Please note that all applications for International Support from artists, curators and institutions must be received by OCA by 15 May. For any questions regarding the application process, please contact Velaug Bollingmo at vb@oca.no.

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.

In 2007/2008, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway offers a studio-apartment grant in two separate periods, each term two months in length available 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.

Click here for information on the application process.

The Nordic Pavilion exhibition in 2007, under the title Welfare — Fare Well, is curated by Renè 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), Lars Ramberg (Norway), Sirous Namazi (Sweden), and Maaria Wirkkala(Finland).

Toril Goksøyr was born 1970 in Ålesund, Norway, Camilla Martens 1969 in Oslo, Norway. They both live and work in Oslo after having studied at the National Academy of Fine Art in Oslo. They have been working collaboratively since 1997 in the construction of performance based projects with social implications. Drawing their inspiration from theatre, their projects often integrate staged situation integrating outside actors in predominantly socially interactive public spaces outside of museums and galleries.

Lars Ramberg was born in 1964 in, Oslo, Norway. He lives and works in Berlin after having completed the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. Ramberg produces architectonic projects that function to intervene with a practiced public space with the intent to infer a political and social commentary.

Press Preview: 7–9 June 2007
Opening dates: 10 June–21 November, 2007
Opening of the Nordic Pavilion within the Venice Biennale: 14:00 on Thursday, 7 June

Requests for invitations:
http://www.labiennale.org/en/news/art/en/71580.html 

Publication

A special FRAME edition, 56 pages, colour, will be released in conjunction with the biennale.

@ Kunsthalle, Basel

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 which opens at the Kunsthalle Basel 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.

@ K3 Project Room, Zürich

Susanne Sauter curates an exhibition entitled, Envisaging, Formulating Language as a Model of Reality which includes, among other artists, the work of Jan Christensen. Other artists participating in the project include Solvej Dufour Andersen, Michael Hilton, Bethan Huws, Reta Schudel, Herbert Weber, Remy Zaugg. The exhibition runs through 20 June, 2007.

@ Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt

Through July 8, 2007
Frankfurter Kunstverein Director Chus Martinez has invited Lene Berg to participate in the exhibition Pensée Sauvage that will take place at the Frankfurter Kunstverein> 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.

From July 27–16 September, 2007
Frankfurter Kunstverein Director, Chus Martinez, curates a 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.

The Documenta Magazine Project

Magne Furuholmen participates in the Flemish Magazine A PRIOR's contribution to the Documenta Magazine Project. The project entitled REVOLVER is a tribute to E.L.T. Mesens, as a publication by the Belgian artist Erich Weiss whereby artists were invited to make a tribute to a singular and ambivalent figure: the artist, art-dealer, musician, poet E.L.T. Mesens. Among those artists contributing include: Barbara Davi, Jeremy Deller, Wim Delvoye, Martin Eder, Magne F, Thomas G, Scott King, Colin Lowe, Arno Nollen, Nils Nova, Graham Parker, Gavin Turk, Erich Weiss, Andro Wekua & Margot Zanni

@ Skulptur Projekte Münster 07
Elmgreen & Dragset participate in the upcoming Skulptur Projekte Münster 07 with a play entitled Drama Queens. The play which premieres on 16 June at 17:00, 19:00 and 21:00, is without actors. "Seven superstar sculptures find themselves displaced and out of their usual context on the main stage of Münster City Theatre. The drama unfolds through a series of clashes and crossovers between the various isms and aesthetics which these sculptures represent — from formal and minimal to pop and postmodern".

OCA Announces its new schedule of events in May and June. 

Click here for the new OCA Semesterplan.

Upcoming events

Wednesday, 16 May, 18:00
Kunst and Kapital #2
Speaker: Chin-tao Wu
Subject: Why be a Saatchi? From Shark Sensation to Pastoral Painting — The Strategies Behind the Building of the Saatchi Collection
@ Fritt Ord
Uranienborgveien 2, Oslo

Please click here for more information.

Friday, 18 May, 18:00
Kunst and Kapital #3
Speaker: Marta Gili
Subject: Galerie National du Jeu de Paume Paris — From Tennis Courts to Contemporary Art: Maneuvering a Historical Institution to Present Day

Please click here for more information.

Tuesday, 29 May, 18:00
Kunst and Kapital #4
Speaker: Chin-tao Wu
Subject: Privatisation and Culture: Some Critical Issues
@ Fritt Ord
Uranienborgveien 2, Oslo

The International Edvard Munch Award: The Award Recipient Alice Creischer Assumes her Residency at Ekely in May 2007

The 2^nd Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art was awarded to German artist Alice Creischer still in November 2006 with the intent that the artist assume her residency period in Oslo in Spring 2007. Creischer will assume her residency at the Munch Estate as of early May 2007 with a presentation planned on 22 May at 18:00 within the original Munch studio at Ekely entitledWhy Not Lobby Today? — the title of her projected work for the upcoming Documenta in Kassel. The work takes the form of an opera and is a political critique approaching the models of economic democratisation and socialization of private industries discussed still in post Nazi Germany. As typical to the artist's previous production, the project assumes the form of a narrative to deconstruct the various economic and political strains of her argument.

Tuesday, 22 May, 18:00
The Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art
Speaker: Alice Creischer
Subject: Why Lobby Today?
@ The Munch Studio, Ekely
Gråbrødreveien 10, Oslo

Please click here for more information.

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.

Chin-tao Wu
Author and Academic
Born 1961, Taiwan, lives and works in Taiwan

Chin-tao Wu specializes in contemporary art and culture, and has contributed to New Left Review and New Statesman. Her latest book, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s, published by Verso in 2002, is being translated into Chinese. The Turkish edition was published in 2005, the Portuguese edition in October 2006, and its Spanish edition was published in February 2007. She is currently Assistant Research Fellow at Academia Sinica in Taiwan and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London.

Pablo Lafuente
Writer, Curator and Research Fellow
b. 1976, Santurce, Vizcaya, Spain. Lives and works in London, UK

Pablo Lafuente is the managing editor of Afterall, a journal of contemporary art co-published by Central St. Martins College of Art, London and California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles. Afterall is published twice a year, and focuses on contemporary art practice in relation to artistic, theoretical, social and political contexts. He is currently developing a series of books for Afterall Books analyzing the history of curatorial practice. He has curated several exhibitions, including Watch out ... it's real! at greengrassi, London (2006) and Unit Structures at Lisboa 20, Lisbon (2006). In 2005 he edited the bookDisplay: Recent Installation Photographs from London galleries and venues (London: Rachmaninoff's). His writing has been published in several art and culture magazines, including Flash Art, Art Monthly, frieze and The Wire, and in the volumeContinuous Project no. 8, edited by Bettina Funcke (Paris: Les presses du réel, 2006). He is currently working on a PhD at Middlesex University on Jacques Rancière and the relation between aesthetics and politics.

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 Bienale.

Please note:
Thursday, 28 June, 14:00–18:00
Speakers: Gabriel Kuri (moderator), Mikkel Astrup, Fernando Esponda, Lars Svendsen
Subject: Expected Applause Duration: 46 seconds — A Discussion on Boredom

This project 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 less in the lyrical than in the metrical. This metricality, even percussiveness, inflects her work in sculpture, text, and sound. Helen Mirra's recent solo shows include Meyer Riegger Galerie, Karlsruhe; Peter Freeman, New York; Galerie Nelson, Paris; Dallas Art Museum; and the Berkeley Art Museum. She was a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm in 2005–06.

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.

Marta Gili
Director, Jeu de Paume
Paris, France

Marta Gili graduated in Philosophy and Education from Universitat de Barcelona. Between 1983 and 1988, she was part of the Primavera Fotográfica de Barcelona Organizing Committee. Between 1991 and 2006, she was head of the Department of Photography and Visual Arts of the Fundació la Caixa. On October 2006, she was appointed director of the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Simultaneously, she was Artistic Director of Printemps de Septembre (a visual arts festival) in Toulouse, for the 2002 and 2003 editions. She was member of the Acquisitions Committee for the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain of the French Ministry of Culture, between 1994 and 1997. Marta Gili has been the curator of a multitude of monographic exhibitions, such as those of Helen Chadwick, Tracey Moffat, Miguel Rio Branco, Lorna Simpson, Aernout Mik, Christer Stromholm, Gillian Wearing and Doug Aitken, amongst others. She has also headed thematic exhibitions, such as la Imatge Fràgil, Ficcions Documentades or Historias Animadas. She has contributed with articles in El País, El Mundo, ABC, Tema Celeste Beaux Arts Magazine, and she also collaborates monthly in EXIT magazine. Marta takes part in numerous seminaries and conferences, and teaches several postgraduate courses, both in Spain and abroad. Her texts have been published in several monographs of artists and in theory books published by Phaidon, Steidl, Gustavo Gili and the Fundació la Caixa.

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.

Jan Freuchen, Narve Hovdenakk, Lotte Konow Lund, Torbjørn Rødland, Martin Skauen, and Bjarne Melgaard will participate in the upcoming 1^st Athens Biennial entitled Destroy Athens, taking place from 9/10 September to 18 November 2007.

Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl participates in the Sharjah Biennial 8 (SB8), opened on 4 April in the United Arab Emirates. SB8, directed by Jack Persekian and curated by Mohammed Kazem, Eva Scharrer, and Jonathan Watkins, integrates a theme that proposes art as a way of creating a better understanding about our relationship with nature and the environment, whilst considering its social, political, cultural, and subjective dimensions in an interdisciplinary way. Among artists included — Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla; Roy Arden; Peter Fend; Tue Greenfort; Group Tuesday; Leopold Kessler; Joachim Koester, Cornelia Parker. The biennial runs through 4 June.

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 through 28 May and continues thereafter with venues at KUMU — Estonian Art Museum in Talinn, and the Pori Art Museum in Pori, Finland.

Silvia Cubina, Director at The Moore Space in Miami and Scottsdale Center for the Arts Curator Marilou Knode have invitedLars Laumann, Knut Åsdam and Andrea Lange to participate in the group exhibition entitled Peer in Peer Out that will take place at The Moore Space in Miami from 12 May through 1 July, 2007. The exhibition alos includes artists Jesper Just and Pia Lindman. This video programme is also part of an exhibition entitled Contemporary Scandinavian Art from 12 May–2 September at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Other artists participating in this exhibition are Torgeir Husevaag, Matts Leiderstam, Ragna Róbertsdóttir, and Egill Sæbjörnsson.

Matias Faldbakken is among 25 artists invited by the ICA in London to participate in a "Memorial to the Iraq War" – an exhibition involving artists proposing a memorial to the ongoing conflict in an attempt to encourage a debate about "how this episode of history might be remembered". The project opens to the public in London on 21 May.

Leander Djønne presents with a performance in the project entitled In Search of the Lost Self to be held at the Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm on 14 May as part of a project lasting from 16 May through 17 June with 15 other art students. The project has been curated by Marianna Garin, Camilla Larsson, and Sinziana Ravini.

A. K. Dolven participates in two European venues – in the anniversary exhibition Critical Mass at the Kunsthalle Bern through 20 May and also within the exhibition Pain at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin 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.

Håvard Boland (c-Lab) participates in a project entitled The Martin Rose at the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art in Sevilla, Spain from 19 April through 1 July. The project is curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose.

Anna Gudmundsdottir has been asked to produce a new work entitled Bread and Animals, at the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik. The project is curated by Larus Vilhjalmsson and will run from 26 May to 8 July 2007.

Roddy Bell has been asked to intervene into the collection of the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford University in the UK with his work The Book of the Imaginary Science in September 2007.

Helge Sten (aka Deathprod) has been invited by Daniella Cascella to participate in Inaudito at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. The project is scheduled to be realized in Spring 2008.

Martin Braathen, resident of the Whitney Independent Study Program in NYC, together with colleagues Stephanie Fabre, Minnie Scott, and Mike Sperlinger (the 2006-07 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows) have organized an exhibition The Price of Everything ... Perspectives on the Art Market to open at The Art Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue on Thursday, May 17. The exhibition addresses the "different overlapping micro-economies that comprise today's expanded art market, structures that are often invisible to the casual observer".Marianne Heier and Elmgreen & Dragset have been invited among other artists – Fareed Armaly and Christian Philipp Müller, Fia Backstrom, Conrad Bakker, Fine Art Adoption Network, Hans Haacke, Kari Haendel, Christian Jankowski, Louise Lawler, Robert Morris, Danica Phelps.

Lene Berg has also been selected to present a new work entitled The Weimar Conspiracyat 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.

Leif Magne Tangen has also curated Synthetische Natur with works by Kjersti Berg, Sveinn Fannar Johannsson, Einar Horsberg, Marte Johnslien, Mikkel McAlinden, Eline Mugaas, Jenny Rydhagen, Børre Sæthre, Per Christian Brown and Anders Valde. The exhibition will open at Kunstraum D21 19 April, run through 10 June, and will then be open from 20 June through 24 June.

Kalle Runeson and Marlene Lindmark (as Kultivator) have been invited by Gijs Frieling to have a solo exhibition at W139 in Amsterdam in November 2007.

Dispatx Art Collective is calling for project proposals related to our eighth collection, Appropriation in Creative Practice, with a particular focus on the use of developed ideas and theories as a material across different artistic disciplines. The deadline for proposals is the 23^rd of June 2007.

For more information on how to collaborate, please visit www.dispatx.com/submissions.

d.u.m.b.o. arts center (dac) is a non-profit contemporary arts organization, whose mission is to engage a broad spectrum of society in the sensory and intellectual stimuli of emerging visual culture by providing visual artists and curators with the singular opportunity for both on and off-site experimentation, innovation and presentation. (dac) presents a year-round exhibition program in its gallery, produces the Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival, hosts an annual Artists' Opportunity Workshop and commissions editions, multiples and public space works.

(dac) invites artists or curators (individuals or groups) from all levels of experience to submit exhibition proposals for realization in its gallery space in 2008. The 3,000 sq. ft. space is located at 30 Washington Street. Built in 1887, the block was the first of many factories to be built along the East River Waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges by cardboard box manufacturer, Robert Gair in the late 19^th Century. Proposals must be original to (dac) and may not have been realized in other venues. (dac) is particularly interested in proposals, which harness the space's unique physical and spatial properties, take an innovative, experimental approach to exhibition making and/or are site responsive. Proposed exhibitions can be solo, two-person, or group and are open to all visual arts media.

Click here for further information.

All applicants will be notified by mid-June, 2007.

Heidi Sellevold returns to OCA as Programme Associate after her maternity leave.

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