Lister

By Esben Bjerre Hansen
Translated by Sara Marie Atkinson

After the tent is pitched and the first beer washed down, it is probably only the very few who go in search of a shovel and somewhere to dig. However, performance artist Uwe Max Jensen’s contribution to this year’s Roskilde Festival is just that. A hole in the ground.

30 tonnes of soil

At 14.30 on the first festival Sunday the first sod was cut in the 4 x 4 metre hole. The plan is to move all soil from the hole to somewhere else on the festival site, where it will form a mountain to sit on and relax.

Uwe Max Jensen will try to include the audience with his work of art.

”Art is normally something you look at, but people should be involved,” he says.

His intentions with the work of art centre around the opposition between the elevated and the low.

”A hole in the ground is nothing, whereas a mountain is the elevated. One creates the elevated from the lowest.”

Something other than pee and poo

Although the artist is probably best known for his more provocative pieces, it is important for Uwe Max Jensen that people realise that he can do more than just pee on an end wall. And as he stands here watching his work of art materialising before him, there is not much of a provo-artist about him.

The first digger of the day is also indifferent to this. He has been given the honour of cutting the first sod. But quickly a Norwegian notices the installation. He jumps over the fence straight away and grabs a spade. After five shovelfuls he drops it, breathless, and sits down with his beer. Uwe Max Jensen watches satisfied from the sideline.

”Drop it in the gravel pit!”

However, not all the festival-goers are keen on the idea of even more holes in the festival site. On the festival’s home page several suggest dropping the soil in the gravel pit instead.

“Then we can move it quietly during the week,” one user writes. And the artist agrees with them, partially. It is more than 10 years since he last visited the festival, and as he says:

“Had I known that there was such a large gravel pit here, then I might not have chosen the hole.”