Verksted was launched by Office for Contemporary Art Norway in 2003 as a series of publications and seminars focused on current discourses relating to contemporary cultural production, culture and aesthetics. Verksted was expanded in 2006 as part of OCA's programme with a renewed commitment to exploring the relationship between philosophy and aesthetics in the form of interrelated seminars and workshops, in addition to publications. The seminars throughout 2006 concerned issues relating to the politics of space, place and spatialization. For example, they asked why the more critical works of arts and art practices of the past century have been those with rational, even architectonic underpinnings. In addition, the series of publications and seminars exploreed how culture on the whole is seamed with the economic, the political and the social. The publications do so by exploring not only the most recent tendencies in art production but in reviewing how particular points exploring political radicality throughout the Modernist period have been looked at.
In 2006 and 2007, Verksted was organized by Marta Kuzma, Director of OCA, in collaboration with Peter Osborne, at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), London. The CRMEP is a centre for postgraduate study and doctoral research in European philosophy with an emphasis on broad cultural and intellectual contexts and a distinctive sense of social and political engagement. This resulted in publications Art of Welfare #7, ISMS1: Recuperating Political Radicality #8, and ISMS2: Populism and Genre #9, with upcoming issues U: Drawings by Olav Westphalen #10 and Draft Deceit #11.
In 2008, Verksted continues in its production of seminars, publications and projects. This includes a series entitled Kunst and Kapital, the research and exhibition project Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia, and a developing seminar/publication on film as a critical medium.