The Fringe
Christian Vium (Denmark)

The Fringe is a poetic re-framing of visual material from his award-winning project ‘Ville Nomade’, which was awarded the Prix HSBC pour la Photographie in 2016, and published as a monograph by Actes Sud (July 2016). The installation integrates previously unpublished film footage along with archive material, photographs and re-framed material made especially for Proyecta Madrid. The music is composed by Morten Riis and Peter Tinning based on field recordings made by Christian Vium.

The project ‘The Nomadic City’ tells the story of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, through an ethnographic juxtaposition of his photographs, archive images, newspaper clippings, appropriated photo albums, film footage, objects trouvés and a variety of edited written sources such as interviews, letters, diaries, notes, maps, news bulletins, journalistic articles, and anthropological essays.

Since 2010, Christian Vium has been systematically mapping the urban landscape of one of the least known, but fastest growing, capitals of the earth: Nouakchott in The Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

By Juxtaposing a variety of photographic practices and ethnographic methods, the project affords a kaleidoscopic view of urbanization from below – that is from the urban fringes – inviting inhabitants to participate actively in the writing of the history of the city.

Christian Vium is a photographer, filmmaker and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Visual Anthropology at the Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University. Primarily working on long-term projects anchored in participatory observation and in-depth collaboration, his work investigates the intersection between art, documentary, and the social sciences. He works increasingly with installations integrating photography, films and archive material.

Christian Vium is a FOAM Talent 2015, Lensculture Emerging Talent 2015 Grant Winner and is on the Critical Mass 2015 list. In 2016, he received the coveted Prix HSBC pour la Photographie for his long-term project 'Ville Nomade' (The Nomadic City), which was published as a monograph by Actes Sud in July 2016. He is currently working on two new monographs and several upcoming exhibitions.

www.christianvium.com