Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard (1979) works within an interdisciplinary artistic praxis, spanning from composition and sound art to performance, conceptual and visual art.

He considers his work to be a basic research in realities and is interested in how bubble-like systems unfold themselves as human conditions.

The meetings between individual bodies and different bubble-like systems are key drivers in Løkkegaards praxis and he's interested in how to escape these bubbles, and if not escape them, then how they can be warped, wrestled and renegotiated.

Løkkegaard is particularly interested in the notion of instrumentalization and what instruments can mean and what they can control and do. Hence he often works with music instruments not only as sources of sound but also as cultural markers embedded within different systems and hierarchies. This being a driver in Løkkegaards work has led into compositions of music that can be performed by people with or without any previous musical knowledge or training - all revolving around the focus on how to soften positions, and how to create a safe environment for performing music, and dissolve shame or trauma.

The work of NLL has been presented at a variety of different venues and museums such as MoMA (NY - as a part of the René Magritte exhibition The Mystery of the Ordinary), York Art Gallery, Imaginary West Indies (Overgaden Copenhagen), ISCM (Vancouver), Radiophrenia (Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts), CPH:DOX (Copenhagen), Roskilde Festival (DK), Harpa (Reykjavik), G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival (Copenhagen), Nordic Music Days (Norway), Akusmata (SF, 2020) and his works has been released on labels such as Topos (DK), Archive Officielle (CA) and Important Records (US). NLL is associate professor at RMC in Copenhagen, and has given lectures at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), The Royal Danish Academy of Music, Artistic Research Forum (N), Goldsmiths University of London a.o.p. NLL has  been awarded by  the Danish Art Foundation, Danish Music Award (DMA), The Sonning Foundation,  Prix Ars Electronica - Honorary Mention and has twice received the Danish Ministry of Culture’s stipend for artistic research.

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard was educated from the RMC in Copenhagen and the School of Architecture at The Royal Danish Academy of Art.

More info: nielslyhne.com