'Art, the Social and Gender Politics in the 1960s and 70s' is a symposium investigating the political and gender implications of artistic and cultural practice of the 1960s and 70s, in Scandinavia and internationally. The symposium is part of the research and exhibition project 'Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia?', organised by OCA, and includes lectures and discussions that develop issues explored in the exhibition. These focus on specific political and cultural events of the time, including sex reform movements, activist art and feminist art practice, as well as individual presentations of work by artists who were either implicated in these movements or whose work reflect the spirit of the time.
The papers examine, among others, artists' role in the change of
pornography laws in Scandinavia; the activities
of Gras in Norway, both as an artists'
collective and cultural and political activists; the avant-garde
exhibition-events organised by Gruppe
66 and Konkret Analyse in
Bergen; the pioneering experiments with sound in the work
of Öyvind
Fahlström and Erkki Kurenniemi;
the innovative distribution strategies employed by artists
internationally at the time; and their exploration of relational
activities and notions of the
collective.
