SixtyEight

About

SixtyEight is a non-profit, independent arts organisation based in Copenhagen, focused on long-term research projects, exhibition-making, educational initiatives and publishing in various forms. We collaborate with artist-run initiatives, larger-scale institutions and universities alike.

SixtyEight works with discursive, research-based projects that involve artists, curators, academics and scientists, and with the potential of art as a practical, pedagogical tool for young people through collaborative educational and learning initiatives.

SixtyEight engages with the question of how both artistic practice and theoretical discourse can foster reflective and pluralistic modes of thought as our societies face an uncertain future. For this reason, SixtyEight has also always been a free space for the free speech of the artists and curators we work with.

Team

Christopher Sand-Iversen
Curator, Editor
csi(a)sixtyeight.dk

Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller
Curator
rebekka(a)sixtyeight.dk

Sara Rossling
Curator-at-Large, Malmö

History

SixtyEight was established by Christopher Sand-Iversen and Iben Bach Elmstrøm and opened in May 2011 as 68 Square Metres Art Space in a disused paint factory from the 1940s. We created an exhibition space in an old laboratory within the existing industrial structure, which was part of a dynamic group of artists, musicians, designers, event organisers, and urban gardeners known as PB43. Together we brought a new set of possibilities and cultural activities to the area. We were at the same time part of a migration of independent exhibition spaces and commercial galleries to the East Amager quarter of Copenhagen, and took the opportunity to initiate and organise a coordination of the galleries and cultural activities in the neighbourhood through a concept called First Fridays.

From the autumn of 2015 to the autumn of 2022 artist Hugo Hopping was part of the team, during which time we re-organised as SixtyEight Art Institute with Iben Bach Elmstrøm as our first official director, and focused on knowledge-intensive exhibitions shaped by artistic and curatorial research, representing Nordic, European and international artists and curators alike. In 2021 anthropologist Inanna Riccardi joined the team after being involved in a number of outreach and learning projects, and led our Erasmus+ project as well as curating two exhibitions before leaving in the summer of 2025. Curator Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller joined the team in the spring of 2022, after having curated a larger research project, public programme and symposium. In autumn 2024, Sara Rossling joined the team remotely after an extended period of close collaboration on the long-term research project Within and Beyond - Embodied Planetary Cycles.

In 2017 RSS Press was launched to publish the research material generated by artists and curators, as well as commission new work by artists and theorists working in contemporary art and related fields of literature and theory. Today, the press also collaborates on various artistic, theoretical and educational publication projects with Leeds Arts University and the IT University of Copenhagen, among others.

Also beginning 2017, we offered an intensive curatorial programme to curators and artists called The Curatorial Thing, which so far has been held 5 times. Here artists, curators, and academics met for approximately 7-10 days and attended public lectures and closed workshops with leading cultural, scientific, and artistic professionals invited by SixtyEight Art Institute.

In the spring of 2023, 12 years after opening in its first exhibition space, SixtyEight moved out of its exhibition space to an office space at Stevnsgade 11, in order to shift focus from exhibition programmes to longer-term artistic research projects and new forms of collaboration, which encompass workshops, residencies, and on-site research and publishing. For this reason, SixtyEight also launched the online journal future/tense to showcase the ongoing projects, publish research of various kinds, and delve into our extensive archives to take a fresh look at older projects and what they might have to say today.

Support

Awards

In October 2018, SixtyEight was awarded BKF-Prisen, the Danish Union of Artists’ prize for best independent space of the year. The motivation for the award included that SixtyEight’s “ambition and international focus are unparalleled in Denmark, even among the state-funded institutions”.

At the end of 2019 SixtyEight received a prize from the Danish Arts Foundation “towards continued work”, the Foundation stating that “SixtyEight has filled a gap in the market, and it is difficult to see how we could do without the institute”.