OCA ANNOUNCES

THE PARTICIPATION OF CRISPIN GURHOLT
IN THE 11TH HAVANA BIENNIAL, HAVANA, CUBA


Exhibition Dates: 11 May–11 June 2012
Official opening of the exhibition spaces: Friday 11 May, 10:00
bienalhabana.cult.cu

Crispin Gurholt has been invited by curator Jorge Fernández Torres to produce a new installation in relation to an ongoing series of works entitled 'Live Photo' at the 11th Havana Biennial. Organised under the theme of 'Artistic Practices and Social Imaginaries', the biennial will, according to Fernández Torres, 'be developed in international circumstances where the debates regarding the scenarios of contemporary art have been substantially modified and have acquired new meanings for artists as well as for the institutions and the different audiences'. Torres further says that 'it is essential to listen to the noise on the street; we must devise a way to leave the sacred sites of the big museums, gallery circuits or international events to think about the passer-by, he who is left out of the specialised circuits, to work for the site-specific, time-specific and public-specific'. In this context, Gurholt will produce a work within a former theatre building located in the Vedado district in Havana.

For press inquiries and more information on this exhibition, please contact Michele Nunez.

About Crispin Gurholt
Crispin Gurholt (b.1965 in Oslo, Norway, lives and works in Oslo) graduated from the New York University S.C.E. Film School, New York, NY, USA and the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo. His work has been presented at, among others, Art Forum Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Art Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Henie Onstad Art Centre, Oslo; Nordnorsk Art Museum, Tromsø, Norway and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo.

OCA Support
Crispin Gurholt's participation in the 11th Havana Biennial supported by O3–funds as underwritten by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for enhancing collaboration in the contemporary art field with professional artists in countries designated by the MFA.

OCA ANNOUNCES

HANNAH RYGGEN
Edition no. 67 in the notebook series
100 Notes – 100 Thoughts
published by dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz

Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Nedre Gate 7
0551 Oslo, Norway
www.oca.no l info@oca.no

OCA announces the release of the dOCUMENTA (13) notebook, Hannah Ryggen, as authored by OCA’s director Marta Kuzma. Numbered sixty-seven (67) in a series of one hundred notebooks entitled 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, the publication is dedicated to a thought essay around the work, production, and political inclination of the Swedish-Norwegian artist Hannah Ryggen. The notebook includes illustrations of Ryggen’s tapestries, personal notes, a textile dye recipe, letters, and sketches from a workbook belonging to Hannah Jönsson, (Ryggen´s maiden name).

According to the notebook’s author, Ryggen, ‘with a sense of public-mindedness, completed her tapestries around political themes marking a shift away from a general treatment of tapestry as a mere applied art form that conventionally effaced politics to convey with a sense of authenticity, immediacy, and contingency, the unfolding of a precarious socio-political landscape of her time’.

Hannah Ryggen was born in Malmø, Sweden in 1894, but lived most of her life on a small farm in Ørland, Norway, and was married to the Norwegian painter Hans Ryggen. Educated as a teacher, Ryggen studied painting under the Danish painter Fredrik Krebs. A self-taught weaver, she had a solo exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm during 1962 and exhibited in the Venice Biennale in 1964. She died in Trondheim in 1970.

This notebook was made possible with the additional editorial support of Tonja Boos, OCA’s research and programme coordinator. Lenders of images and materials for the notebook include: National Museum of Decorative Arts, Trondheim; The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo; The Hannah Ryggen Archive at the National Museum of Decorative Arts, Trondheim; Hannah Ryggen Archive at Special Collection, NTNU University Library, Trondheim; Hannah Ryggen Archive at Yrjar Heimbygdslag, Ørland.


Hannah Ryggen
Introduction by Marta Kuzma, texts by Hannah Ryggen
Series: dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken No. 067
German/English
2012. 48 pp., 27 ills.
ISBN 978-3-7757-2916-1
Available in printed and e-book editions from Hatje Cantz

About the 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts notebooks series
As a prelude to the 2012 exhibition, dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz are publishing a series of notebooks, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, that is comprised of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations, and conversations.
A note is a trace, a word, a drawing that all of a sudden becomes part of thinking, and is transformed into an idea. This publication project follows that path, presenting the mind in a prologue state, in a pre-public arena. A space for intimacy and not yet of criticism, dOCUMENTA (13) is publishing the unpublishable, the voice—and the reader is our alibi and ally. Note taking encompasses witnessing, drawing, writing, and diagrammatic thinking; it is speculative, manifests a preliminary moment, a passage, and acts as a memory aid. 
With contributions by authors from a range of disciplines, such as art, science, philosophy and psychology, anthropology, economic- and political theory, language- and literature studies, as well as poetry, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts constitutes a space of dOCUMENTA (13) to explore how thinking emerges and lies at the heart of re-imagining the world. In its cumulative nature, this publication project is a continuous articulation of the emphasis of dOCUMENTA (13) on the propositional, underlining the flexible mental moves to generate space for the possible. Thoughts, unlike statements, are always variations: this is the spirit in which these notebooks are proposed. 
The notebooks, designed by Leftloft, have been published from March 2011 in three different formats, 16 to 48 pages, in English and German.

Commissioned by dOCUMENTA (13)’s Artistic Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev together with Agent, Member of Core Group, and Head of Department Chus Martínez, this series is edited by Head of Publications, Bettina Funcke. Among the authors to date include: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Matias Faldbakken, Kenneth Goldsmith, Erkki Kurenniemi, Christoph Menke, Thomas Mann & Theodor W. Adorno, Griselda Pollack,  Suely Roelnik, Ian Wallace, among others. 

OCA ANNOUNCES
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

INTERNATIONAL RESIDENCIES
Berlin Mitte, Berlin, Germany
18th Street Art Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Deadline: 1 May 2012

www.oca.no

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
OCA is currently accepting applications for the Second Quarter Application Review for International Support. Forms are due by 1 May 2012. Applications are accepted from Norwegian artists, international artists residing in Norway and non-profit entities. Priority is given to exhibitions taking place in key international art institutions and project spaces. Support is also extended to solo exhibitions and group exhibitions initiated by international curators as well as to Norwegian art professionals organising exhibitions and projects abroad. The applications will be assessed by an International Jury appointed by OCA.

The objective for support is to foster the professional consideration and exhibition of Norwegian art abroad, innovative artistic production, and a creative process of dialogue and collaboration within the spectrum of contemporary cultural practice. OCA's International Support Programme aims to enable international institutions and international curators to work more comprehensively and thoroughly with individual artists, art groups and professionals to convey the critical initiatives behind their production.

INTERNATIONAL RESIDENCIES
OCA provides International Residencies for Norwegian artists, curators and critics in a number of international venues. The upcoming 1 May 2012 deadline applies to Berlin Mitte, Berlin, Germany and 18th Street Art Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA. The applications will be assessed by an International Jury appointed by OCA.

Berlin Mitte
OCA offers four residencies for curators, critics and artists in Berlin during autumn 2012 and spring 2013, from September 2012 until the end of April 2013 for 2 months each. Applicants must be Norwegian citizens, or live and work in Norway. The residency period will be allocated in discussion with the selected candidates following the jury's selection. Curators and critics are especially encouraged to apply, and their applications will be given priority. Please notice that the residency is not available for BA or MA students.

18th Street Art Center
In 2012 OCA offers a studio residency for a Norwegian artist at the International Artists in Residency programme at 18th Street Art Center in the Santa Monica neighbourhood of Los Angeles, CA, USA. A live/work studio within the 18th Street Art Center complex is provided for a period of 3 months, from 1 October 2012 to 31 December 2012. Only Norwegian citizens are eligible for this fellowship. Please note that the programme is not open to BA or MA students. The residency is optimal for artists seeking time and space in order to pursue specific studio-based project work. Residents are encouraged to participate in open studio events and other activities within the broader programme of the centre.

For questions regarding applications for International Support, please contact Anne Charlotte Hauen. For international institutional applications, biennials and residencies, please address your questions to Paul Brewer.

OCA ANNOUNCES

‘MIDSUMMER: «BACK TO NATURE»’
BY ELISE STORSVEEN AND ELINE MUGAAS
AS PART OF ‘HUMAN VALLEY’ AT KUNSTHALLE ZÜRICH, SWITZERLAND

CURATED BY DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER AND TRISTAN BERA

Exhibition Dates: 21 April–17 June 2012
Press Preview: Thursday 19 April, 16:00
Opening Reception: Friday 20 April, 18:00-–21:00

kunsthallezurich.ch

'Midsummer: «Back to Nature»' is the fifth and final chapter of ‘Human Valley’, a one-year project by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera for Kunsthalle Zürich at the Museum Bärengasse, Zürich, Switzerland. ‘Human Valley’ is presented by the two curators as a ‘one-year project for hybrid presentations of borderline topics in an area comprising three rooms inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's film Une Femme Mariée (1964), with first an entrance resembling a provincial cineclub, then a bedroom for two with books on bookshelves, and also a projection room’. Une Femme Mariée is built up by a collection of fragments, an idea that Elise Storsveen and Eline Mugaas continue in their project. The artists are playing with their ongoing zine series ALBUM#'s favorite topics like nudity and the universe, desire, melancholy, motherhood and lonely men. According to the artists, 'Midsummer: «Back to Nature»' 'looks to the notion of nature, as seen through images found in books from discarded archives'. The artists further say that 'the books have left their alphabetical order and are reorganised in small groups, based on visual clues. Turned inside out and without their explanatory texts, photographs of things that occurred some time ago take on a new presence as they start communicating with each other. Research has been conducted to see if there is a possibility for a return to the wild'.

For press inquiries and more information on this announcement, please contact Ursina Merkt, Marketing and Communication Responsible, Kunsthalle Zürich.

About the artists
Elise Storsveen (b.1969 in Oslo, Norway, lives and works in Oslo) graduated from the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry and the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts (Now Oslo National Academy of the Arts). Recent solo exhibitions include 'Fyktelige angrep i ly av', Gallery Trafo, Asker, Norway (2009); 'A week of Kindness' (with Are Myklebost), 0047, Oslo (2008) and 'It's All In Your Mind', Galleri Bouhlou, Bergen (2006). Group exhibitions include  'Take Me To Your Leader', The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2010); 'Rock Paper Scissors', Galerie Susan Nielsen, Paris, France (2009); 'Cut-ups', Centrum för fotografi, Stockholm, Sweden (2009) and 'Cons and Idols', Kistefoss Museet, Kistefoss, Norway (2008). Together with Eline Mugaas she is publishing the zine ALBUM#. Until 14 May 2012 ALBUM# 1-5 is presented at the Library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA, as part of the exhibition ‘Millenium Magazines’.

Eline Mugaas (b.1969 in Oslo, Norway, lives and works in Oslo) is a graduate from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY, USA. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Face of young man half in shadow’ Galleri Riis, Oslo (2010); ‘Skin flick’, Galleri Riis (2008) and 'Some Cities', Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2007). She has participated in exhibitions such as 'Cities ReImagined', MoCAV, Novi Sad, Serbia (2010); 'Fake Snow', Galleri Riis, Oslo (2008); 'Recent History of Norwegian Photography', Stenersen Museet, Oslo (2007); 'Syntetische Natur', Kunstraum D-21 Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany (2007) and ‘Likheter & Forskjeller / Similarities & Differences, New Norwegian Photography’, Preus Museum, Horten, Norway (2005). Together with Elise Storsveen she is publishing the Zine ALBUM#. Until 14 May 2012 ALBUM# 1-5 is presented at the Library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA, as part of the exhibition ‘Millenium Magazines’.

OCA Support
The participation of Elise Storsveen and Eline Mugaas in ‘Human Valley’ is supported by OCA's International Support Programme.