The Nordic Network of Public Art Producers (NNPAP) was initiated by Mossutställningar in Stockholm, to create a Nordic platform for professionals in the field of art that actively produces in the public space or relates to the public realm. The overall objective was to strengthen regional cooperation and create a discussion around issues related to this field. Although an independent network body, the Nordic network may find engagements with its pan-European counterpart – ENPAP (European Network of Public Art Producers) launched by Mossutställningar and the network partners in 2010. NNPAP was funded by a grant from Culture Point North.
The Nordic Network of Public Art Producers (NNPAP) consists of Rakett (Åse Løvgren and Karolin Tampere) from Norway and Publik (Nis Røhmer, Johanne Løgstrup, Katarina Stenbeck) from Denmark and Mossutställningar.
Workshop and meeting discussing A Changing Public Sphere
hosted by Nordic Network of Public Art Producers
30 Sept – 1 Oct 2011, Holbæk, Denmark
With the workshop and meeting, NNPAP wanted to provide a forum for public art professionals to engage with issues central to artistic production in the public sphere. The aim was to stimulate professional knowledge, exchange and networking in the Nordic region and to spell out the specific challenges that await public art producers acting in the region. Recognizing that the public sphere is a construct that needs to be constantly redefined we wanted to discuss how art and artists relate to the public sphere in the Nordic countries today.
The meeting was organized in such a way that the participants, through short presentations, could gain from each other’s experiences and thoughts around their own practices. Each session was moderated by an external participant who also compiled a report from the discussions.
The workshop and meeting contained individual presentations and the focus for their activity. Also there were three major workshops:
Workshop: Looking at the past
Who are our predecessors? Are there any battles that we have forgotten? How can we learn from the past? What glossary has been used to describe a practice today commonly referred to as art in the public realm? Do we want our practice to be remembered, how? What is the future, where do you go from here?
Please bring documentation and images from projects that you would like to highlight.
Moderator: Line Halvorsen
Observer: Nis Rømer
Workshop: A changing public sphere?
What changes have occurred in the public sphere the last five years or so
that might need other responses or strategies when working with art? Describe the
premises for working with art that relates to the public sphere today and how you see it from your position. The current situation for the extreme cutbacks for culture in the
Netherlands would function as an important case study and background: how would our practice be affected if faced with such changes in our region? Alternative economies or activities within cultural production, other strategies?
Moderator: Andjeas Ejiksson
Observer: Line Halvorsen
Workshop/Topical discussion: Fiction-Non-Fiction
How do you use your artistic license and fiction in social projects?
Moderator: Nis Rømer.
Observer: Andjeas Ejiksson
Participants:
From Denmark
Morten Goll, artist & cofounder of: www.trampolinehouse.dk
Nynne Haugaard og Nikolaj Kielsmark, artists, Wish you were here
YNKB, artist group (Kirsten Dufour, Finn Thybo & Joen P. Vedel)
Berit Nørgaard, artist
Johanne Løgstrup, curator
Nis Rømer, artist
From Norway
Ingrid Lønningdal, artist
Ingrid Book and Carina Hedén, artists
Aeron Bergman, artist
Moderator/observer: Line Halvorsen, artist and curator
From Sweden
Niga Hamasor, Sprong kommunikation
Kristoffer Svenberg, artist, The New Beauty Council
akcg(anna kindgren and carina gunnars), artists
Andjeas Ejiksson, artist and writer
From Finland
Paula Toppila, curator, Pro Arte Foundation /Taidesäätiö
More about the participants
Ingrid Lønningdal (1981), artist and writer based in Oslo, Norway, received her Master’s degree from The National Art Academy in Oslo in 2008. Through photo, text and drawing her practice deals with issues related to architecture and the transferral of knowledge. She has recently exhibited in Sogn og Fjordane Kunstmuseum, Førde; Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo; Der Kunstverein, seit 1817, Hamburg and 0047, Oslo. She is also part of the artist group Institute for Colour, formed in 2006 as a reaction to the termination of a subject-area of the same name at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo. In the educational vacuum that ensued, students and tutors proceeded with an autonomous educational programme, which later evolved into a collective art project. This gave rise to exhibitions, workshops, collaborations and the production of fanzines, revolving around issues of autonomy, the role of theory in art practice and art pedagogical models and questions. The group, which now consists of Silje Hogstad, Steffen Håndlykken, Ingrid Lønningdal and Elizabeth Schei, has created a transversal production format where social processes and collective material, rather than personal signatures, are the basis for diverse projects.
Pro Arte Foundation Finland seeks to promote art as a resource for democratic society, and as an important part of human life and everyday existence. Art articulates and interprets the world and allows alternayive viewpoints to be raised. Contemporary art is contnually changing. The Foundation supports this changein art and gives it prominence in its work. The commissioned public works produced by the foundation explore the numerous ways in which manifestations of community emerge in art.
Andjeas Ejiksson (Sweden, b. 1978) lives in Stockholm, Sweden. He is an artist and a writer who is mainly interested in the histories and formations of life in publics and counterpublics. His work often plays with the rules and roles of critical discourse. Andjeas graduated from the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Sweden in 2004 and was researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, Netherlands from 2008 to 2009. Until recently he was the editor of the Swedish art magazine Geist.
Aeron Bergman is an artist and professor born in Detroit and currently based in Oslo. He has worked in an artist duo with Alejandra Salinas for the past 13 years. The pair has had solo exhibitions at Centre d’Art Santa Monica (Barcelona), Serralves Museum (Porto), Röda Sten Art Center (Gothenburg), Centre d’Art Contemporain (Geneva), IMO (Copenhagen), Dumbo Arts Center (New York) and participated in group shows at ICC (Tokyo), the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, CCCB (Barcelona), Kunstnernes Hus and Henie Onstad Art Center (Oslo). They have also done electro-acoustic music and performance art works in venues around the world such as Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), the Knitting Factory, (New York), Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art (Copenhagen) and MUDAM (Luxembourg). Bergman and Salinas have directed Lucky Kitchen editions for electroacoustic music and published 15 solo audio works. They have been awarded an Honorary Mention and an Award of Distinction by the Prix Ars Electronica (Linz). In 2011 they created INCA: Institute for Neo Connotative Action, an artist, poet and scholar in residency program, exhibition and lecture space in Detroit, USA. The pair also curate the nobelprize.no yearly online exhibition. They have taught and lectured in art schools such as Umeå Art Academy, Malmö Academy of Art, Trondheim Art Academy and the International Academy of Art, Palestine in Ramallah. Bergman is currently professor and chair of intermedia at Kunstakademiet, the fine art faculty of the Oslo National Academy of Art. www.incainstitute.org / www.nobelprize.no
Book and Hedén have worked and exhibited together since 1987. Today they enjoy international recognition, and can point to frequent exhibitions since the early 90s. They work as a pair in many different mediums, but usually in a direct and documentary idiom. In recent years the artists’ projects have become increasingly more explicitly political and more clearly pronounced in their questioning of ethical matters. Book and Hedén make the most of the openness of the field of art in order to critically remember history, and comment on contemporary politics.
Ingrid Book (1951) and Carina Hedén (1948) live and work in Oslo. Ingrid Book was educated in Oslo, Carina Hedén in Lund, Paris and Maastricht. Previously these two artists have exhibited together at venues such as Göteborgs Konstmuseum (Gothenburg Art Museum), Salzburg Kunstverein (Salzburg Art Society), Kunstnernes Hus (The Artists’ House, Oslo) and Fotogalleriet (The Photo Gallery, Oslo). In addition they have taken part in a number of group exhibitions worldwide.
Line Halvorsen (1976) is an artist and curator based in Oslo, Norway. She graduated from the Art Academy in Bergen and Academy of Malmø in 2005. Previously she was doing literary studies at the University of Tromsø¸ and also a film foundation school in the islands of Lofoten. Halvorsen has mainly been involved in the language between film and video art, but is more and more concerned with the premiss of the exhibition, and how the exhibition as a language is discussing art. She now holds a position as assistant professor in art theory at the Academy of Arts in Oslo, KHiO. Since 2001 Halvorsen has been involved in numerous projects as a curator, artist and essayist. In the time coming she will work with projects at WIP:Stockholm, Tegnebiennalen 2012, Oslo, Østfold kunstnersenter, Fredrikstad, Gallery Format, Oslo and curate the Graduation Exhibition for the Art Academy Oslo, KHiO.
Sprong kommunikation
During the period 2008-2010 Sprong developed five different projects. Each one have had a common goal to find varius methods to devlop new networks to foster diversity within the cultural sector. Through these projects we’ve been able to create meetings between people that cultural institutions seldomly succeed in reaching.
Morten Goll, artist & co-founder of the Trampoline House; A user-driven culture house for asylum seekers and Danes working for a just and humane refugee- and asylum policy in Denmark. www.trampolinehouse.dk
Nynne Haugaard og Nikolaj Kielsmark, both artists. Together they published ”Wish You Were Here” (Revolver Publishing, 2011) as a result of two years of fieldwork in Nepal, where they were working as NGOs. The book takes a critical look at what is called ”Aidland”, on how how aid is distributed and also investigates post-colonialism in relation to development work.
YNKB is an artist group founded in 2002 and based on Ydre Nørrebro, the most densely populated area of Copenhagen and also the part of Copenhagen with the highest percentage of immigrants. YNKB wants to leave the elitist centres of Art and want to establish cultural and artistic activities where people live. Because YNKB see art as a collective research project on a global interrelational and human scale based on humanity, openness, self-determination, participation, generosity and warmth, YNKB wants to use dialogue and participation as a method of involving participants and audiences in a common artistic process. (Kirsten Dufour, Finn Thybo & Joen P Vedel will participate from YNKB).
Berit Nørgaard, artist
Reflecting the social potential of everyday-life, Berits art practice focuses on human relations and interactions. She is specifically interested in art operating as part of society. That is to say art which is being used as an integrated tool to suggest creative solutions and new lines of action in our daily life.
Johanne Løgstrup is a co-founder of publik, independent curator and writer of several books. Among her projects are ”The World is Flat” on mapping, and the ongoing; Kontoret for undergrundsanliggender www.subterramania.dk
Nis Rømer´s work evolves around the social and political organizations of space and how processes of globalization affects the city and our everyday environment. He is co-founder of Free Soil, an international artist group dealing with sustainability. He is a founder and active member of publik; an organization that produces art in public spaces. He has been a guest professor at the faculty of LIFE science at University of Copenhagen (2007/2008). He is currently teaching at the Kunsthøjskole in Holbæk. www.free-soil.org / www.field-work.dk / www.gaaafstand.blogspot.com
Stella d’Ailly is from an artist background but worked as a curator since 1998 both within various institutions and as a freelance curator. She is co-founder of Mossutställningar.
Mossutställningar is a non-profit organisation founded to widen the possibilities for artistic productions outside the traditional institutional framework. We facilitate conditions for art production and are not tied to a specific space. Often in dialogue with other operators within the public sphere, we create art projects in Stockholm. Each art project is made for a site- or contextual framework or else directly from an artist’s vision. We provide room for new meetings between artist, audience, works and sites.
akcg(anna kindgren and carina gunnars)
We have collaborated in various constellations for many years. Between 2000 – 2006 in the project love and devotion together with artists Ingrid Eriksson and Karin Johnson. Our works touch upon different disciplines. However, the point of departure is that we are artists and nothing else. Our works often develop out of a specific situation or issue. When our interest is aroused, we are impregnated by meeting people, studies and journeys – experiences that help us move further into a more profound understanding of the situation. We do not hurry this process.
The recent neoliberal revolution in Sweden has made us reassess the financial and political situation that we are slowly engulfed by – both locally and globally. Our objects of inquiry are Swedish institutions and cities. Among other things, we have explored the urban space and its limitations for civic activities, which are regulated by law and by commercial interests. A research trip to Brazil inspired our interest in the urbanity we encountered there.
The New Beauty Council/ Kristoffer Svenberg
The citizens of a city might have different opinions of good & bad, beautiful & ugly, fun or boring, but they have one thing in common – the public space. At odds or finding a consensus, the public realm is a stage for constant negotiation. The New Beauty Council investigates concepts like the public, beauty and ugliness, what they consist of and how they can be (re-)defined, and aims to identify and examine the conditions which influence our experience of the city.
