21 October 2009 to 17 April 2010
Curator: Marta Kuzma, Director, OCA
'The Grammar of Forms' was a series public events, workshops and presentations that took place throughout autumn 2009 and winter 2010 at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, with the aim to look at language, writing, criticism and publishing in relation to contemporary art, exploring its diverse modes of operation and possibilities within historical and contemporary practices. As a complement to this programme of events, OCA hosted a series of projects, including presentation of artworks and libraries of publications, further transforming OCA's public space into a place for production and exchange of discourse. Click here for more information.
Friday, 5 June 2009 / 11:00
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice
As a tribute to the celebrated Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn (1924-2009) known for his design of the Nordic pavilion within the Giardini in Venice, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway organised a panel discussion on Sverre Fehn's practice as an architect during the opening days of the Venice Biennale in 2009. The panel discussion started with an introduction to Fehn's work by Per Olaf Fjeld, the author of the monograph Sverre Fehn: The pattern of Thoughts on the architect's work, followed by a discussion with artist Dan Graham, architect Momoyo Kaijima (Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo), curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, architect Gro Bonesmo (Space Group, Oslo) and architecture theorist Marco De Michelis.
Joan Jonas and Anawana Haloba
Friday, 29 May 2009 / 15:00
Faculty of Design and Arts, IUAV University, Venice
On the occasion of Anawana Haloba and Joan Jonas's participation in 'Fare Mondi//Making
Worlds…', curated by Daniel Birnbaum for the 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale
di Venezia, the two artists met at the Faculty of Arts and Design at the IUAV University
of Venice to discuss their respective artistic practices in relation to video and performance art. The presentation was accompanied
by visual examples of the artists' performances, films and video works, in an effort to discuss a variety of artistic strategies such
as the use of sound and voiceovers, and the exploration of concepts of time and memory.
Read on.
8 to 10 November 2007
@Frogner Cinema, Oslo
This two-day seminar and additional screening programme organised by Marta Kuzma, Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, brought together artists, critics and theorists to discuss 'film as a critical practice' by looking into the political and psychoanalytic dimension of film, including individual presentations by each of the following participants. The seminar was moderated by Marta Kuzma, Pablo Lafuente, Managing Editor of the London based contemporary arts journal Afterall and Peter Osborne, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London, Editor of the journal Radical Philosophy. More.
Scene from the film I Am Curious – Yellow
Directed by Vilgot Sjöman, 1967
Courtesy Sandrew Metronome
The expansive research project developed throughout 2007 and 2008 and addressed the representation of Scandinavia as a sexual utopic territory extolled in the international media in the 1960s and 1970s. The project delved into these representations investigating their mythical status or rightful claims. Links were made to the drafting of sexual reform initiated by the respective woman's movements at the beginning of the 20th century throughout Scandinavia, to the revisionist movements in psychoanalysis throughout the 1930s principally in the practices of Wilhelm Reich and Otto Fenichel, and moreover to the more provocative films produced in the 1960s such as I Am Curious Yellow, I Am Curious Blue. An essay relating to this research, entitled Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia? I am Curious (Yellow), was published at Afterall, issue 17, Spring 2008 and at Verksted issue 9, 2008. Click here for more information.
2007 – Ongoing
In 2007 OCA launched a series of talks and discussions entitled 'Kunst and Kapital' in an effort to examine the increasingly porous sectors of private and public. This series of seminars and talks aims to demystify the contemporary art market while illuminating how the critical community is being steadily streamed into these new initiatives. More.
Saturday, 14 October 2006 / 11:00-19:00
Tate Britain, London
'Populism and Genre' was part of the investigation of the general theme of the ISMS series: the complex and problematic relationships between artistic movements, political movements, and individual works. The question of populism has been at the heart of debates about both the political and the formal aspects of contemporary art in Britain since the mid 1990s. This conference examined the concept of populism via the issue of genre: specifically, the changed status and functioning of genres within contemporary art, after the decline in the independent significance of traditional media (painting and sculpture), and in the context of the increasing individualism of contemporary art. Particular attention was paid to: the status of genres as social forms; art's relations to mass media genres; the strategic use of genre within post-conceptual practice; and the political functioning of genres as carriers of populism. here Read on.
20 and 21 April 2006
Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO)
This first seminar on the subject of 'ISMS: Recuperating Political Radicality 1. Constructing the Political in Contemporary Art' focused on the complex and problematic relationships between artistic movements, political movements, and individual works. Specific focus was placed on current dilemmas facing art production, how it is for a work to function 'critically' today, and how this relates to or in fact, neglects, politics. Click here for more information.
Saturday, 18 February 2006 / 11:00-19:00
Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO)
The seminar addressed issues explored within the exhibition 'Draft Deceit'; the relationship between the artist and society, via the issues of form and aesthetics explored by Conceptual artists in the 1960s. In a series of discussions, the seminar approached the way in which artists such as Dan Graham and Lawrence Weiner view their work in relation to their practice in the 1970s, via the light thrown by the exhibition on the post-conceptual character by contemporary art and through the standpoint of other artists who find these practices relevant to their own. Discussions focused on the use of language as a sculptural device; incompleteness as a project; the investigation of the structural properties of film; and the adoption of architectural tropes as political criticism. Organised by OCA with additional support from AHO and the Architectural Association, Oslo. Click here for more information.
Friday, 27 January 2006 / 10:30–18:00
@The Goethe Institut, London
The artists Michael Elmgreen (b. 1961, Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (b. 1969, Norway) have collaborated since 1995 on the production of powerless structures — sculptural installations that perform institutional critique in relation to sexual and other political identities. 'The Welfare Show', originally produced at Bergen Kunsthall in Norway in 2005, addressed aspects of welfare society, as implemented in the Scandinavian model of a democratic society. This model, engineered and marketed in the 1950s, has steadily deteriorated since the 1970s in response to a globalized economy. 'The Art of Welfare' was a one-day conference, in tandem with the opening of 'The Welfare Show' at the Serpentine Gallery in London, that explored artistic and political aspects of 'The Welfare Show.' Topics included: politics as content and the politics of artistic form; the Scandinavian model of welfare as a socio-spatial form of experience; the current viability of the welfare state and its possible future forms; and institutional critique and relational aesthetics. Click here for more information.