on nothing 
one thing is of course that artforum.com does not have the highest standards when it comes to conflict of interest, another thing as well it is that I find a perverse interest in reading artforum.com's diary (called Scene & Herd) - and third thing is that I do have friends writing for them. A fourth thing is that I do not understand why Brian Sholis has a Blog that he never finds the time to update.

ps. do read April Elizabeth Lamm's post upon going to Norway. This is the third time in a year or so that a columnist at artforum.com goes up north. The two others being Brian Sholis at the opening of Elmgreen & Dragset's show in Bergen this year and Clair Bishop going way up north to my home part of norway. Check out the talkback. Someone did not like the Bishop’s formulations.


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about subjectivity and google hitrate 
I guess I am not single-minded. I guess that is good. I guess that is less good for my google hit rate. Not that I care. This site is not meant to become a popular blog, or at least I am doing no effort to make it more attractive or easier to reach. I guess that means it is a non-commercial blog? I am however hoping that those (any) of you that reads it (un/frequently) have a certain interest in it. I am not Tyler Green, I am not a journalist and I am not doing much updating on the arts life in Leipzig -- altough I live here. I should tell more about Leipzig and it's art life. Starting on Wednesday. I promise.

My hit rate at google (is it at all possible to find this blog without knowing the link og going through )vitakuben ? I do not think so. thats good. The idea was to have a space online (means someone could read it) that would force me to write some lines now and then. The blog also fits into the concept of Vitakuben the way it is today: underdeveloped and strange. We have done no projects since the oVERstation project (see http://ah.vitakuben.org -- click on oVERstation), and the only one that is doing something with his pages is Aksel (AH). The others (kjersti Bergesen and Nicolai Høgenhaug) are doing next to nothing online (As it happens, Aksel is the onlyone that do now how to program...)

But back to my writing. I do not write that good, not good at all if you ask me. I think the only reason why I am wanted at all by Norwegian (and some foreign mags) is that I do know a few people and I always hear the news early on (when it comes to Norway that is, when it comes to international new within the art world I am probably one of the first Norwegians to read about it, either by friends and contacts or by reading magazines, newsletters and other related written material ). Blogs, I do read a great deal of blogs. not all of them listed in my blogsroll, by there are a few that I read.

But one thing is to want to do something, another thing is to be able to live from it. I cannot live from writing and I know very few people that is independent and being able to pay their bills from writing. I know they do excist, but the marked is just not large enough. That combined with the fact that magazines
a) want many independent writers and
b) do not want to pay that well -- or cannot pay very much -- makes it difficoult to live from writing about contemporary art in a non journalist fashion.


The last two weeks I have been selling advertisement for the online magazine
kunstkritikk, building up a network within Norway, doing some chance, spam-like mails to more international magazines and institutions landing a deal with a few institution and a few international (as in: not Norwegian). That was fun. Organizing was fun. much more fun than writing.

And I mean, I did apply for a job in northern Norway a wile back. The application deadline in on Monday (second round) and I am expecting to be called up, mailed or something like this asking me to come to a job interview -- again. So you see, I hope to be able to work on vermitlung and developing new concepts rather that writing.
-- or so I hope --

got to go, have to write that piece on that the Norwegian gallery wang will not be closed down, but they will probably step down their engagement considerably.



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the death of a gallery 
there have been rumours for a long time: Galleri Wang , one of the flag ships of Norwegian contemporary art, has problems with their economy. A few days ago it became clearer as their two main investors pulled out.

This is not any longer breaking news in Norway since it was
one of the headlines of the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv yesterday.

It is now clear that Galleri Wang, that since they took in several new (Norwegian) artists in 2001, supporting their artist Børre Sæthre for his My Private Sky exhibition at the Astrup Fearnley Museum for Modern Art in Oslo same year, represented at both Art Basel (2002 or 2003) and the Armory Show(2003-04). They did statement with Børre Sæthre in Basel 2000.

The rumours have been more than a few, and last year it was reported (one more time by the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv) that they had problems and was considering several different models for the gallery.

Earlier this year they let the same artist they started to work with only two years earlier (but before that they had solo exhibitions with three of them during the last year or so) go. And not only them, some of the artists they had been working with for several years also had to go. It was said that they would cut down to only five artists (my guess would then be: Harald Fenn, Kjell Erik Killi Olsen, Kjell Nupen, Torbjørn Rødland and Børre Sæthre), make a project room up front for showing new artists and doing art dealing from the office. I guess this model is still interesting as it would cut costs - if the artists would agree working with the gallery under such conditions.

Now the gallery haven't showed anything since April this year, and for the new
Standard Oslo gallery would be showing Torbjørn Rødland at the NADA art fair came as a surprise for the Norwegian arts life.

One comes and one goes.




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artforum.com - conflicts of interest 
it is such a relief to read MAN, and I am very glad every time he touches upon the very delicate subject of Artforum.com and their sloppy editorial work.
here is another take on the subject.
I think the reason is that the art world does not have the same look upon conflic of interest that the rest of the publishing world has. We had an incident here in norway as well.
Two magazines, one subject, same writer, almost identical texts. And this happened twice. This without talking about this to any of the editors. It is not the same, but still interesting and on the same line.




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more about Art in Nordland 
During the project Artistic Interruptions, Art in Nordland has produced 18 new projects, some of them moving into documentary. Several of them is stirring quite some debates either internaly in the municipality where they are done others by the artists themself
(one project is defined as a failure by the artist and one artist closed her project). The one most debated is the project by the Norse duo Charlotte Thiis Evensen and Lisa Karlsson and their project in Nyksund. The unusual situation at hand is that the producer of the documentary film (art in nordland) would like the film stopped from being shown.

One can follow the debate on the norwegian version of th website only.







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