kan man genoverveje om det snarere er genrernes force end deres problem. I dag er det ikke længere en flugt fra virkeligheden at finde en vej ud af verden, som den tegner sig nu og her. Bøgerne her på Tranens bibliotek på Gentofte Hovedbibliotek har tjent som andre veje ind i den udstillede kunst for et læsende og tænkende publikum. Men flere af dem viser også veje hinsides en skrumpende samtid.
Ud over selve udstillingen er plakaterne og folderne med diverse essays designet af Alexis Mark, som Tranen har samarbejdet med siden 2016. Fra og med første udstilling med ekstemporær kunst, Homo Homo af Rasmus Myrup i 2017, har designerne præsenteret kommende kunst på Tranen i en forenklet digital simulering af udstillingsrummet. Inspirationen har været Henning Larsens Gentofte Hovedbibliotek. Her blandes elementer fra forskellige perioder, så arkitekturens rum ikke synes at tilhøre en bestemt tid. På lignende vis har Alexis Mark kastet pressebilleder fra kommende kunstnere i programmet ind i rummet, som om de ikke hører til, fordi udstillingerne endnu ikke har fundet sted. Udstillingens titel, der står på endevæggen i Alexis Marks egen font AM Public, er inspireret af langstrakt typografi på landingsbaner, hvor flyene accelererer og letter.
Toke Lykkeberg
Leder af Tranen
Særlig tak til Emil Busch Madsen, Emilie Juul Thorsteinsson, Sisse Haugland, Anders Kjær Rasmussen og Mia Olesen.
Tranen's new project Beyond the Compressed Present is a library staged by the design studio Alexis Mark, which brings together exhibitions at Tranen over a period of seven years. From 2018 to 2025, all projects at this exhibition venue have been characterized by a single idea. As a space for contemporary art, the ambition has been to present art that points beyond the present. Perhaps such a program paradoxically provides the best picture of our present—or lack thereof. Today, the future becomes present and the present becomes past at an ever-faster pace. In a world that is changing at accelerating speed, there is talk of our contemporary world contracting or shrinking. This perspective on our time was previously found in the work of German historians and thinkers such as Hermann Lübbe, Reinhart Koselleck, and Hartmut Rosa. Today, it is part of the discourse in Silicon Valley. As Dario Amodei, CEO of the AI company Anthropic, put it in a sensational essay from 2024: “My basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years. I'll refer to this as the compressed 21st century.”
As a result, many artists have given up trying to grasp and capture the changing times we live in. One example is the influential author Kim Stanley Robinson, who acknowledged this trend in an online interview at Tranen in 2025. The video recording of the interview, which was published in two articles in e-flux notes last year, is now presented here in its entirety under the title: “To Capture the Present Moment, You Either Write Historical Fiction or Science Fiction.” In other words, much contemporary art is no longer art about the present. It is no longer contemporary, i.e. “with time.” Instead, it is extempory in the sense of “out of time.” More and more artists are interested in the past, the future, and other and larger temporalities.
When Tranen planned its program for the coming years in 2017, the focus was particularly on two areas undergoing rapid change: nature and technology. Tranen’s most significant examples at the time were climate change and artificial intelligence, respectively. Both areas are characterized by, among other things, exponential growth and self-reinforcing processes, where the speed of change accelerates. As in the development of AI, there is now increasing talk of hundred-year events that now occur every ten years or simply every year. But it was not until the so-called “climate election” in 2019 and the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 that these changes really set the political agenda and gained widespread media coverage. Today, Tranen's profile over the past seven years is more reminiscent of other art institutions. Many of the Danish artists who had their first institutional solo exhibition in Denmark at Tranen are now also making their mark on the Danish and international art world.
Much extemporary art that shuns current affairs and seems politically irrelevant at the moment has, over time, become the opposite. Tranen's exhibitions of Anton Vidokle in 2019 and Stine Deja in 2021, both of which revolved around immortality research, could, for example, be seen in a different light when, this summer, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were overheard discussing their own interest in the subject. Since 2018, it has become increasingly difficult to dismiss even the wildest ideas about the future as mere noncommittal speculation. Not only because some of them may become reality. But also because we are all forced to speculate more in a world where faith in progress has been shattered by acceleration with consequences that no one can foresee.
As professor of political science Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen spoke about with Tranen at the Gentofte Folkemøde 2025, his textbooks no longer apply. He therefore increasingly seeks other narratives about the world in science fiction. Following on from his book Krisesamfundet (The Crisis Society), he suggested that the Danish prime minister should not strive to return to normality during the coronavirus pandemic, among other things. Instead, we should call for imagination and think in terms of alternatives.
At the group exhibitions ECO-FAN and Speculative Evolution in 2024, Tranen focused on genres such as fantasy and science fiction. Today, such former subcultures and low cultures now permeate mass and high culture. Historical worship and views of nature, which revisit fantasy, and speculations about future technology, which characterizes science fiction, have long seemed far removed from reality. They have been dismissed as an escape from reality. Both fantasy and science fiction have been called escapism, and today we can reconsider whether this is rather their strength than their problem. Today, seeking escape routes from the world as we now know it here and now is no longer an escape from reality but a way of facing it. The books here at Tranen Library at Gentofte Main Library have served as other paths into the exhibited art for our reading public. But several books also show paths beyond a shrinking present.
In addition to the exhibition itself, the posters and folders containing various essays have been designed by Alexis Mark, with whom Tranen has collaborated since 2016. Since the first exhibition of extemporary art, Homo Homo by Rasmus Myrup in 2017, the designers have presented upcoming art at Tranen in a digital simulation of the exhibition space. The inspiration has been Henning Larsen's Gentofte Main Library. Here, elements from different periods are mixed so that the architectural space does not seem to belong to a specific time. Similarly, Alexis Mark has thrown press photos of upcoming artists in the program into the space, as if they do not yet belong given they have not yet taken place. The exhibition title, written on the end wall in Alexis Mark's own font AM Public, is inspired by the elongated typography on runways where planes accelerate and take off.
Toke Lykkeberg
Director of Tranen
Special thanks to Emil Busch Madsen, Emilie Juul Thorsteinsson, Sisse Haugland, Anders Kjær Rasmussen, and Mia Olesen.