As part of Astrup Fearnley´s Museum of Modern Art’s survey of young Norwegian contemporary Art, Lights On, Rakett was invited to do a project in their Guest Room.
Exhibiton view, sound installation part of Investigation of a Model of Influence (2008). Photo: Anders Valde
Exhibiton view Model of Influence (2008). Photo: Anders Valde
Exhibiton view, Investigation of a Model of Influence (2008). Photo: Anders Valde
Detail, sound installation part of Investigation of a Model of Influence (2008). Photo: Anders Valde
Wall text with the program part of Investigation of a Model of Influence (2008). Photo: Anders Valde
What is politics, and what is the political function of art? Reading with Espen Sommer Eide and Arne Skaug Olsen. Photo: Rakett
Exhibiton view, sound installation part of Investigation of a Model of Influence (2008). Photo: Anders Valde
What is politics, and what is the political function of art? Reading with Espen Sommer Eide and Arne Skaug Olsen. Photo: Rakett
Installation view, Social Model. Why is art so important? Workshop with Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen. Photo: Raket
Workshop: Social Model. Why is art so important? With Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen. Photo: Rakett
Social Model. Why is art so important? Workshop with Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen. Photo: Rakett
Talk: Who is Gerd Stern and what does he know about Michael Asher? With Michael Baers. Live sound by Centre of the Universe. Photo: Anders Valde
Talk: Who is Gerd Stern and what does he know about Michael Asher? With Michael Baers. Live sound by Centre of the Universe. Photo: Anders Valde
Invitation card, Investigation of a Model of Influence. Design: Rakett
Investigation of a Model of Influence consisted of an installation (sound and photo) and discursive events (see program below). We see the project as an investigative work in dealing with the power structures and processes of the Astrup Fearnley Museum, this particular exhibition and of the contemporary art field at large. The sound installation is composed by answers given to three questions that we posed to several artists, curators and directors within the field of contemporary art.
The questions were:
1. What constructions of meaning does an artwork create and how do these influence other structures of society (as opposed to political meaning, scientific etc)? Could you describe a work that you consider important/influential?
2. What strategies could one (or does one) implement at art institutions to give art a more important role in society?
3. Is there still anything like institutional critique? If so, what does it mean in the present context?
As part of the installation, Rakett also asked for an image that could be part of representing the thoughts elaborated by each contributor. The printed photos displayed in the exhibition-space are all chosen and sent by our contributors.
Rakett is grateful to following contributors for lending us their time and thoughts:
Matei Bejenaru, Yvette Brackman, Tone Hansen, Linus Elmes, Insert Name Here – Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen and Jenny Yurshansky, Maaretta Jaukkuri, Camila Marambio, Matt Packer, Ron Sluik, Kristin Tårnesvik, Magdalena Ziolkowska and Tal Ben Zvi. See short bios below.
The discursive program included contributions from Espen Sommer-Eide & Arne Skaug Olsen, Michael Baers and Geir Tore Holm & Søssa Jørgensen
PROGRAM
Thursday February 14th at 17:00
Opening
Friday February 15th at 13:00
What is politics, and what is the political function of art?
With Espen Sommer Eide and Arne Skaug Olsen
French philosopher Jacques Rancière tries to establish a new relation between aesthetics and politics through an investigation of the two by introducing the term “the distribution of the sensible”. Rancière uses the term as an aggregate to reveal something in common to the sphere of politics, and the sphere of aesthetics. As an attempt to answer these questions, Espen Sommer Eide and Arne Skaug Olsen invited the public to a collective reading of Rancière’s definition of the distribution of the sensible.
“…the distribution of the sensible [is] the system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it.” – Jacques Rancière
Arne Skaug Olsen is a visual artist, director of Flaggfabrikken and editor at Ctrl+Z Publishing.
Espen Sommer Eide is a musician and philosopher, as part of the musical projects Alog and Phonophani. He has released several albums on the record label Rune Grammofon.
Saturday February 16th at 13:00
Who is Gerd Stern and what does he know about Michael Asher?
With Michael Baers. Live sound by Centre of the Universe
How do institutional critique practices attempt to resituate the viewer’s perception of the institution and the art object? What limits are then encountered by attempts to redefine the nature of something as concrete and structurally opaque as a museum or conceptually entrenched as a normative definition of ‘art’? And more to the point, what is the lost psychedelic component of institutional critique? Michael Baers seeks to address these and other questions in a talk show format with special guests and entertainment, psychedelic musings and, of course, an incisive interrogation of the nature and function of the museum and critical art practice. While preferring to let the connection between psychedelia and critical practice remain obscure for the moment, as a programmatic foretaste of the afternoon’s agenda, Baers introduces here Timothy Leary’s concept of Set (as in ‘mindset’ or attitude) and Setting (ambience, décor, and music, particularly), the therapist’s principal tools in guiding the psychedelic experience. Museums also make use of set and setting to ideologically orient visitors in relation to art and its institutions. One might propose institutional critique as instituting a counter-setting, which then, hopefully, induces a counter-set. Come reprogram both your mind and the museum.
Michael Baers is an American artist based in Berlin who commonly works with publications and comics. He is currently collaborating with the Dutch publication Fucking Good Art on a comic about LSD and Switzerland for their upcoming Swiss Issue.
Sunday February 17th 13:00
Social Model. Why is art so important?
With Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen
A workshop with Søssa Jørgensen and Geir Tore Holm that practically investigates how contemporary art can function with relevance to society and on its own terms.
Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen live and work in Oslo, Gildeskål and Tromsø. They have both examined from the Art Academy in Trondheim (1995). Their individual practices as visual artists include video, performance and installations, and they have also curated, written about and taught art. Together with Kamin Lertchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija, they started Sørfinnset skole/the nord land in 2003. Jørgensen has explored sound art since the middle of the 1990s through her collaborative project Ballongmagasinet. Holm has been the project leader for the newly established Art Academy in Tromsø. They are both concerned with social responsibility and ecological thinking.
CONTRIBUTORS
Insert Name Here – Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen and Jenny Yurshansky, established in 2005, is a transnational curatorial collaboration consisting of the artists Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen and Jenny Yurshansky. www.insert-name-here.org
Kristin Taarnesvik is an artist from Bergen, Norway, that works with photography, video and text. www.flaggfabrikken.net
Tone Hansen is a curator and artist. She lives and works in Oslo, Norway. She is a curator at the Henie Onstad Art Centre. Hansen also hold a research fellowship at the Oslo National Academy of Art in Oslo.
Magdalena Ziolkowska – art historian and critic, guest curator at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and curator at Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, Polen.
Linus Elmes, is an artist and curator living in Stockholm. His practice is based on the non-polemic and imaginary.
Maaretta Jaukkuri, born in Rovaniemi, Finland. Jaukkuri has amongst several commissions and positions, been the senior curator at Kiasma and during 1989-98, she co-curated the major international sculpture programme Skulpturlandskap Nordland/Artscape Nordland. Newly appointed artistic director at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.
Matei Bejenaru is a visual artist and artistic director of Periferic Biennial, organized in Iasi, Romania since 1997. He is the founder of Vector Cultural Association and teaches photography at the Arts University of Iasi.
Tal Ben Zvi, Curator of Heinrich Böll Foundation, Tel Aviv (1998-2001) and Hagar Art Gallery, Jaffa (2001-2003). Currently completing her doctoral thesis at Tel Aviv University on “Representations of the Nakba in Palestinian Art”. www.hagar-gallery.com
Matt Packer is a curator based in London, and from March 2008 will be Curator of Exhibitions & Projects at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, Ireland.
Ron Sluik (NL, 1961) is an audiovisual artist. Co-founder of artcentre AoRTa, founder of Moldovan art Foundation, director of the board of the Biennial of Young Artists Bucuresti, independant curator and advisor and guest lecturer at several art academies in Europe, www.sluik.info.
Yvette Brackman is a visual artist living and working in Denmark. Her work investigates the relationship between material production and social relations focusing on identity, displacement and borders. It explores the mixing of cultures in order to better understand ourselves in society.
Camila Marambio is a curator based in Valparaíso, Chile. She is currently working as artistic coordinator of Proyecto Piloto, an asociative program between municipal schools and art spaces in the city of Valparaiso.
Investigation of a Model of Influence – including use of subversive strategies and attempts of aesthetic practice and experience was part of Lights On, an exhibition at Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, February 14th to March 2nd 2008.
In conjunction with the exhibition a publication was published where the survey of artistic practices is presented alongside commissioned texts reflecting upon the young Norwegian artists of 2007. Published by Skira Editore.
This project was generously supported by the Municipality of Bergen.
