Kadoya Japan.  
I got a travel grant from the Norwegian Art Critic Association, to go to the island Naoshima (Naoshima ), which is very fucking nice for several reasons.
I do really want to go there to see what the Benesse Corporation is doing out there. This mainly because I am involved as some sort of ‚local producer‘ for my home municipality in the project Art in Nordland-Artistic interruptions (Art in Nordland - Artistic interuption ) in my home county (Nordland in Northern Norway for those who does not know). To take the AiN-project first:
In 1988 AK Dolven a Norwegian artists suggested in a roundtable on something about art (nobody knows anymore what the theme was ) that they should make “a sculpture park” of the whole county (for the record: The County of Nordland is ....square kilometres large and ...kilometres long).Said, done. They initiated a project were each of the 36 municipalities was offered to get a sculpture of a contemporary artist. There was much discussion. There where many voices speaking against it and many tax payers where not that found of that their municipality was going to waste money on rubbish that anyone could produce (to quote my uncle). The project Sculpturescape Nordland was born and was carried out in the years between 1989 and 1999. (Skulpturescape Nordland).

In Naoshima the Benesse corporation have established a art site with close connection to the nature and culture surrounding the space. They have build up a collection of art through thinking site specific, long term culture related in their projects. They are mostly concerned with artist that have the interest to do projects that are rather large and clear cut in their idea of that all works is commissioned should be in direct connection to the island and its culture and hisory. Especially should one mentioned their Art House Project where they buy houses that are not more in use but still is important for the memory of the island itself and ask artist if they can make an artwork out of it. Not restoring the houses, but making art work of the whole house, usually together with an architect. The project is in many ways to discover a community rather than to establish a collection by merely buying art.

The Sculpturescape was a grand success in terms of both artistic development and dialog with the communities. There have been discussed much and some still do not like contemporary art but do admit that this debate going on with neighbours and in the newspapers makes it possible to discuss other sides of a town and a culture than merely the issues dealing with politics, economy, elderly, children and education etc. Thus this the county initiated another project in 2002 / the Art in Nordland thing. At the same time as they wanted to continue their sculpturescape `collection`, they wanted a more flexible approach to the art side and not only sculpture. It did at that point get the largest founding from the state of Norway ever, and could more relay on this rather than seeking sponsors and partners other places.

The Naoshima Art Site is owned and run by Benesse Corporation. A rather large company who does a lot in connection to contemporary art. Since 1995 it gives out the Benesse prize at Venice Biennale.

I am looking forward to see the site itself and talk to the people being involved.
Art, nature and culture is the themes for both places.


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I have no theory about this text (Annika Ström) 
After seeing the Funky lesion exhibition in at BüroFriedrich in Berlin last autumn I have been thinking a little bit about the exhibition. I do not know why. Or I did not know why until I stumbled over the catalogue the other. It seems that not only is there a catalogue, but the exhibition did wander to BAWAG foundation. All the artist talks that I missed out in Berlin (although I not sorry for missing out Münz club this horrible wannabe exclusive but haven’t got the stile club in Hackerse Höfe) are transcribed in this catalogue. I think I love printed matters. Partly because... well I have always read, and almost all I know from art I got from some sort of printed matters. Of all the artist I know I have seen very little in real life. I am the backside of a world that travel. One can travel in mind and text. And thus is Germany a great country, they seem to firmly believe that catalogue and printed matter are almost the main way to communicate.

Didactical lessons
Singing LeWitt is great, I love the work. I do also love Annika Ströms works that tell stories like `this work refers to kosutt`, and I was very confused by my first real encounter with Tino Sehgal where the gallery assistant did fall to the floor in a very fainting out fashion saying something about this is a work by Tino Sehgal etc. etc. And I do like the way Monica Bonvicini asks me to add elegance to my poverty although it is to large here in this installation outside the no not any longer existing Büro Friedrich. The exhibit tried to deal with the fact that a lot of curatorial concepts is no concepts at all and that they merely put together a brand of artist and let them more or less do the work.

Art to the people
My first encounter with Bonvicini is now a good 4,5 years back when Jonas Ekeberg decided to stop doing magazines and do some curatorial big shot projects instead and established Oslo Kunsthall in autumn 2000. Among those working together with him on the project was Gardar Eide Einarson and Matias Faldbakken. They wanted to make a fully fluid art space in Norway that where going to be a intravenous injection of really fresh contemporary art. The first exhibition was Bonvicini and and her hous wife fucking video. I did not like it at all, but it was a very nice combination of hard architecture and feminism. I still think it is rather boring but well made. Anyway, the Kunsthalle did not manage to keep its budget and Ekeberg was fired. They did change directors a lot and in 2003, or was it 2002? It was closed down. So much for using social democracy and its money to make international art for Ekeberg (he later on got to do the national touring exhibition of Norway celebration exhibition called art to the people and last time I checked I did an exhibition on social democracy for apexart in NY. )

Going back to the overfilled exhibition of Heiser – the catalogue is of course published by the Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst and it is rather well made, not better made than any other catalogues in Germany but they make rather good catalogues in general in this country. Reading through it it occurs to me that the problem is not to curate or not or to become static or not, but it is very important that one might be able to see some other points of view before there is any option to curate. To curate is like writing with other peoples texts, who much do you want to appropriate and do you want your text to stand alone with no one others than your statements. There is possible to use everything as a illustration, and I find discussing curatorial aspects through an exhibition is rather clever but maybe a bit boring.


Thing
The exhibition feels a bit overstated, I do not like to be told that it is clear that someone is telling me in what direction I am going to see the different works in. Run home and tell everyone that it is not need for curating unless you want to give the artists space to move.
As Steven Soderbergh said saying: `I need the actors too move as freely as possible, and thus I have to tell them exactly what to do` is something that one could also say about this exhibition. It is well staged and well over-conceptualised. Is there another art exhibition we need? said Maria Lind in an essay as she was working for Moderna Museet in her time. Meaning shure we do, we just have to re/write the concept and change the exhibition place a little bit.





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Never Mistake Motion For Action 
Det er merkelig dette med kunstkritikk i Norge. Det er mange som skriver kunstkritikk på siden av å gjøre andre ting, eller for lettere kunne gjøre andre ting. Entanglements kan man si på engelsk – på norsk å gå amok i et vannglass. Man kan si at det er en veldig enkel grunn for hvorfor man skriver om kunst i tillegg til det man aller helst vil gjøre (lage kunst, selge kunst, lage utstillinger etc.) – det betaler seg – ikke mye, men litt + at det er mulig å gjøre seg selv synelig i landskapet. Det store problemet er at man har veldig mange spillere og en ekstremt små bane – og når ballen begynner å rulle, da ruller han for hele personen; både kunstneren, kritikeren og kuratoren. De fleste lar to tredjedeler av disse rollene da falle vekk og konser på det de virkelig har lyst å gjøre, mens andre fortsetter å jobbe videre full fremmad i alle retninger. Det er ok. Det er også ok at man poingterer dette ved å si ”ja, han er bestekompisen min”, ”jeg gjorde hans første utstilling” etc. Dette var veldig typisk for norge og oslo på nittitallet.

I dag virker det å være litt mer rolig. De som er kunstnere, har påbegynt eller fullført en kunstutdannelse som skriver om kunst (meg inklusivt) gjør i all hovedsak ikke kunst lengre (ja, jeg har vært med på to ustillinger de to siste årene, begge organisert av Josefine Lyche). Det er en slags insevrelse av horisonten når man lager utstillinger, stiller ut hos galleriene, blir utstilt av de samme – som en selv da skriver om. Det er rettogslett en vanskelig og ufruktbare jord å dyrke kunstkritikk i.

Løsningen er ikke tilsynelatende lett å finne. Det ene er å søke flere eksterne samarbeidspartnere, det andre er å kunne skrive uten trykk utenifra – og det er denne delen av det å skrive jeg har lyst å skrive om her.
Jeg har startet en blog – om du leser dette er det mest sansynlig at jeg har fortalt deg om at dette stedet eksisterer og gitt deg instrukser om hvordan du kan finne det. Det er min blog, og jeg vil ha tid til å utvikle min egen måte å skrive på her før jeg lar andre mennesker slippe til. Dette er delvis fordi jeg jobber nå hele tiden opp mot deadlines og det er skjelden at jeg får 100% rom til å skrive hva jeg vil (de har alle sammen restriksjoner) - jeg vil skrive om kunst – og jeg vil ha tid til å utvikle en stemme som ikke er avhengig av hva andre synes om den til enhver tid. Den vil gi en frisone for å lufte ut ideer om skriving og kunst – og ting og tang (utstillinger) som jeg ikke har mulighet til å prøve ut andre steder. Den vil utvikle seg, det vil ta tid, og jeg kommer til å mulighet til å tenke på et type kunstspråk som jeg kommer til å trenge for å kunne gjøre dette stuntet som jeg nå er i gang med: skrive om kunst.
ja vi elsker

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VI ELSKER STATEN 
I have decided to submit a proposal for the Vestlandsutstillingen for 2006 with the working title WE LOVE THE STATE (Norwegian title above). The only problem is that I have to find someone that is willing to participate on this as there have to be a curator group of at least two persons.

The thing about the exhibition is, that it is a manifestation on the social democracy in the Norwegian art life as it is “democratic” in the sense that everyone can apply as long as they live or origin from this part (in this case the western part, there are similar exhibition for every part of Norway) of the country. All entries was earlier scanned and selected by a jury, consisting of artists that belonged to this part of Norway, most of the time being member of the local or regional artist association.

Today the artists have in one way or another softened up the structures that was build up and they did first allow one or two people to function as curator/organisers/jury – choose the one you like best, as they acknowledged the fact that a) a lot of their owns – the artists, startet in the eighties and nineties to use this function in the art world to organise and curate exhibitions. The latter two years they have had a sort of contest, or tender, where curator groups are in a open to all call for proposals asked to submit a sort proposal for what they would like to do if they got to curate the exhibition. The proposal is not open for revolutionising the concept itself (it must be open for artist to submit application to the exhibition, but the curator are in no way prevented from doing a selection purely their own and deciding if inviting external artists).

The concept I am thinking about is based on the small idée that the state is supposed to support us all – everyone. This time of year there are hysteria in Norway, literarily everyone gets a grant of some sort from the state – establishing grant, travel grant, they got grants for going to ISCP NYC , to Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, there are more than 150 working grants, from one year of length to 4 (or is it five) – and now a lot of my friends are starting to receive those since we all started end nineties to study and they all are now “artists”. Me myself I got a travelgrant for going to Naoshima in Japan to have a closer look on the Benesse Art Site Naoshima as this is fairly parallel to the project Art in Nordland , a project that I am involved in.

Aaanyway. The idée of the mother state having to take care of us all supporting the poor (artist) and everyone else seems to be an interesting subject to discuss in this part.
The good thing is that everything is in place;
- budget (small, but still)
- venues (not actually central sites, but still)
- infrastructure (the organisers have been doing this for some time)
So, I´ll have to see what I can come up with and with whom.




[ 969 comments ] ( 8164 views )   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  related link  |   ( 2.9 / 1914 )
The very first entry -  
was today. For a long time now I have been writing on art on the side on my own laptop - this additional to all the mailing. Now, in January my laptop was stolen, without me having any backup – everything is gone, from texts that I have written or being in the making of, to those thinks mentioned above. So, now I have decided to put things that I write ( that I think might be interesting for other to read). I haven`t fully completed the whole thing yet, it is a construction site – but this will improve as we go along.

For starters I might introduce the title itself. It is stolen – more or less. There is a great sense of failure of communication in Raymond Carver’s universe. People does always seem to be saying more or trying to understand more than being said. He greatest – in my opinion anyway – short story is What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, a story of how to deal with love and how to formulate what we feel. Being a fan of belletristic literature – and criticism this is a title I can live with. for more info on belletristic criticism I would recoment Virginia Woolf’s essay “common Reader” (from 1925 and 1932). What I mean by this is, I guess, the common understand if this notion; criticism that is not that occupied with informing their readers about sources. I guess it is not a scholar term (I am not an scholar, I never was, and never will be persistent ), and one of the few I have commen up with from the academic side doing this is Roland Barthes.

Being Norwegian living in Leipzig, Germany and Reine, Lofoten/Norway – I guess those who pass by this site will be reading more about what is going on in Leipzig and Norway than not. Leipzig has a not that large scene – the art scene (including number of museums and institutions) are larger in Oslo although both cities are about 5 millions inhabitants. Leipzig have a nice little museum for contemporary art named the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst , and it is the only museum I know of being in the hands of only women on the artistic director side (Barbara Steiner being the Director, and the two curators being Julia Schäfer and Ilina Koralova). Behind gfzk there is no one, and then there is no one, and then there is some smaller non-for-profit, run-without-money institution. One of those are the Halle 14 , run by the federkiel collection/foundation (federkiel is a quill I guess – a pen made out of fether). The gallery scene on the other hand is stronger. The power gallery Eigen+Art (with artists as the Nicolai Brothers, Neo Rauch, Christine Hill – and Jörg Herold and Maix Mayer to mention), and also Dogenhaus is worthy to mention (with people like Tilo Schulz, Kaeseberg and Ati Maier and then some). Then due to the new Leipzig school of painting there is a few newer galleries likeGalerie Kleindienst , Galerie Post etc. Most of those dealing with mostly painting. The only new comer claiming to be dealing with other types of art is the Aspn galleri of Ms. Arne Linde – opening by the end of this month – I am curios. Arne is a critic turning gallerist, a trend that seems to support the current feeling of critics not only being underpaid but also not feared anymore (respected; yes, but have no power as Samuel Keller is quoted in Marc Spieglers article on art criticism in the newest The Art Newspaper).
Arne will be opening her Aspn on the 23th when all the above mentioned galleries ++ will open in new spaces in the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei – a former cotton fabric, since beginning of the nineties (as the wall came down) artist ateliers and now also gallery scene and luxus apartments.

I hope you have fun reading this. lmt




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