The workshop will explore how artistic and cultural production relates to political and economic structures. Of particular interest in this context is the political, cultural and economic configurations of the northernmost parts of Scandinavia – such as Sápmi, Barents Region, or the different nation states. This is an area where local, national, and international interests overlap and contradict each other; a space where relations between nation states, global capital and local ethnicities are currently being negotiated.
While the geopolitical stakes here might make this an interesting case for art projects – and it has indeed had a lot of artistic attention – there is also the question of how contemporary art relates to these economic and political aspects. For instance, one might suggest that artistic or cultural productions that deal with locality, history and culture produce currencies that take part in politics and the economy. From this perspective the issue might not be whether art and culture can operate independently from market or politics; rather, it might depend on how contemporary art articulates positions in relation to such political, economic and cultural complexities.
Also, one might want to consider contemporary art in the same way. An understanding of contemporary art as a structure with its own economic and distributional logic, would imply that it could be thought of as geographically produced and articulated. From this perspective a structural investigation could reveal something about what is at stake in the relation between contemporary art and the periphery. The conceptualisation of such a peripheral position could open up to a discussion of the limits and possibilities that should inform any attempt at articulating a critical position for contemporary art in the north.
Participants: Pavel Borisov (art historian, philosopher, Russia) (TBC), Marysia Lewandowska (artist, theorist, United Kingdom), Joar Nango (architect, Norway), Andrea Phillips (art theorist, United Kingdom), Åsa Sonjasdotter (artist, Germany/Norway), Kristin Tårnesvik (artist, Norway).
Co-organizers and participants: Morten Torgersrud (artist, Norway) and Hilde Methi (curator, festival director, Norway).
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Lewandowska, Marysia
Marysia Lewandowska is a Polish born, London based artist who has collaborated with Neil Cummings between 1995–2008. She is a co-author of many projects such as The Value of Things (Birkhauser, 2000), Give & Take (Victoria&Albert Museum, 2001), Capital (Tate Modern, 2001), Enthusiasm (CSW Zamek Ujazdowski Warsaw, Whitechapel Gallery London, Kunst Werke Berlin, Tapies Foundation Barcelona, 2004/06), Museum Futures (Moderna Museet, Stockholm 2008). Those projects, have explored the public function of archives, collections and exhibitions in an age characterized by relentless privatization. Her new project Tender Museum (Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, 2009) addressed the relationship between artist and critic through staging fictional radio broadcast. Her current interests engage with legitimacy of conversation as a site of the unacknowledged knowledge, including Women’s Audio Archive (CCS Bard College, NY, 2009/10). Our Radical Parents (Mossutställningar, Stockholm 2010) is planned as a film and a book based on a series of conversations exploring radical acts present in practices of everyday life, as well as questions of generational hand down. Museum Vocabularies (Calvert22 Foundation, London 2010) project traces the dissemination of cultural activities under communism. Double Act. 1917 is a recent commission for the Sámi Art Festival in Trondheim. Marysia is a Professor at Konstfack where in 2005 she established Timeline: Artists’ Film and Video Archive. // www.marysialewandowska.com // www.womensaudioarchive.org // www.enthusiastsarchive.net
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Methi, Hilde
Hilde Methi, Kirkenes, Norway, works as an independent curator and culture worker. She is interested in economic and geopolitical issues while engaging into local, cross-border situations through various collaborative projects, often of extended duration involving certain groups of people. She worked at different art institutions since 1993. From 2002 to 2007, she was the director of the art and culture production company Pikene på Broen (Girls on the Bridge) in Kirkenes. Methi is responsible for the Sami Art Festival 2008-2011.
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Nango, Joar
Joar Nango is an architect and artist based in Oslo, Norway. Nango graduated with an MA in architecture from NTNU in Trondheim (2008), where he also has been involved in researching the subject of Saami architecture. He is currently editing and publishing Sámi Huksendáidda, a small fanzine that researches Saami architecture from different perspectives. He is inspired by the creative simplicity and DIY mentality that exists within northern rural environments. In addition to his projects in printed matter, he is also working collaboratively on projects that intersect art, design and architecture.
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Phillips, Andrea
Dr Andrea Phillips (London) is Reader in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Director of the research project Curating Architecture which aims to interrogate ideas proposed by recent and recurring influences of architecture on artistic and curatorial practice. She publishes on the relation between politics, aesthetics and the design of space; art, architecture and cultural capital in a contemporary transnational milieu. She is currently preparing a book on ‘transnational aesthetics’ which argues that globalization is shaped by, and shapes contemporary aesthetic forms as a critical refinement of its more orthodox understanding as a process described through context, thus repositioning aesthetics as a term of politics. Phillips has published widely on art, architecture and politics, and is a regular speaker at conferences and public events on the subjects.
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Sonjasdotter, Åsa
Åsa Sonjasdotter works in Berlin/Tromsø. She studied at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norway, and at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, MFA from the latter. Since 2007 she works as a Professor at the Art Academy in Tromsø. Sonjasdotter focuses on place, identity, power, relations and language. An ongoing project is Potato Perspective. Her projects often function as social forums, in which the artist herself often acts and interacts with the subjects involved. Sonjasdotter has been a founding member of Women Down the Pub from 1996 to 2006, which operates within the current debate on gender. Projects include the anthology Udsigt /View – feminist strategies in Danish visual art, 2004.
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Tårnesvik, Kristin
Kristin Tårnesvik is an artist based in Bergen. Her focus of research has
developed from questioning ethnicity, geographic and national belonging
in the North, to investigate political ideology and hegemonic structures.
Focus in particular is upon the reciprocity between destruction and revolution,
vision and utopia, and acts of the individual within a political system.
She works with video, installation and photography. Tårnesvik is also a cofunder
of the artist-run space Knipsu in Bergen. -
Torgersrud, Morten
Morten Torgersrud works as an artist based in Kirkenes, Norway. Torgesrud situates his practice in the context of contemporary political configurations of the northern landscape such as Sápmi and Barents. Considering ontological and conceptual aspects of photography and space/place, his research aims at developing perspectives on photography through its relation to a political-economic landscape.