Birgitte Anderberg is a curator and researcher of contemporary art at Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark. She is currently working on a large retrospective exhibition of Bjørn Nørgaard's work, and completing a PhD on Danish art from the 1960s and 70s from the perspective of gender. Among her recent publications are Efter revolutionen (Kvinden & Samfundet, no.2, 2008), Søren Martinsen. Country Song. X-rummet (Statens Museum for Kunst, 2007), Passager i Lene Adler Petersens kunst fra 1960erne til i dag (Billedkunst, 14, no.1, May 2006), Et romantisk fantasme. Per Kirkebys Et romantisk billede (1965) i et kønsperspektiv (SMK Journal, 2005) and Kønnets poetik og politik. Konceptualiseringen af det kvindelige i Lene Adler Petersens Udklip på papir med kvindetegnet (SMK Journal, 2003-04).
Knut Ove Arntzen is an associate professor in theatre studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He worked as a theatre critic in Oslo from 1976 to 1986, and has published many essays in Norwegian and international periodicals. He has participated in symposia and conferences on theatre and cultural studies, and he has been a visiting professor at universities in Antwerp, Frankfurt am Main and Kaunas, among other places. He was an advisor to the festival Les 20 Jours du Théâte à Risque in Montréal and an international research advisor to the Bergen International Theatre.
Thomas Bayrle,
Tassentassen, 1969
Thomas Bayrle is an artist who originally trained as a weaver and currently works with drawings, collages, film and computer graphics. Bayrle focuses on the notion of the mass in his drawings, photocopy collages and film animation sequences, which he has been producing since the 1960s, as well as the generation of superstructures through geometric patterns of images with a variety of techniques and materials. Through this, his work reveals contradictions within the forms of organisation upon which society is based. Bayrle taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, Stadelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, from 1975 to 2002. He has received several awards and prizes, including the Prix Arts Electronica, Linz (1995) and the Cologne Art Prize (2000). Bayrle's work has been shown in over thirty solo exhibitions internationally, as well as in documentas III and VI (Kassel, Germany).
Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk trained as an artist at the Art Academy in Bergen and Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and has been the head of the independent art space Galleri Otto Plonk in Bergen, Norway, the Exhibition Coordinator for NIFCA (Nordic Institute of Contemporary Art) in Helsinki, Finland, and the managing director of Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Norway. Eeg-Tverbakk also ran the international site-specific art project 'Artistic Interruptions in Nordland', Norway. He has curated many exhibitions, among them the Nordic Biennale Momentum 04 (together with Caroline Corbetta). He is currently working as a research fellow at Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo.
Rune Gade has a PhD in Art History and is Associate Professor at the department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen. His areas of research include photography, pornography, gender studies, feminism, museology and contemporary art. Gade has published several books in Danish and co-edited two anthologies in English: Performative Realism: Interdisciplinary Studies in Art and Media (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005) and Symbolic Imprints: Essays on Photography and Visual Culture (Aarhus University Press, 1999).
Dan Graham
Continuous Past(s), 1974
Sketch
Since the mid-1960s, Dan Graham has produced an important body of art and theory that engages in a highly analytical discourse on the historical, social and ideological functions of contemporary cultural systems. Architecture, popular music, video and television are among the focuses of his investigations, which are translated into essays, performances, installations, videotapes and architectural/sculptural designs. Graham has published numerous critical essays, and is the author of Video-Architecture-Television (The Press of Nova Scotia College of Art & Design and New York University Press, 1979). His work is in the collections of major institutions in the USA and Europe, including Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; and Tate, London, UK. He has had retrospective exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK; The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, USA and Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. Graham's work has also been shown at international institutions and exhibitions such documenta VII, Kassel, Germany; P.S.1., New York; the American Film Institute National Video Festival, Los Angeles; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.
Kirsten Justesen is an artist based in Copenhagen whose activities comprise a wide range of genres, from body art and performance to sculpture and installation. Justesen was part of the Danish avant-garde scene of the 1960s, where she became a pioneering figure within the three-dimensional modes of art that incorporate the artist's own body as material. These experiments led her in the direction of so-called feminist art, which challenged traditional value systems during the 1970s. Her later works constitute broader investigations of the relationships between body, space and language.
Morten Krohg is a Norwegian artist who since the 1960s has demonstrated a radical political awareness through his art. Krogh was part of the Norwegian 1960s avant-garde scene, and became an important figure in the radical leftist movements of the 1970s as a member of the artists' collective Gras (1970-74). His work encompasses photography, installation and painting. In addition to his own artistic practice, Krohg has been vital to the development of Norwegian art institutions; he served twice as Director of Vestlandets Kunstakademi in Bergen, Norway (1973-79 and 1986-91) and since 1997 has been a professor at the Department of Aesthetics at Høgskolen i Oslo, Norway.
Wencke Mühleisen is the director of the unit for Gender Studies at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Her research falls into two broad areas: feminist theory (particularly queer and sexual theory) and the analysis of the performativity of changing relations of gender, sexuality, intimacy and sociability in public cultures. Her latest book is The Meaning of Sex: A Selection of Artistic, Popular and Scientific Explorations (ed. Wencke Mühleisen and Cristel Sverre, Pax Forlag, 2008).
Anne Hilde Neset is the deputy editor of The Wire magazine and the co-founder (with Lina Dzuverovic) of Electra, a London-based contemporary art agency. She has commissioned, curated and produced a number of projects, including the 'Enter' series of permanent sound installations (Stavanger, Norway, 2008), 'Her Noise' (South London Gallery, London, UK, 2005) and the film/performance commission Perfect Partner by Kim Gordon, Tony Oursler and Phil Morrison (Barbican Centre, London, UK, 2005 and international tour), as well as the The Sounds Of Christmas installation and performance project by Christian Marclay (Tate Modern, London, UK, 2005) and the group exhibition ‘Invisible London' (MACBA, Barcelona, Spain, 2001). She has worked with artist Daria Martin as a music consultant developing soundtracks by Zeena Parkins and Maja Ratkje, participated in the curatorial committee for sound at London's Serpentine Gallery and devised and taught at the lecture series Sound and the 20th Century Avant-Garde at Tate Modern (2004).
Gunvor Nelson
My Name Is Oona, 1969
Gunvor Nelson has worked as an experimental filmmaker since the 1960s. Some of her most widely known works were created while she lived in the Bay Area, California, USA in the mid-1960s and early 70s, where she took part in the avant-garde film circles. Among her films are My Name Is Oona (1969), Moon's Pool (1973), Frame Line (1984) and Field Study #2 (1988).
Elsebet Rahlff is visual artist based in Bergen, Norway, who works with geographical and cultural identities. Born in Denmark, she completed her art education in Copenhagen and Paris, and specialised in textile and graphic art. During the 1960s and 70s Rahlff played a major role in the presentation of new art forms in Norway, such as happenings and installation work. During the same time she participated in the activities of Gruppe 66, Konkret Analyse and Samliv in Bergen Kunstforening. She has also lectured as an associate professor at the State School for Art and Design in Bergen.
Gertrud Sandqvist is a professor in the theory and history of ideas of visual art at Lund University, Sweden. She was previously Dean at Malmö Art Academy, Lund University and the dean of the College of Photography and Film, Gothenburg University, Sweden. She is a board member of the National Foundation for Swedish Culture of the Future since 2003. She is the chair of the steering committee of KUNO, the network organisation of all Nordic Art Academies, a member of the International board of Maumaus – Escola des Artes Visuales, Lisbon, Portugal and a member of the curriculum committee of the International Academy of Art in Palestine. Sandqvist is one of the founding members of EARN, European Art Research Network. In 2001 she received the Lund University award for eminent pedagogical merits. Sandqvist also writes extensively on mainly Nordic and European contemporary art.
Barbara T. Smith
Field Piece, 1968-72
For three decades, Barbara T. Smith has been at the forefront of feminist, body and performance art in California, USA. Trained as a painter, Smith began her body-oriented work in 1965. As one of the originators of the West Coast performance art scene, Smith worked together with artists such as Nancy Buchanan, Chris Burden, Allan Kaprow, Suzanne Lacy and Paul McCarthy. Her work is aligned with 1970s art practice that explores, among other things, the body and the patriarchal structures within the art world. Her work externalises psychic materials, in the form of mythic rituals that deal with issues of gender, spirituality and sexuality. Smith approaches the intimate, personal and participatory, and often the works evolves into extending over several days.
Hito Steyerl is an author and filmmaker, based in Berlin, Germany. She studied cinematography and documentary filmmaking at Academy of Visual Arts, Tokyo, Japan and the Munich Academy of Television and Film, Germany. She has published filmic and written essays centred around questions of globalisation, urbanism, racism and nationalism. Steyerl is currently guest professor at University of Arts Berlin, Germany. Her work has been included in numerous international exhibitions, including Manifesta 5 (San Sebastián, Spain) and documenta 12 (Kassel, Germany).