Anne Mie Bak Andersen

Fine Art Photography2 year

Glasgow School of Art

My name is Anne Mie Bak Andersen. I was born and raised in Nykøbing Mors, Denmark, in 1988. I lived in Copenhagen for some years where I studied at Vera School for Art & Design in the fall of 2011. And at Københavns Film & Fotoskole in 2012. Now I am in year 2 in Fine Art Photography in GSA.

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I am very interested in the residency/masterclass at the Independent Air in Silkeborg this summer as it (of course) will ex-pand and add new aspects to my art practice. I didn’t get accepted into exchange for next year so I will have a great amount of energy stocked up that I can bring. And with a long summer-break from the school, this opportunity would come in per-fect place and time where a lot of ideas and energy need to be confronted and developed, and it is a good time to reflect on on-going projects I am sure that the opportunity and experience can shed some new lights and methods on my practice, as I think that we learn mostly by interacting and networking in our artistic progression.The residency/masterclass will not only broaden my knowledge about art and photography, but will also help in developing my practice into new levels. By meeting other people from different places; both geographically, in life and in photography, will make a great dynamic which I will enjoy being a part of. Also I think it’s the perfect mix of guest artists, as they can all teach me something different that I very much can use in my practice.

My main focus in my art practice is on our responsibility of sustainability: environmental sustainability is something I value and fight for, both in my photography, in my live, and when being involved in GSA-Sustainability. And since The Independent Air also values all of this, it would be a perfect fit.

I want our globe to stay organic, and not turn into a plastic planet. I want to combat the naivety of the glitter generation, in this world of instant gratification.I don’t want to point fingers and tell people how to live their lives, but I want to make us all more critically aware and develop more empathy towards each other and the world. I hope that people will listen and look, and thereby realize and understand by themselves, that a lot of things really need to change. And I think that The Independent Air residency/masterclass can help me on my journey to achieve this.

Project Descriptions:

Instant Gratification, Analogue Photography, October/November 2014With all theses quick, certainly helpful changes happening in technology and the way of interacting and consuming, we are giving a lot of new opportunities, but there might be some consequences around sustainability and the environment. The struggle I often encounter is how to get people to think differently about their everyday life regarding recycling, the world, and themselves and their future in this world. How can I raise their awareness to these topics without forcing them? We buy and buy, consume and consume, party and live our everyday life. We have to think about the consequences in our behaviour, and at the same time continue living our lives with what makes us happy. This project is about the instant gratification in the modern culture. It’s the backside of all the parties, where we dress both us self and our surroundings. It is about the trash left behind that would maybe eventually all end up in the landfill. It is also a related to the phrase “not all that glitters is gold”. So the subject matter behind it, is the hangovers after a party, both mentally and physical.’

Glitter Generation, Analogue Photography, November/December 2014Is an expansion from Instant Gratification, with the same subject matter, but can be seen with other aspect and viewpoints as well, as I was trying to collaborate some of my snapshots with my lighting studio photographs. Two very different ways of photographing, but two ways I think should be combined more often, to try and expand how we look at photographs and series and sequences.

Further on these two projects I am now working on trying to create landscapes with different leftover plastic materials. It’s a bit of a conflicting project, since I am trying to create landscapes that can appear like real nature, but is made from plas-tic. The world might end up containing so much plastic that the plastic will turn into actual landscapes (if this is not actually already happening). The conflict here is that I am creating landscapes that look pretty, but actually would be a terrible for the world, especially if nature as we know it cannot concur or incorporate the plastic. I will then connect the landscapes with weird plastic things around us, such as “plastic people”, and plastic equipment of different kinds, to try to make people think about how much plastic we actually use, and don’t reuse in our everyday life.

From the series Instant Gratification

From the series Instant Gratification

From the series Instant Gratification

From the series Instant Gratification

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

From the series Glitter Generation

Studio wall examples