Tuesday, 26 June, 18:00
Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia — Part 2
Speaker: Lars Bang Larsen
Subject: The production of gratification?
click here for program details

Thursday, 28 June, 14:00–18:00
Speakers: Gabriel Kuri (moderator), Mikkel Astrup, Fernando Esponda, Lars Svendsen
Subject: Expected Applause Duration: 46 seconds
Click here for programme details.

Frankfurter Kunstverein Director, Chus Martinez, curates the first major solo exhibition of Gardar Eide Einarsson entitled South of Heaven open from 26 July and run through 16 September 2007. 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. According to Martinez, Einarsson's solo will serve as a "terrain to imagine this new territory and a place where different aesthetic premises co-exist". The opening takes place on the evening of 25 July at 19:00, with a press preview at 11:00 am on the same day. An accompanying catalogue published by Revolver Verlag (Frankfurt) and designed by Christoph Keller, will include texts by Katy-Garcia Anton, Ina Blom, Chus Martinez, Ingar Niermann, Dieter Roelstraete. The exhibition will continue to tour to the Centre d'Art Contemporain Geneve following the close in Frankfurt.

The curators Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio and Augustine Zenakos have invited Jan Freuchen, Narve Hovdenakk, Lotte Konow Lund, Torbjørn Rødland, Martin Skauen, and Bjarne Melgaard to participate in the 1st Athens Biennial, entitled Destroy Athens. The professional preview is 9 September, and the biennial will run from 10 September through 18 November 2007. For press passes, please visitwww.athensbiennial.org/pages/main_en.php.

Bodil Furu and Beate Petersen have been invited by Hou Hanru to participate in the 10th International Istanbul Biennale with their work Kabul Ping Pong. The video work will be exhibited in one of the main venues of the biennial, Santralistanbul. The professional previews are 6 and 7 September. The biennal opens 8 September, and runs through 4 November 2007. OCA funded this exhibition with 03—funding, specifically designated funds made available by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the "exchange with countries of the South". For press passes, please visitwww.iksv.org/bienal/english/bienal.asp?cid=12.

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. The funding for International Support is provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

03–Funding (Funds for the Exchange with Countries in the South) is a support program initiated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for enhancing collaboration in the contemporary art field with professional artists in countries in the South. This programme is also administered by OCA.

Click here for information on the application process.

For any questions regarding the application process, please contact Velaug Bollingmo at vb@oca.no.

Recipients from the May grants review for International Support is announced. The recipients are listed here.

In November/December 2007, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway offers a studio-apartment grant for a length of two months for Norwegian curators, critics, and artists in Berlin Mitte. The residency provides a fully equipped apartment located at Kunstwerke Institute for Contemporary Art in Mitte. OCA provides a travel grant up to NOK 4000 in addition to the residency. Curators and critics are especially encouraged to apply and their applications will be considered as a priority.

Application deadline 15 September 2007 for a residency period November/December 2007. Notification will be in October..

Click here for information on the application process.

Geir Haraldseth has received the September residency at OCA's residency at Berlin Mitte. Geir Haraldseth graduated from the M.A. Programme of Curatorial Studies at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York. Haraldseth received his B.A. from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. Haraldseth had formerly been the Head of the bookshop at the National Museum of Contemporary Art/National Museum of Art, Oslo.

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.

Gabriel Kuri
Artist
Born 1970, Mexico, based in Brussels and Mexico

Gabriel Kuri is an artist whose sculptural practice addresses issues of coding experience, temporality and space. His work encompasses an array of media grounded on the grammar of everyday lexicon and exchange. His vocabulary of forms places emphasis on process and the open and unstable nature of meaning. He studied at ENAP UNAM Mexico (88–92) and Goldsmiths College London (93–95). Recent solo shows include 2006 Govett Brewster National Art Gallery New Zealand, 2004 and 2006 Galleria Franco Noero Torino, 2004 MuHKA Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, 2003 and 2007 Galeria Kurimanzutto Mexico. Recent Group shows include 2006 Brighton Photo Bienale, 2004 State of Play Serpentine Gallery London, 2003 Interludes L Venice Biennale.

This residency is made possible with funds from 03 — Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Helen Mirra
Artist
Born 1970, Rochester, New York, lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Helen Mirra's work occurs in varied scrap media, and engages structural and conceptual logics. It is often referred to as poetic, and indeed Mirra engages quite directly in relation to poetry, but her interest is as much in the metrical as in the lyrical. This metricality, even percussiveness, inflects her work which is informed by anxieties related to the conflicting ecologies of the modern world. Within the various forms in which she operates, there is always a source material upon which decisions are made. Recent projects include the large-scale public project Instance the Determination, which indexes works by John Dewey and Jane Addams, at the University of Chicago through 2009, and the book Cloud, the, 3, published by JRP Ringier/Christoph Keller Editions in March 2007, as well as solo shows at Meyer Riegger Galerie, Karlsruhe; Peter Freeman, New York; Galerie Nelson, Paris; Dallas Art Museum; Berkeley Art Museum and the Whitney Museum, New York. Mirra completed her MFA at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996, and has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, and Artadia: the Fund for Art and Dialogue. Mirra was a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm in 2005–06, and teaches at Harvard University.

Claire Fontaine
Paris, France

Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective, founded in 2004. After lifting her name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared herself a "readymade artist" and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people's work. Working in neon, video, sculpture, painting and text, her practice can be described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence and the crisis of singularity that seem to define contemporary art today. But if the artist herself is the subjective equivalent of a urinal or a Brillo box — as displaced, deprived of its use value, and exchangeable as the products she makes — there is always the possibility of what she calls the "human strike". Only two years old, Claire Fontaine uses her freshness and youth to make herself a whatever-singularity and an existential terrorist in search of subjective emancipation. She grows up among the ruins of the notion of authorship, experimenting with collective protocols of production, détournements, and the production of various devices for the sharing of intellectual and private property. Recent shows include, Kunsthalle Zürich, Grey Flags, The Sculpture Center, New York, Group Therapy, Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea, Bolzano, Incipit, Espace Paul Ricard, Paris and The Look of Law, University of California, Irvine. Claire Fontaine is represented by Reena Spaulings Fine Art in New York.

From 2 June 2007, Claire Fontaine's exhibition in Kunsthalle Zürich in the context of the program How to cook a Wolf presents a series of works revolving around the most painful contemporary contradictions. The exhibition is curated by former OCA IVP visitor Beatrix Ruf. Read more at www.kunsthallezurich.ch.

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.

Brian Sholis
Editor, writer
Brooklyn, NY, USA

Brian Sholis is Artforum.com Editor at Artforum. He has written for Artforum, Parkett, Afterall, Flash Art, Bookforum, Print, and the New York Press, among other periodicals; has contributed essays to publications accompanying exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and has contributed to books published by Taschen and Phaidon. He is the coeditor, with Noah Horowitz, of The Uncertain States of America Reader (Sternberg Press/Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art/Serpentine Gallery, 2006), has taught at New York University, and has been a visiting critic at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Parsons The New School for Design, New York. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Zhang Ga
Artist, Curator, Academic
New York, NY, USA

Zhang Ga is a media artist, curator and a professor of communication arts. He has exhibited internationally including the Ars Electronica Center (Austria), Adelaide Art Festival (Australia), Dutch Electronic Art Festival (The Netherlands), Whitney Museum of American Art (US), Singapore Art Museum (Singapore) and Art Center Nabi (South Korea) among others, organized conferences and digital salons, written and lectured on new media art practice and criticism widely, and served on jury duties for media art grants. He is artistic director and curator of China International New Media Arts Exhibition 2008, a major cultural event presented by the National Art Museum of China during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. He was the artistic director and curator of the Millennium Dialogue: Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium 2004, 2005 and 2006, His most recent curatorial projects include, Code:Blue, 3rd Beijing International New Media Art Exhibition,European Media Art Festival 2006 (guest curator), Container Culture — ISEA2006 / ZeroOne, a Global Festival of Art On the Edge (San Jose, US), New Directions from China (Basel, Switzerland). Prior to joining the New York Institute of Technology, he taught for many years at the MFA Design and Technology Department at Parsons School of Design. Zhang Ga studied at the University of Arts in Berlin (UDK) and holds an MFA from the Parsons School of Design in New York City. He is also a guest professor at the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

In a collective work process the artists Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann together with the composer and conductor Christian von Borries have conceived five musical scenes and a libretto: Auf einmal und gleichzeitig. Eine Machbarkeitsstudie(At once and simultaneously. A Feasibility Study; 2007) examines and demonstrates the (pre)conditions of our consumer world. The work will be performed by the State Youth Orchestra of Hessen and other actors on 2, 3 and 4 July 2007 in the Citypoint shopping centre at Königsplatz in Kassel.

www.documenta12.de

The OCA semesterplan for fall 2007 will be announced in August.

At the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland: Knut Henrik Henriksen participates in the exhibition entitled Poor Thing at the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland together with artists Karla Black, Robert Breer, Martin Heldstab, Dagmar Heppner, Karin Hueber, Ian Kiaer, and Kilian Ruthemann. The exhibition is curated by Simone Neuenschwander and brings together artists who engage in a dialogue with the specific space of the Kunsthalle, in an "alteration of architectural space that combines with the transformation capacity of the "poor" materials which can refer back to their everyday use and build up narrative structures". The opening takes place on the evening of 9 June at 19:00. The exhibition runs through to September 2, 2007.

At the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt Lene Berg participates in the exhibition Pensèe Sauvage. The exhibition takes place at the Frankfurter Kunstverein from 20 May–1 July and in parallel at the Ursula Blickle Foundation from 25 May through 8 July, 2007. The exhibition uses the title of the well known book by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss to present an take on the actual fact of meeting the stranger and the notion of freedom, to reinforce the importance of being involved in reality, and of underlining enthusiasm as an extremely difficult but desirable form of freedom. The exhibition curated by Chus Martinez will include among other artists — Lucas Bambozzi, Andrea Buttner, Henrik Hakansson, Marine Hugonnier, Deimantas Narkevicius, Rosalind Nashashibi, Markus Oehlen, Aida Ruilova.

At the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston Camille Norment participates in Black Light/White Noise, at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas as curated by Cassel Oliver. The project presents the work of a new generation of artists who are working with sound and light not only as an audiovisual landscape, but also as an interactive form. It also includes recent works by Sanford Biggers, Louis Cameron, Kianga Ford, Kira Lynn Harris, Satch Hoyt, Arthur Jafa, Jennie C. Jones, Yvette Mattern, Kambui Olujimi, Karyn Olivier, Nadine Robinson, and SoundLab. The exhibition will also feature select canonical works by George Lewis (in collaboration with Douglas Ewart and Douglas Irving Repetto), Tom Lloyd, and Benjamin Patterson that place these 21st-century sound and light works in context with the history of the genre. The project will run through 5 August.

At the ICA London: Matias Faldbakken participates in the exhibition entitledMemorial to the Iraq War at the ICA in London — a project that curated by ICA Curator Mark Sladen and that involves artists proposing a the means to memorialize the ongoing conflict in Iraq in an attempt to encourage a debate about "how this episode of history might be remembered". The project which opened to the public in London on 21 May will run through 27 June. Other artists participating include Christoph Buchel, Yael Davids, Jeremy Deller, Sam Durant, Liam Gillick, Sanja Ivekovic, Nate Lowman, Michaela Meise, Roman Ondak, Khalil Rabah, Collier Schorr, Sean Snyder, Jalal Toufic, among others.

At Scottsdale Museum for Contemporary Art in Phoenix: Senior CuratorMarilu Knode includes the projects by Knut Åsdam, Andrea Lange, Lars Laumann, Torgeir Husevaag within an exhibition and video programme entitled Contemporary Scandinavian Art from 12 May through 2 September at the Scottsdale Museum for Contemporary Art.

At Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin: A.K. Dolven participates in the exhibition entitled Pain at the Hamburger Bahnhof through 5 August. The exhibition curated by Eugen Blume explores the "manifold depictions and expressions of pain" and includes works by Birgit Brenner, Julio Gonzalez, Mathilde ter Heijne, Gary Hill, Bruce Nauman, Sam Taylor Wood among others. A.K. Dolven also participates in a project entitled Samling '07 at the Museet for Samtidkunst in Roskilde, Denmark from 29 June through 9 September, 2007.

At the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco: Bull.Miletic are invited byRenè de Guzman to participate in a group exhibition entitled Dark Matters: Artists See the Impossible scheduled to open in San Francisco on 28 July. Bull.Miletic will participate with the installation Heaven Can Wait, in a larger project that delves into "the obscure and often sinister, testing the limits of the imagination to offer a range of work including internet-eavesdropping installations, surveillance projects." Other artists participating include Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, Sergio Prego, Walid Raad, Kambui Olujimi, Alison Sant, Richard Johnson, Richard Barnes, Alex Schweder and Charles Mason.

At MoMA, New York: Lars Laumann's Morrissey Foretelling the Death of Diana participates in MoMA's Automatic Update, a film series held throughout the duration of 27 June through 3 September as organized by Barbara London, Associate Curator in the Department of Media in MoMA. The festival is intended to reflect upon the "momentum of the dot-com era infused media art with a heady energy, artists, many switching from analog to digital equipment" into newly invented art forums. For the complete programme, please visithttp://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/automatic_update.

At the Salzburger Kunstverein in Austria: Ingrid Book and Carina Hedé participate in a project at the Salzburger Kunstverein from 20 September–25 November at the invitation of its director, Hemma Schmutz. The project entitled Stories for Empty Shopwindows originates in a series of stories from Scheibbs in Austria in exploring "to construct evidence and to play on the questioned capacity of photography to act as a testimony of truth." An artists talk will be held on 21 September.

At Neue Gesellschaft for Bildene Kunst in Berlin: Rachael Dagnall participates in the exhibition, Syntropia, with work from Tatlin's Tower and the World Project. The exhibition opens on 29 June and runs through 30 September.

At Midway Contemporary Art in Minneapolis: Matias Faldbakken participates in a solo exhibition at the non profit space Midway Contemporary in Minneapolis from 8 September thorugh 27 October, 2007. The exhibition is curated by John Rasmussen, Director of Midway.

Willy Wonka in Zürich: Willy Wonka (Ida Ekblad and Anders Nordby) will curate The Corny Show (a.k.a. The Art is in the Heart), a project to open at KARMA International in Zürich on 28 June through 29 July. The artists Nils Bech, Lina Viste Grønli, Ida Ekblad, Lars Laumann, Camilla Løw, and Anders Nordby represent a project that the curators claim "aims to research the peculiar expression "corny" and its significance and menaing within urban jargon."

At W139 in Amsterdam: W139's director Gijs Frieling has invited the artist group Kultivator (which include Kalle Runeson and Marlene Lindmark) to have a solo exhibition opening 12 October. The subject of Kultivator's work is agriculture and ecology, rural versus urban culture, food production and distribution, global trading and economy.

In Ecuador: Vibeke Tandberg participates in Border Jam, a project curated by New Museum (NYC) curator Gerardo Mosquera as part of Regional Encounter of Art/Montevideo 2007. Border Jam will respond from the standpoint of contemporary artistic practices the social and cultural environment of solidarities and exclusions, not necessarily inscribed by territorial limits. Other artists participating in the project — Monica Bonvicini, Shilpa Gupta, Mona Hatoum, Teresa Margolles, Fernando Sanchez Castillo and Santiago Sierra. Tandberg will participate with her work Sunflower from 2001.

At Sparwasser HQ in Berlin: Geir Tore Holm presents the project of nord land Sorfinnset which has been inspired by the Land Foundation, a rice farm outside Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. Both in Thailand and in Nordland, the emphasis is placed on exchange, involvement, and experimentation within a sustainable development context. The presentation at Sparwasser will take place between 29 July and 2 August.

Adriana Alves at Fuzuê Arte e Cultura in Rio de Janeiro: José Loyola has invited Adriana Alves to exhibit in the new art center Fuzuê in Rio de Janeiro. In addition to Alves' two floor-exhibition there will be a Norwegian contemporary video art programme and a seminar. The exhibiton will run from 12 October through 12 November.

In Sweden: The artist group El Parche (Herman Mbamba, Olga Robayo, and Marius Wang) will produce a site specific work for the exhibition Earthworks at Kultivator to take place between 8 July and 12 August.

Nordic Culture Point is open for applications to two of the modules within the Art and culture program: Module for activities aimed at production and communication and Module for capacity building, criticism and sharing of knowledge and experience.

For information on applications please visit http://applications.kknord.org/user.

The Italian Cultural Office of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano — South Tyrol, next host of the European Biennal Manifesta, is announcing the first edition of the international competition Best Art Practices — International award for young curators. Best Art Practices will assign prizes to the best curator practices of contemporary art of the last five years. The theme of the first edition will focus on projects in non-conventional spaces.

Application Deadline: 3 September 2007-06-21, http://www.bestartpractices.it/index.asp.

Curators are invited to send one work each by two different artists to the "Most Curatorial Biennial of the Universe." All works must be received between June 16 - July 5. http://www.apexart.org.

Application Period for 2008 Scholarships: 15 May to 15 July 2007

http://www.balmoral.de.

The Glucksman is currently offering a Fellowship in Curatorial Practice for a one year period commencing on 29 October 2007. The Fellowship offers a graduate-level candidate the opportunity to gain professional curatorial experience in an internationally significant gallery. The Fellowship is aimed at those who wish to pursue a professional curatorial career in an institutional context. The Fellow will work with the Curator of Exhibitions + Projects on the research, administration and realisation of the Glucksman's artistic programme, with additional duties as appropriate to specific projects. The Glucksman will consider exceptional candidates in art history, museum studies, and related fields with a demonstrated interest in contemporary art and curatorial practice.

Applications Deadline 6 July
www.glucksman.org.

As of the 30th September, 2007, Ida Lykken Ghosh, will leave her position at The Office for Contemporary Art Norway as OCA's Head of Internal Relations in order to pursue personal interests. Ida Lykken Ghosh has been integral to the development in the organization of OCA's administrative structure and devoted in her exemplary commitment to the challenging schedule of the organization. In accordance with the expanding programmatic and activity base of The Office for Contemporary Art Norway both within the country and abroad, OCA's Director Marta Kuzma, and as confirmed by the OCA Board, has taken the decision to appoint Jørn Mortensen as Associate Director for the organization, effective 1 September, 2007. This follows a long standing dialogue between Kuzma and Mortensen on many issues related to the role art plays within the public sphere, art in relation to social change and an overall shared view on the integral role of contemporary art and production to society. The position of Associate Director will expand upon Ida Lykken Ghosh's position and hold with it the responsibility for overseeing all aspects of administration and operational activities including development, public relations, education, public programmes and institutional planning in tandem with the Director's longer term strategy plan. OCA Director Marta Kuzma feels Jørn Mortensen as the optimal individual and key component in lending to OCA's expanding profile taking into account his professional and proven experience in working within the field of contemporary art, in addition to managing staff, his demonstration of institutional and fundraising abilities, financial expertise, and comprehensive experience in major contemporary art institutions or non-profits. Mortensen joins the staff of OCA within a dynamic, demanding, and collaborative artist-driven environment that is committed to an international vision of contemporary art and its discussion.

Jørn Mortensen comes to OCA after having served as Information advisor at KORO (Public Art Norway) in Oslo; as Director of Momentum, the International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2001 - 2006); and as Director of UKS in Oslo (1994-2001) among other professional and personal interests exhibited within the field of contemporary art and practice. Mortensen is educated at the University of Oslo in Media and Communications, History of Ideas and Music.

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