Jacobus North (Germany)

//BIO

Jacobus North is an artist and musician based in Berlin, Germany. He tries to deal with altered states of cultural and investigation of collective identity issues, with recurring themes around superimposed injustices, a conflicted subculture, aspects of light and human incongruity in nature. His installations can be composed out of documents, photos, and referential works of other artists, often addressing issues of disparate histories with sarcastic humour. Evolving from an activist background, and being a former member of the German Punk Band Feine Sahne Fischfilet, he continues his search for new narratives and social practices reflecting them in a deeper relation to material processing. He works across a range of disciplines focusing on sculpture, photography and sound. Having received multiple degrees from Free University Berlin and HFBK Hamburg, with a focus on on architecture of the GDR and trained by Michaela Melían and Thomas Demand.

// PROJECT

In his residency project, he will illustrate the empty billboards of Narva. This visual essay will be developed during his stay and will be based on interwoven narratives of troubled identities of borderlands, and emotional patterns of neglect manifested in time. In a participatory approach with the inhabitants of Narva, he will try to find those images and interfere with their sense of time. To shape images that will resonate among the audience of Narva, he will organize an open discussion. Trying to develop a format that will help to discuss the historical, theoretical and artistical implications of public artworks in Narva.

​​This series of billboards will form a road trip around Narva. He will be reusing a medium of advertisement that he would love to become a reflective canvas. Have the rectangular metal bars of the empty billboards been framing the surrounding landscape? This new format of public art could also be opened to other artists regularly. It has the potential to become an ongoing public open gallery with a relatively high range but a low footprint.