The Office for Contemporary Art Norway would like to announce 'The Grammar of Forms', a series public events, workshops and presentations that will take place throughout autumn and winter 2009 at OCA's premises at Nedre gate 7, with the aim to look at language, writing, criticism and publishing in relation to contemporary art, exploring its diverse modes of operation and possibilities within historical and contemporary practices. In these public events, writers, artists, critics, publishers and theorists will investigate different experiences of and approaches to writing and language specifically in relation to art. These events will have a pedagogical remit, and be accompanied by a series of projects including presentation of artworks such as the original manuscripts of Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art and libraries of publications, made available to the public for consultation and reading.
*All events are open to the public and take place in OCA's public space at Nedre gate 7, Oslo.
Wednesday, 21 October/ 19:00
Speaker: Peter Osborne
Subject: 'Fragment and Project: From Schlegel's Athenaeum Fragments to LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art'
Many of the ideas central to the understanding of contemporary art – genre, fragment, project, the new or, the concepts of art and criticism
themselves – derive from early German Romanticism. This lecture revisits Friedrich Schlegel's Athenaeum Fragments as the basis for a
new interpretation of Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art, one of the defining documents of this movement, focusing in particular on the
art-status of criticism and its philosophical function of 'completing' works of art.
21 October to 19 December
Project: 'Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art: Manuscript and Draft Materials 1968–69'
Courtesy of Collection Daled, Belgium
In January 1969 Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art were first published in the magazine 0-9 (New York, NY) edited by Vito Acconci
and Bernadette Mayer, and later the same year in Art-Language (UK) declaring that 'Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of
development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not to be made physical'. OCA will present the rarely exhibited handwritten
notes by the artist and illustrate the evolution of the Sentences, which are an example of draftsmanship in their own right.
Wednesday, 28 October/ 19:00
Speaker: Ina Blom
Subject: 'On Lynda Benglis's Mumble (An Instance of Videosociality)'
What are the critical terms through which we approach the question of 'sociality' in art? In 1972 Lynda Benglis and Robert Morris started an
artistic dialogue through a collaborative project that, using video as a medium, seemed to turn, self-reflexively, around their evolving
relationship. The two resulting works, Benglis's Mumble (1972) and Morris's Exchange (1973) seem to suggest that this
relationship is the unique result of the productive framework of televisual technologies, and open up fundamental questions about the social
art practices of the 1960s and 70s.
28 October to 19 December
Project: 'Lynda Benglis's Mumble (1972) and Robert Morris's Exchange (1973)'
In 1972 Lynda Benglis and Robert Morris agreed to exchange videos in order to develop a dialogue between each other's work. The resulting
artworks, key examples of early video, will be screened daily at OCA's public space.
Wednesday, 4 November / 11:00–16:00
Organiser: Will Bradley
Workshop: 'The mind of this death is unrelentingly awake': A Workshop on Art, Criticism and the Institution of Critique (Part 1)'
What is art criticism for? How does it function? How should it change? This workshop steered by Will Bradley will investigate art criticism, its aesthetics, its
ideologies and its institutional role to focus on questions such as: How does critique take form? How does a text operate? What is the relationship
between writer and text, text and reader? How does a text reach an audience? How is the discourse around art constructed? What forces affect it?
If the critique of the institution of art is also, itself, part of the institution, how can meaningful change take place?
Participation is open to the public with prior registration.
Wednesday, 11 November / 11:00–16:00
Organiser: Anne Hilde Neset
Workshop: 'Audio Interpretation: Writing on Sound'
How do you translate sound into words? How do you pin down music, ethereal and without body, onto the page? This workshop will explore various
approaches to writing about sound: journalistic, fictional, personal, historical and theoretical. Participation is open to the public with prior registration.
Wednesday, 2 and 9 December/ 11:00–16:00
Organiser: Stuart Bailey
Workshop: 'On Library, Archive and 'Service' (Part 1 and Part 2)'
How do we guarantee preservation and access to published material? How do we construct libraries? What are the different modes of experience
that a library can offer? Stuart Bailey, member of collaborative group and event space Dexter Sinister, will lead two public workshops on the
nature of the library and its function as an archive, a social space and a pedagogical tool, taking at a starting point 'The Serving Library', a
project currently in development by Dexter Sinister. Participation is open to the public with prior registration.
Participation in workshops is open to the public but requires prior registration to receive readings and preparatory material. To register please send an email to Anne Charlotte Hauen, OCA's Programme Assistant, at anne.charlotte.hauen@oca.no with contact information and designated workshop preference.
The respective workshops and their full day programmes and reading lists will be announced on the web in early October. For more information on any of the events, please click here.
Peter Osborne is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University,
London and an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy.
Ina Blom is a Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo.
Will Bradley is an art critic and curator based in Oslo.
Anne Hilde Neset is deputy editor of The Wire magazine and the co-founder of Electra (with Lina Dzuverovic).
Stuart Bailey is a graphic designer, a member of Dexter Sinister and co-editor of Dot Dot Dot, a fanzine/journal concerned
with art, design, music, language, literature and architecture, with David Reinfurt (earlier with Peter Bilak).
OCA will continue with the 'The Grammar of Forms' in 2010, with the participation of AA Bronson, member of General Idea and founder of Printed Matter, New York City, in a workshop on independent art publishing; a project around the work of Guttorm Guttormsgaard; a dialogue with critic and editor Jonas Ekeberg regarding editorial concepts, both historical and current; Mikkel Astrup's workshop on literarity and a continuation of Will Bradley's workshops on art and criticism, among others.
OCA's Verksted at the New York Art Book Fair
2 to 4 October, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, Queens
OCA has been invited to participate in the New York Art Book Fair, Printed Matter's annual fair of contemporary art books, catalogues, artists' books, art periodicals and fanzines, which will take place from 2 to 4 October at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, Queens.