The Office for Contemporary Art Norway provides financial support on a quarterly basis for international projects including Norwegian artists and/or cultural producers. This includes extending support to group or single artist exhibitions initiated by international institutions and international curators. International artists who have permanent residence in Norway may also apply for support. The objective is to foster innovative artistic production, expression and the creative process by encouraging and supporting projects that support, exhibit and interpret a broad spectrum of contemporary artistic practices.

Click here for information on the application process

In 2007/2008 Office for Contemporary Art Norway offers two different studio grants for a Norwegian artist and a Norwegian curator at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City. The artist/curator will be selected by the host institution, ISCP NYC, in collaboration with Office for Contemporary Art Norway Jury.

Application deadline 15 February 2007

In 2007/2008 Office for Contemporary Art Norway offers a studio grant for a Norwegian artist at the International Studio Program Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. The artist will be selected by the host institution, Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, in collaboration with Office for Contemporary Art Norway Jury 2007.

Application deadline 15 February 2007

The Nordic Pavilion exhibition in 2007, under the title Welfare — Fare Well, is curated byRenè Block, the director of Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel (1998–2006) and internationally acclaimed artistic director of several international exhibitions and biennials. The exhibition will include projects by Adel Abidin (Finland), Jacob Dahlgren (Sweden), Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens (Norway), Sirous Namazi(Sweden), and Maaria Wirkkala (Finland). A large scale outdoor project by Lars Ramberg (Norway) is still under negotiation.

Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens discuss their participation in Venice with Therese Veier.

Further information on the biennial.

The OCA Semesterplan for winter/spring 2007 is announced.

The International Studio Programme Oslo is available for international artists and curators by invitation for a stay from two weeks up to six months, independently or in connection with research in Norway. The programme comprises four studios located in the city centre of Oslo.

Rosalind Nashashibi
Artist
Born in Croydon, England
Lives and works in London, England

Read more

Francesco Manacorda
Curator
Born 1965 in Naples, Italy, lives and works in London

Marko Lulic
Artist
Born 1972 in Vienna, Austria

Thomas Bayrle
Artist
Born 1937 in Berlin, Germany, lives and works in Frankfurt

Read more

In Spring 2005, OCA launched an experimental off-sites residency programme whereby the institution invited an international artist, otherwise not able to participate in the ISP programme in Oslo, to enter into research or render a project in a country designated as part of the 03-funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Norway. In August 2006, this included the artist and Turner Prize nominee Phil Collins who traveled to Turkana and realized a performance within the context of the OCA's Fall Semesterplan and a follow-up project within Momentum 2006.

In December 2006, at the initiative of OCA, Corey McCorkle traveled to India to research Le Corbusier's Chandigarh to realize the film project, Tower of Shadows.

McCorkle's film aims to capture Tower of Shadows as a cairn (to be animated at the lowest pitch of light on the shortest day of the year). Much like any Bronze Age mystery of assembled stones, perhaps capturing within Le Corbusier's tower itself (his final meditation on the "Radiant City") the light of his perforated monolithic vision. A time-lapse film capturing the entire movement of the sun through this structure and supporting material will be produced.

The film resulting from McCorkle's trip to Chandigarh will be screened in [OCA, NYC] and Oslo in late April 2007.

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway runs an International Visitor Program to support international curators and cultural producers in their research in Norway for upcoming exhibitions and projects.

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
Chief Curator, Castello di Rivoli Museum Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy

Beatrix Ruf
Director and Curator, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland

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Clive Kellner
Director, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

Renske Janssen
Curator, Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

25 Broadway
New York, 10004
NY, USA

[OCA, NYC] is an experimental platform launched by The Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo in an aim to initiate projects, host seminars, talks, and screenings with an effort to draw from the resources and network already available in New York City. In supplement to the existing residencies overseen by OCA in Manhattan, [OCA, NYC] attempts to provide a less formal context for exchange and presentation with shorter term networking and research possibilities for Norwegian professionals while also initiating OCA programming, discursive panels and platforms of discussion.

Click here for March programme.

Bodil Furu, Anders Eiebakke, and Talleiv Taro Manum, are among artists selected to participate in Don't Worry — Be Curious!: The 4^th Ars Baltica Triennial as curated by Dorothee Bienert, Kati Kivinen, and Enrico Lunghi. The exhibition which "addresses the problems and fears resulting from upheavals in present day society" is launched at the Stadtgalerie Kiel in Germany on 30 March and continues thereafter with venues at KUMU — Estonian Art Museum in Talinn, and the Pori Art Museum in Pori, Finland.

Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl has been invited to participate in the 8^th Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates from 4 April–4 June. The Sharjah Biennial curated by Jack Persekian will present various attempts in visual art and film that "address the growing social, political, and environmental challenges the world is facings due to excessive urban development, pollution, political ambitions, and thoughtless misuse, abuse and exhaustion of our natural resources".

Dreamlands Burn opened at the Mücsarnok in Budapest on 7 December. The curator, Lívia Páldi, selected works by Vibeke Tandberg, Torbjørn Rødland, Maia Urstad, and Jana Winderen to be included in the exhibition. An thematic film programme running in association with the exhibition features the works of Andrea Lange and Bodil Furu. The project which is scheduled to run through 25 February, 2007 proposes a crossover of the contemporary art scenes in the Nordic countries, with an investigation of identity through the very personal. Among the works of over 50 artists, Páldi "attempts to offer a contemporary reading of the complex artistic reality of Northern Europe with the help of various concepts — identity, nation, statehood, personal versus public, questions of community". Other artists included in the project are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Johanna Billing, Tommi Grönland and Petteri Nisunen, Felix Gmelin, Alexander Gutke, Jesper Just, Joachim Koester, Gitte Villesen among others.

Matthew Higgs will present the video work of Lars Laumann entitled Morrissey Foretelling the Death of Diana at White Columnsin NYC on 21 February. The video, which "borrows from already established style and language of films supporting conspiracy theories circulating the internet" will be shown at the space through 21 March.

The curator Marilou Knode has included Torgeir Husevaag and Andrea Lange to participate in a group exhibition co-organized by Silvia Cubina, Director of The Moore Space in Miami. The project which will also include works by Matts Leiderstam, Egill Saebjornsson, and Ragna Robertsdottir will open at The Moore Space on 12 May and run through 2 September.

Curator Will Bradley has invited Andreas Dalen to participate in the exhibition How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, California. The project revolves around the contrasting visions of future put forward in California in the mid 1970s. It takes is title from an essay by science fiction author Philip K. Dick, in which he compares the speculative world building of artists and writers to the scenarios imagined and constructed by governments, corporations and the mass media. The exhibition opened 28 November, 2006 and runs through 24 February, 2007. Other artists participating in the exhibition: Can Altay, Nate Boyce, Rick Guidice, Shaun O'Dell, Toby Paterson, Eileen Quinlan, Eva Rothschild, Katya Sander, William Scott, Solmaz Shabazi, Bonnie Sherk, and Gitte Villesen.

As part of Documentary Fortnight Expanded: MoMA's Annual Festival of Nonfiction Film, the Norwegian filmmakers Bodil Furu and Beate Pedersen will screen Kabul Ping Pong (2005) on Monday, 12 February 12, 18:00. The documentary explores the strategies Afghani citizens are using to put their lives back together after suffering more than twenty years of continuous and ongoing war. The film focuses on three individuals who represent diverse strata of Afghani society. The programme has been curated by Sally Berger and William Sloan.

The book launch of PHILIP will take place at Dexter Sinister in New York City, Friday 9 February, 21:00. PHILIP is a novel by Mark Aerial Waller, Heman Chong, Cosmin Costinas, Rosemary Heather, Francis McKee, David Reinfurt, Steve Rushton & Leif Magne Tangen.

Harald Medbøe will participate with his photographic project Rrom — Gypsy Trips at the non profit space BWA Awangarda in Wroclaw, Poland. The project is curated by Pawel Jarodzki opened 7 January and run through 11 February.

Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in Berlin has invited Ane Lan to participate with her videoElegi in the exhibition Sexwork — Kunst Mythos Realität. The exhibition is opened on 16 December and to be shown at NGBK through 25 February, 2007. The exhibition will explore the phenomenon of prostitution, from various perspectives and will investigate the myths and limited perceptions that have arisen around prostitution.

Yokoland (Aslak Gurholt Rønsen, Espen Friberg and Thomas Tengesdal Nordby) was invited by Robert Blackson, the curator at the Reg Vardy Gallery at the University of Sunderland to exhibit their print based work from 23 January–23 February 2007. On the opening Metronomicon Audio's Center of the Universe played. The Exhibition will also be shown in Edinburgh in June.

The Marienborg Artist Community from Trondheim will participate in a non-for-profit event SuperMarked to be held in conjunction with Marked the international art fair in Stockholm, from 22–25 February. Their participation will include a symposium containing talks, discussions, performances, group work and individual work to be located throughout the city.

Ingar Dragset and Michael Elmgreen participate in This Is Not For You: Sculptural Discourses, an exhibition that opened at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Vienna (22 November, 2006–29 April, 2007). The exhibition "reframes sculpture, object, and sculptural installation as autonomous, contemporary forms of artistic practice" and includes among other artists, Ai Weiwei, Fiona Banner, Monica Bonvicini, Isa Genzken, Jeppe Hein, Jim Lambie, Sarah Lucas, Eva Rothschild, Andreas Siekmann.

Tom Sandberg will have a major exhibition curated by Bob Nickas at P.S.1 MoMA in New York City. The exhibition, scheduled to open 11 February, 2007, will include more than thirty photographs taken over the past ten years, this will be the photographer's first major exhibition in the United States. Nickas writes:"Sandberg has produced a remarkable body of work that is consistent in its vision, imbued with a sense of mystery and great depth of feeling ... Sandberg's work is about photography, about the act of seeing, and ultimately about being in the world."

Curator Mami Kataoka has invited Trine Lise Nedreaas to participate in All About Laughter at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan from 27 January–6 May, 2007. Nedreaas has been invited to participate with video and photographic work Forget Me Not 1, 2, 3 in an exhibition which explores the role of "humour in depicting worlds that are not possible in real life". The exhibition which is divided into three sections — 1) avant-garde and laughter, 2) laughter in everyday life and 3) laughter across different cultures — includes among others works by George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Erwin Wurm, Peter Land, Gabriel Orozco, Damian Ortega, Mark Bradford, Carlos Amorales, Alora and Calzadilla among others.

Katja Høst has been invited to a present a project The Lonely Crowd at the artist run space Articule in Montreal Canada. The project approaches "ones visibility in public space and the impossibility of escaping ones own subject and become the other". The project will be exhibited from 2 February through 11 March, 2007.

Karl Ingar Røys participates in an exhibition Line of Play at Fabric-Berlin from 11 February. The artist participates with his work, Erna's Video from 2006, a work which "contains a series of interviews with people from the former Yugoslavia where social and structural implications of the Norwegian government's strategies to stop asylum seekers from wanting to go to Norway, are questioned". The video is filmed in Sarajevo, Mostar, Belgrade, Prishtina, Oslo and Volda.

Lene Berg has been selected to present a new work entitled The Weimar Conspiracy at the ACC Galerie, a not for profit space in Weimar, Germany. The project which opens on 30 March will use Weimar as an image, or example of established ways of presenting and remembering European history and culture.

Martin Skauen has been invited into a group exhibition entitled Whenever It Starts It Is The Right Time, by Chus Martinez, Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. The exhibition scheduled to open at the Kunstverein in March 2007, explores a world run by states and corporations, in activating our immediate reality. Martinez has asked that Skauen participate with The Polarbear Split.

OCA supported Norwegian curator Leif Magne Tangen in curating a project entitled I will never make it at Kunstraum D21 in Leipzig, Germany. The exhibition, writes Tangen, is born out of the necessity of failing. Built upon an original work by Jan Christensen from 2000, the project includes artists Mikkel McAlinden, Mark Hamilton, Paolo Chiasera, and Reto Pulfer. The show will open 10 March 2007.

Frankfurter Kunstverein Director, Chus Martinez, will curate a major solo exhibition with the works of Gardar Eide Einarsson, that will open 27 July and run through 16 September 2007 at the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Martinez notes that Einarsson's work refers to the notion of utopia understood as "the impossibility of a place". On the other hand, the artist also addresses the notion of the "future" — or better, "the near future" — as the social ground we are already sharing and constructing for our collective tomorrow in the sense that we live in a permanent negotiation of different cultural and social backgrounds. Therefore, the solo presentation of Gardar Eide Einarsson should serve as a terrain to imagine this new territory. A place where different aesthetic premises co-exist.

Dr. Barbara Steiner, Curator and Director of the Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst Leipzig, Germany, invited the artist Stefan Schröder to participate in a public project entitled Plagwitzer Sand in Summer 2007 in Leipzig.

Knut Åsdam was selected as the Artist in Focus as part of Rotterdam's International Film Festival. His contribution to the festival is a particularly versatile one. Not only will he be showing his own recent short films, he will also produce a large installation in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, entitled The Care of the Self Finally Edit, which will take the form of a dingy little urban park at sunset. This realistically constructed "hangout" is a synthesis of various motifs from his oeuvre: architecture, the urban setting, cinematographic mise-en-scéne and, above all, attention to mental processes (desire, politics, the everyday). In addition, Åsdam has integrated two installations — the video work Abyss and the new series of slides Smooth City, Smooth Space —in the auditorium and conference spaces of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi). In the Bilderberg Park Hotel nearby, Åsdam found the perfect context within which to integrate a small selection of his early video work. Finally, he will also participate in the exhibition Borderline Behaviour at TENT with a graffiti work. During the festival, Åsdam will not only be introducing his own work, but also a number of his favourite films.

Exhibition and launching of Tone Hansen's publication Megamonstermuseum — How to Imagine a Museum of Today?

The book is the final part of Hansen's research fellowship project at The Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Here she argues for the role of the museum as an active platform for dialogue and production of meaning.

3–10 February
Opening February 3 at 12.00–16.00
13.00: Official presentation of the resarch fellowship program
14.00: Tone Hansen presents her book and opens the artist debate

NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, was closed down on 31 December, 2006 due to a political decision, as a part of the restructuring of the Nordic cultural collaboration. NIFCA was 1997–2006 the Nordic Council of Ministers' expert organ for visual culture; visual arts, architecture and design.

The new program and structure for the Nordic cultural collaboration starting in 2007 is Nordic Culture Point.

For more information please see: www.kulturkontaktnord.org

Post-academic Institute for Research and Production
Fine Art, Design, Theory

Call for applications — Deadline: 15 April 2007

Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit research and production proposals to become a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie. Candidates can either apply with a topic of their own or for a project formulated by the institute itself. In order to realise these projects, the Jan van Eyck offers the necessary made-to-measure artistic, technical and auxiliary preconditions.

More information about the application procedure can be found here.

Gibraltar Point International Artist Residency Program on Toronto Island, Toronto, Canada: Artscape is currently accepting applications for the Gibraltar Point International Artist Residency Program taking place 1–30 June, 2007.

Deadline: 21 February, 2007

For further information please visit Artscape's website at www.torontoartscape.on.ca/gpiarp

At the School of Visual Arts in New York September 2007–June 2008: This intensive one-year residency offers international participants the opportunity to work in technologically advanced facilities with renowned photographers to bring critical rigor to the advanced photographer. The function of the program is to advance the content of individual work through critique, lectures, museum and gallery visits and dialogue with other participants.

Application Deadline: 1 May 2007

For more information click here.

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