'Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia?' is a research project that consists of three platforms – an exhibition, a programme of public events and a publication – examining the juncture of the political and the erotic through the work of artists produced predominantly in the context of the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s. Part of OCA's Verksted series, the exhibition and public programme are the result of an extensive research project about the international perception of Scandinavia from the 1950s onwards as a utopic region of socialism and sexual freedom. This project introduces OCA's new premises at Nedre gate 7 in Oslo.

Saturday, 13 December 2008 / 17:00 

Screening: Premiere of Christmas on Earth (1963) 
dir. Barbara Rubin

With the additional presentation of Art (core)
A lecture and film screening curated by
M. M. Serra, Director of The Film-Makers' Cooperative, New York, USA
Screening: films by George Kuchar, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Peggy Ahwesh, Scott-Free, Martha Colburn and M. M. Serra

Saturday, 13 December 2008 / 19:00
Holiday Cheer
Please join joing us to our holiday celebration at Nedre gate 7.
There will be a lavvu, white wine gøgg and light snacks by Marius Notvik.

Wednesday and Friday / 7 and 9 January 2009
Speaker: Peter Osborne
Lectures on the Philosophy of Contemporary Art
Wednesday, 7 January 2009 / 19:00
Subject: Starting Up All Over Again:
Time and Existence in Some Conceptual Art of the 1960s
Friday, 9 January 2009 / 19:00
Subject: An Interminable Avalanche of Categories:
Medium, Concept and Abstraction in the Work of Robert Smithson

OCA provides financial support on a quarterly basis for international projects including Norwegian artists and/or cultural producers. All applications must be sent by post and must be postmarked by 15 February. Applications sent after 15 February will be returned to the respective applicants.

Click here for information on International Support and the application process.

For any questions regarding the application, please contact Jørn Mortensen at OCA at jorn.mortensen@oca.no.

Upcoming Resident 2008/2009: Ane Graff

At the core of Ane Graff's work is the poetics of scientific research. The exhibition Fall Into Matter (2008) at STANDARD, Oslo saw Graff widening her range of medias, adding both sculptures and photographic works to her signature-styled pencil drawings. Despite their formal differences these works shared an interest in the still life as a genre and the scientific principle of verification. Present in Graffs work is a belief in observational evidence, and a commitment to a positivism doubtlessly stating that the world and its phenomenons can be understood through collection, observation and verification. Ane Graff lives and works in Oslo, Norway.

OCA's International Studio Programme Oslo (ISP) is available for international artists and curators by invitation, independently or in connection with research in Norway.

Click here for information on the International Studio Programme Oslo.

Carolee Schneemann Artist, lives and works in New York, USA

Carolee Schneemann is a multidisciplinary artist who has transformed the very definition of art, with work encompassing painting, film, performance and installation. Her works have been shown internationally, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA among others. In 2007, a dual exhibit at CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, USA and MOCCA Toronto, Canada featured recent video installations. Electronic Arts Intermix and Anthology Film Archives, New York collaborated on presentations of newly restored and current film and videos in November 2007.

M. M. Serra Filmaker, Curator and Director of The Film-Makers' Co-operative, New York, USA lives and works in New York

M. M. Serra is a filmmaker, educator, curator and Director of The Film-Makers' Co-operative. Her film Art Parade premiered in 2007 at the Womanizer Film Program at Deitch Projects in Soho, New York, USA. She was featured in Profiles from the Edge in Swoon Magazine in 2007 and her own work, as well as her curated programs, have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of the Moving Image in New York; The Centre Georges Pompidou and the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, France; The London Film Festival, UK; The Sundance Forum, USA and The Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany. In December 2007 she curated New York Experimental Cinema for the Kulczyk Foundation and the Warszawa Kinolab in Poland. In August 2008 she programmed ART (CORE): The Avant Garde and the Cinematic Body at The Pleasure Dome in Toronto, Canada. Serra teaches Media Studies at The New School for Social Research, where she lectures on genre and sexuality in the moving image.

HC Gilje and Marius Engh selected to participate in the 1st Brussels Biennial for Contemporary Art

1st Brussels Biennial for contemporary Art Brussels, Belgium

Curator: Barbara Vanderlinden

19 October 2008 – 4 January 2009

Brussels Biennial 1 is organized under the conceptual umbrella devised by its artistic director, Barbara Vanderlinden, in an attempt to rethink the legacy of modernity in a global context. The biennial incorporates exhibitions curated by eight contemporary art institutions. Within the exhibition curated by L'appartement 22 from Rabat, Morocco, the Norwegian curator Anne Szefer Karlsen has invited HC Gilje to exhibit the public art work Wind up bird. Marius Engh has been invited by Nicolaus Schafhausen andFlorian Waldvogel to exhibit within the Witte de With Contemporary Art Centersection of the biennial. The artist will exhibit Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way, a series of 14 photographs of Teufelsberg – a symbolic mark in Berlin. Among other art institutions participating in the biennial are MuHKA, Antwerp, Belgium; Drik, Images, Communication & Information Technology in Dahka, Bangladesh; and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

For media inquiries, please send an email to press@brusselsbiennial.org. For more information visit the biennial website or send an email to office@brusselsbiennial.org.

This project is also supported by 03–funding*.

Until 26 January 2009, P.S.1/MoMA presents Børre Sæthre's solo exhibition. Curated by Lia Gangitano, P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor, and entitled Børre Sæthre, the exhibition presents the artist's highly aestheticized immersive environment, in which 'anachronistically frozen in space, Sæthre's mythological taxidermy hybrids insinuate elements of surrealism, drawing from an ancient register that collides with futuristic settings'.

Matias Faldbakken and Leif Tangen have been invited by Ruba Katrib, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, USA, to exhibit within The Possibility of an Island at MOCA from 4 December 2008 to 15 March 2009. According to the curator, the exhibition takes as a starting point the recent novel The Possibility of an Island, by Michael Houellebecq to pose existential questions in the face of a never arriving future. For The Possibility of an Island, MOCA commissioned new works from Matias Faldbakken and invited Leif Tangen to take part in the public programme of the exhibition with a talk about the process of writing the novel Phillip. The Possibility of an Island takes place at Goldman Warehouse in Miami. Among other participating artists are Claire Fontaine, Peter Coffinand Cao Fei.

Raimundas Malasauskas, curator at Artists Space in New York, USA has invited Morten Norbye Halvorsen to exhibit withinPaper Exhibition, taking place at the Artists Space from 14 January to 7 March 2009. According to he curator, the exhibition will 'explore a number of modes of artistic and curatorial production dedicated to potential, speculative, imaginary virtual, etc'. Within Paper Exhibition, Morten Norbye Halvorsen will present a sound installation that draws from various sources amongst them Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and the new autobiography of Clifford Irving Phantom Rosebuds. Among the artists exhibiting are Mario García Torres, Mariana Castilo Deball and Loris Greaud.

As part of the artist group Henry VIII's Wives, Rachel Dagnall is currently holding a solo exhibition in a off-site location organized by Whitechapel in London, UK. As part of their ongoing project Tatlin's Tower, Henry VIII's Wives is occupying The Shop on Toynbee Street and transforming it into the foyer of Vladimir Tatlin designed and never build 400ft tower, complete with uniformed staff and a specially designed reception. The group uses the industries and services in the area to commission 'Tatlin' versions of local products that reinterpret the tower within the area, whilst also investigating the origins of local products found in the market.

Åsa Sonjasdottir have been invited by Veronica Wiman and Berin Colonu, Associate Visual Art Curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, to exhibit within The Gatherers: Creating Our Urban Spheres, taking place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, USA, from 31 October 2008 to 11 January 2009. According to the curators, the exhibition 'looks at the diverse array of practitioners and their motivation for greening the urban sphere'. Åsa Sonjasdottir will be exhibiting the long-term project Potato Perspectives, in which the artist uses the potato plant as a starting point for investigations in cultural and socital relations.

Øystein Aasan has been invited by curator Fanny Gonella to exhibit within The Repetition of Sigsat Alte Fabrik in Rapperswil, Switzerland. According to the curator, the exhibition addresses 'the process of how a group becomes visible in our surrounding'. For the exhibition, Øystein Aasan developed a new project based on the campus of Cité Universitaire in Paris, France, where each house is representative of a nation. The Repetition of Sigs takes place from 25 October to 21 December 2008.

Torbjørn Rødland, Goksøyr & Martens (Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens), Bodil Furu and Maia Urstad are exhibiting within Disturbance – Contemporary Art from Scandinavia & South Africa, at Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa. Curated by Maria Fidel Regueros and Clive Kellner, Director of Johannesburg Art Gallery and a guest at OCA's International Visitor Programme, the exhibition examines the relationship that Scandinavian and South African artists have to notions of identity and place. Disturbance takes place at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa between 26 October 2008 and 1 March 2009. The project is supported by 03–funding*.

Karl Ingar Røys is taking part in the 1st Annual International Forum on Contemporary Art at the Art and Cultural Studies Laboratory (ACSL) in Yerevan, Armenia from 1 November to 15 December 2008 under the title Interdiagnosis. During the Forum, the artist presents his earlier work in relation to Armenian contemporary art and will also produce a new video.

Jan Christensen and Josefine Lyche are currently exhibiting within Up Against the Wall, at Zacheta National Gallery of Art Zacheta National Gallery of Art. The exhibition has as it starting point murals that become a pretext for a variety of different interventions on the architectural interior of the Zacheta Gallery. The artists participating in the project have been asked to engage with the space of several of Zacheta's rooms and create installations which annex the architecture in a total way by taking over the building's monumental surfaces. Up Against the Wall is on view until 25 January 2009.

Baltic Art Center in Visby, Sweden calls for applications to the 2009 AIR residency for Nordic artists and art professionals. Artists, curators or contemporary art writers from one of the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greenland or the Faroe Islands) or based in one of these countries are eligible for the residency. Residencies last for a minimum of 4 weeks and a maximum of 8, during the period April–May, or September–November 2009. Please visit balticartcenter.com for further information.

IDENSITAT, an art project that investigates ways to intervene on the public sphere through creative proposals, opens an international call for projects For ID#5, the context is the cities of Calaf and Manresa in Spain. Projects should intervene in the public space and seek for interaction among different social sectors, outlining contemporary strategies for creation, and incorporating specific aspects of the context. Information about material to be submitted along with the proposals is available at: idensitat.net.

LACDA, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, announces its juried competition for digital art and photography. Works sould involve digital processes of some kind and should be submited in three JPEG files of original work. The selected winner recieves 10 prints up to 44 x 60 inches on canvas or museum quality paper to be shown in a solo exhibition in LACDA's main gallery from 8 to 31 January 2009. For more information, please visit lacda.com.

*03–funding: The purpose of the 03-funds, as allocated by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to OCA, is to further develop cooperation and professional networking between OCA and the constituency of artists, independent cultural producers and organizations that are located in designated countries or associated with 03-countries. This includes but is not limited to professional research visits by cultural producers, artists and curators, short-term residencies for cultural producers and artists, and the development of seminars, conferences, art projects, workshops, etc. that focus on the further development of professional exchange and networking between and among countries, project development and pilot projects on an international scale.

You have received this email as you are subscribed to the OCA.no newsletter.
If you wish to be removed please email newsletter-unsubscribe@lists.oca.no or visit http://www.oca.no/newsletter/