BIENNALS: osloBIENNALEN 1st Edition 2019-2024

Art in public space is different from art in a museum. It is free and accessible. It is often unexpected: a performance, a sculpture, a mural, a sound. Its surroundings are constantly changing and evolving. People can love it or react against it, perhaps passing by without even noticing it or maybe it becomes an iconic symbol of the community.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo osloBIENNALEN Archive

osloBIENNALEN FIRST EDITION 2019-2024 is a new format for a biennial in public space: a five-year evolving program that unfolds over time across the city, inviting active participation with a public program of workshops, readings, concerts, symposia, and performances. Proposing a new biennial model, co-curators Eva González-Sancho Bodero and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk  note  in  their  curatorial  statement “The  works  pose  questions  about  the  timeframes  and  situations  in  which  they  operate,  contexts  that  overflow  conventional, institutional  time/spaces.  How  are  such  works  produced  and  presented?  How  do  they  engage  with  audiences,  or  enter  an  art  collection?  What  kind  of  curatorial  framework supports these works and their timeframes, which may stretch indefinitely beyond the one-off event? How might this framework be designed or constituted?” Over the course of the next five years, the expanding programme for the years ahead will be announced at regular intervals as the biennial moves forward in time. During the opening weekend, visitors can discover a range of projects encompassing sculpture, text works, experiences, performances, painting, sound, public outreach and workshops by ​Mikaela Assolent, ​Benjamin Bardinet, Julien Bismuth, ​Carole Douillard, ​Ed D’Souza, ​Mette Edvardsen, ​Jan Freuchen,  Sigurd  Tenningen  ​and  Jonas  Høgli  Major, ​Gaylen Gerber, ​Hlynur  Hallsson ,  ​Rose  Hammer*​,  ​Marianne  Heier,  ​Michelangelo  Miccolis, Mônica Nador and Bruno Oliveira, ​Michael Ross, ​Lisa Tan and Øystein Wyller Odden​. With varying tempos, rhythms and life-spans, the projects presented will respond to the contingent contexts of public space: Julien Bismuth’s practice is at the intersection of visual art and literature. Bismuth’s work ranges from performance, video and photography, to sculpture and drawing. Over the course of five years the artist is developing a performance series entitled “Nothing is big nothing is small” inspired by political street theatre and by a diary note by Edvard Munch that reads, “Intet er litet intet er stort”. For 2019, two performances will be staged, one in May, with a second planned for October. Each performance will take place over the course of a single day. The performances will involve five performers, who will all perform on the same day, in different parts of the city. Each performer will be given one short text (an anecdote, a joke, a diatribe, a description, a fable) that they will perform several times in different places in the city. Where and how they perform it will be determined by the performer, in relation to the text and the specific contexts of each performance. At the end of each day of performances, the five performers will convene at the same location, where a camera crew will be waiting to film them describing where, when, and how they staged their monologues over the course of the day, then performing their respective monologues one last time for the camera. Carole Douillard’s performance “The Viewers” is staged for the first time in locations across a city to challenge the strict division between public and private. She is most often described as “using her body as a sculpture” and also produces representations, such as drawings and photography, that explore mental states and patterns relating to her artistic practice. Ed D’Souza presents “Migrant Car” based on a full-sized, 3D photographic recording of a crashed Hindustan Ambassador car found in Delhi and recreated in the Grünerløkka neighbourhood in a local workshop run by furniture maker Eddie King. Also D’Souza is co-producing a series of projects with students from Oslo National Academy of the Arts, OsloMet, and Eddie King’s Workshop. The work of Mette Edvardsen is situated within the performing arts, dance and choreography. Although her work explores other media and formats, such as video, books and writing, her interest is always focused on the relationship to the performing arts as a practice and a situation. “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine – A Library of Living Books”, can be found in Myntgata 2, the headquarters of osloBIENNALEN First Edition 2019–2024. The works will be present and available for audiences to access within announced periods. Visitors can borrow books and “read” them. The readings take place as intimate one-to-one encounters where the book recites its content for the visitor. The first presentation of “Oslo Collected Works OSV” by Jan Freuchen, Jonas Høgli Major and Sigurd Tenningen, entails five sculptures of animals, all with unique connections to Oslo’s history and public spaces. Gaylen Gerber’s project is a further development of his ongoing project Supports, a series of found objects of diverse origin that he paints uniformly in institutional grey or white. By covering their original appearance, Gerber invites the audience to pause, experience and reflect on the significance we assign to these objects, such as authenticity, value, and bearer of cultural heritage and collective memory. Language and communication play an essential role in Hlynur Hallsson’s practice as an artist and curator, and in his work, which moves across mediums, from installation to photography. Through conceptual and purposeful multilingualism, Hallsson explores the semantic difficulties of communication surrounding a work of art and the cultural preconditions of, and multifarious opportunities for, interpretation. “Seven Works for Seven Locations” form a multilingual text-based work, which will be sprayed directly onto public walls around the city. Each of the seven works consists of a compilation of three texts in different languages. The choice of language reflects Oslo’s population composition and/or language that is in daily use: English, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Sami, Swedish and Somali. The texts deal with aspects of the city and Norwegian society in a style and a tone that mixes facts, statements and attitudes. Rose Hammer* is an artist persona comprised of a collective group of individuals. Evolving and changing. For “National Episodes”, constructed from an anecdote told by Johan Galtung in a recent radio show, when Galtung mentions Griniforliket (“The Grini compromise”), a meeting between WWII POW, representatives of the Labour and Conservative parties that allegedly took place in barrack number 12 in the spring of 1945 at the Grini detention camp, the first episode explores the idea of this meeting as a crucial and very concrete turning point in Norwegian history. A moment in time shortly before the German capitulation when the political future of Norway was mapped out, and, according to Galtung, a deal was struck where the Labour Party would let Norway enter into an alliance with Western powers (rather than turning toward the Soviet sphere of influence). In return, the conservatives agreed not to block the establishing of a welfare state (built on socialist principles). Øystein Wyller Odden presents “Compositions for Oslo City Hall”, a sound piece that will activate the building’s unused organ pipes, and a concert conceived for grand piano and orchestra. The Compositions are based on the 50 Hz frequency of alternating current in the Nordic electrical grid. The work consists of two parts: “Power Line Hum (Compositions for the Organ in Oslo City Hall)” this humming will be played at regular intervals in Oslo City Hall from 25/6-21/9/19 and “Power Balance (Composition for Grand Piano, Alternating Current and Orchestra)” this concert will be performed twice in the City Hall on 1/6/19 at 17:00 and 21/9/10 at 13:00. For nearly 30 years Michael Ross’ has created small-scale, sculptures employing unexpected combinations of everyday elements and materials. Within the space of a few inches or even less, bits, parts, scraps and fragments of forgotten things, his anti-heroic and uncompromised world resonates. Ross has created several works in public spaces which subtly interact with civic space. His “Tre Eventyr (Three Fairy Tales)” are evocative miniature sculptures hidden in three locations in the city: the interior space of a watchmaker, an antiquarian and the exterior corner of a building located on a street corner. Marianne Heier is presenting her performance project, “And Their Spirits Live On”, first at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and then in Oslo’s former Museum for Contemporary Art. “Another Grammar for Oslo” by  Mônica Nador & Bruno Oliveira proposes a dialogue with the diverse population of the city of Oslo through artistic work with drawing and stencil printmaking training for educators, immigrants and residents, aimed at the recovery their memories and of narratives from their territories of origin, stories that are invisible or little communicated in official or mainstream channels. In  October  2019,  a  second  set  of  projects  will  be  launched,  featuring  works by:  Adrián  Balseca,  Marcelo  Cidade,  Jonas  Dahlberg,  Anna  Daniell, Edith Dekyndt,  Tomáš  Džadoň,  Oliver  Godow, Javier Izquierdo, Graziela  Kunsch, Belén Santillán and Knut Åsdam. Over the course of the next five years, the expanding programme for the years ahead will be announced at regular intervals as the biennial moves forward in time.

* Evolving and changing, Rose Hammer includes, in no particular order: Kim Svensson, Emilie Birkeland, Élise Guerrier, Alma Braun, Mattias Hellberg, Niels Munk Plum, Arely Amaut Gómez Sánchez, Evelin Sillén, Emil Andersson, Alessandro Marchi, Stacey de Voe, Nora Joung, Victoria Durnak, Jakob Tamm, Morten Langeland, Sara Hermansson, Sahar Seyedian, Qi Tan, Ole-Petter Arneberg, Per-Oskar Leu and Dora García, and also includes the collaboration of graphic designer Alex Gifreu and theatre expert Samir Kandil.

Info: Curators: Eva González-Sancho Bodero and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk, osloBIENNALEN 1st Edition 2019-2024, Oslo, Duration 25/5/2019-2024, www.oslobiennalen.no