| week 43. | week 44. | week 45+46. | Week 49+50. | Week 51+52. | |
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| 1. theory |
Wednesday, 21 October/ 19:00 Speaker: Peter Osborne Subject: Fragment and Project: From Schlegel's Athenaeum Fragments to LeWitt's 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' |
Wednesday, 28 October/ 19:00 Speaker: Ina Blom Subject: On Lynda Benglis's Mumble (An Instance of Videosociality) |
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| 2. practice |
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)* Wednesday, 11 November / 11:00–16:00 Organiser: Anne Hilde Neset Workshop: Audio Interpretation: Writing on Sound* |
Wednesday, 2 and 9 December/ 11:00–16:00 Organiser: Stuart Bailey Workshop: On Library, Archive and 'Service' (Part 1 and Part 2)* |
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| 3. project |
21 October to 19 December 'Sol LeWitt's 'Sentences on Conceptual Art': Manuscript and Draft Materials 1968–69' |
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28 October to 19 December 'Lynda Benglis's Mumble (1972) and Robert Morris's Exchange (1973)' |
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| 4. history | |||||
all events take place at Nedre gate 7
*participation is open to the public with prior registration. To register please send an email to Anne Charlotte Hauen at anne.charlotte.hauen@oca.no with your contact information and name of the workshop you whish to sign up for.
'Columns, Grottos, Niches: The Grammar of Forms'
On Art Criticism, Writing, Publishing and Distribution
'The Grammar of Forms' is a series public events, workshops and presentations that will take place throughout autumn 2009 and winter 2010 at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 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. 'The Grammar of Forms' consists of a series of public events with a pedagogical remit, in which writers, artists, critics, publishers and theorists will investigate different experiences of and approaches to writing and language, specifically in relation to art. Starting in October, the programme will continue through spring 2010, making of OCA a public forum for learning, practice and exchange of knowledge and information, and further developing our commitment to rethinking the relationship that a contemporary art institution can have to its audience. As a complement to this programme of events, OCA will host a series of projects, including presentation of artworks and libraries of publications made available to the public for consultation and reading, further transforming OCA's public space into a place for production and exchange of discourse.
A/THEORY + PROJECT
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 Friedrch Schlegel's Athenaeum Fragments, one of the defining documents of the early German Romanticism, as the basis for a new interpretation of Sol LeWit's Sentences on Conceptual Art, focusing in particular on the issues of 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.
B/THEORY + HISTORY
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) suggest that this relationship is the unique result of the productive framework of televisual technologies, and has no self-evident correlate in any reality beyond this framework. Ultimately, this collaborative work opens up certain fundamental questions concerning the social art practices of the 1960s and 70s, and calls out for redefinitions of the very models of sociality that tend to underpin our discussion of such work.
28 October to 19 December
Project: 'Lynda Benglis's Mumble (1972) and Robert Morris's Exchange (1973)'
In 1972, Robert Morris and Lynda Benglis agreed to exchange videos in order to develop a dialogue between each other's work. Mumble brings together repeated scenes and gestures, featuring Morris and Benglis's brother Jim, and a narrative of irrelevant, confusing and often purposefully untrue statements. As Benglis's narration degenerates into a meaningless, repetitive pulse, Mumble disrupts the convenient fiction that the image presented on screen is complete on itself. Morris's tape, Exchange, is a response to Benglis's Mumble. At the beginning of the tape, Morris comments on the nature of the collaboration, their interaction, and what they represent to each other. An asymmetry of elements forms as the tape moves from the professional towards the personal – a shift that gives the work humanity and, in relation to the development of early Conceptual video, its unique historical importance.
C/PRACTICE
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 will investigate art criticism, its aesthetics, its ideologies and its institutional role with an emphasis on the Norwegian context. The workshop will 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? The workshop will begin with a one-day public event of talks by Bradley and additional speakers and screenings, and will continue with several sessions culminating in a day of public talks by the participants in 2010. For more information please click here.
D/PRACTICE
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? In this workshop, The Wire's deputy editor Anne Hilde Neset will explore various approaches to writing about sound: journalistic, fictional, personal, historical and theoretical. The workshop will sample music and sound clips and discuss how sonic experience can be put into words, and will include reading various examples of writing on sound and debating their different approaches and effects. Participation is open to the public with prior registration. For more information please click here.
E/PRACTICE
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 being developed by Dexter Sinister. The idea of 'The Serving Library', a place where both books and alcohol are available, functions as a roundabout way to reflect on the way in which printed and unprinted material can be articulated and preserved within a public place that is both educational and recreational. Participation is open to the public with prior registration. For more information please click here.
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. The Fair hosts over 200 international organisations, presenting a diverse range of contemporary art publications, as well as a special exhibition of books, posters and ephemera by Richard Prince. For the Fair, OCA will present our publication Verksted, including Ü, by Olav Westphalen (no.10), Populism and Genre (no.9, with contributions from, among others, Victor Burgin and John Karniauskas), Constructing the Political in Contemporary Art (no.8, with contributions from Hito Steyerl and Éric Alliez) and Art of Welfare (no.7, with contributions from Claire Bishop and Victor D. Norman).
Stuart Bailey is a graphic designer 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). His work circumscribes various aspects of graphic design, writing and editing, most consistently in the form of publications made in close collaboration with artists. Since 2002 he has worked with Will Holder under the compound name Will Stuart on a broader range of projects, including theatre and performance. Since 2006 he has worked together with David Reinfurt as Dexter Sinister, also the name of their basement space on New York City's Lower East Side that operates as a workshop and occasional bookstore.
Ina Blom is a Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo. Her fields of research and teaching are modernism and avant-garde studies, and contemporary art and aesthetics, with a particular focus on media art practices and media aesthetics. A former music critic and DJ, she has also worked extensively as an art critic and curator, contributing to many art magazines and journals. She is the author of On the Style Site: Art, Sociality and Television Culture (Sternberg Press, 2007), The Postal Performance of Ray Johnson (Sittard, 2003) and Joseph Beuys (Gyldendal, 2001).
Will Bradley is an art critic and curator based in Oslo. His publications include the books Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader (editor, Tate Publishing, 2007), Self-Organisation/Counter-economic Strategies (co-editor, Sternberg Press, 2007) and the essays 'The New New Monuments', Metropolis M, 2008 and 'Dreaming of Dreaming' (for the 'Dream Politics' edition of UKS Forum, 2009). He has curated many exhibitions, including 'Forms of Resistance' (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2007, with Charles Esche and Phillip van den Bossche) and 'Radical Software, on the underground influences on Open Source culture' (Wattis Institute, San Francisco, 2006).
Anne Hilde Neset is deputy editor of The Wire magazine and the co-founder of Electra (with Lina Dzuverovic). She has commissioned, curated and produced a number of projects, including the 'Enter' series of permanent sound installations (Stavanger, 2008), 'Her Noise' (South London Gallery, London, 2005), the film/performance commission Perfect Partner by Kim Gordon, Tony Oursler and Phil Morrison (Barbican Centre, London and international tour, 2005) and The Sounds Of Christmas installation and performance project by Christian Marclay (Tate Modern, London, 2005).
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. His books include The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (Verso, 1995), Philosophy in Cultural Theory (Routledge, 2000), Conceptual Art (Phaidon, 2002), How to Read Marx (Granta, 2005) and Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory (editor, 3 Volumes, Routledge, 2005). He has contributed to many art journals and catalogues. A collection of his recent essays, El arte más allá de la estética: Ensayos filosóficos sobre el arte contemporáneo, will be published by CENDEAC, Murcia, in October 2009.