P.E.T. Biographical Tour #1

Delilah Jensen - A biographical guided tour – Århus 1999

The first arrangement by P.E.T. was based on the life and adventures of Delilah Jensen, and took place in and around Århus city in the autumn of 1999.

The tours departed from Mejlgade at one PM on Saturdays and Sundays throughout September, and tickets and information were distributed through Århus City Tourist Office, and through Gallery Rhizom which was hosting the arrangement.

Delilah Jensen was a workingclass-hero, who at an early stage developed a political interest, leading her on to radical and quite unconventional activism. The story of her life, intertwined with that of Århus City, began in the 60’s and was played out against a background consisting of laurettes, shopping-malls, striptease-clubs, sewage treatment works etcetera.

Public Educational Tours is a continuous series of guided bus-tours, and a project about history writing.

Our conception of existence and idetity, as well as our visions for the future are lagely defined by our officially documented history. The information recorded here not only documents past events, but also creates and shapes those to come and is consequently an immensly powerful political tool.

As history writing can never be an objective documentation, it is necessarily selections of events based on the documenting individuals, institutions or nations subjective choise. This, in turn, depends upon factors like political and financial interests along with a specifik (traditionally male Western) point of view in terms of religious conviction, national and cultural background, social and educational status, race, gender etcetera...

From this perspective, the representation of the state of affairs in our history-writing cannot really be said to be less fictitious than any other individually conceived interpretation, presented by anyone, and at any given point in time.

production year
1999

duration of the project
1.9 - 30.9 1999

assistant
Stine Loft Rasmussen

guide
Annika Lundgren

photo documentation
Stine Loft Rasmussen, Annika Lundgren

idea, manuscript and arrangement
Annika Lundgren