Opacity: Current Considerations on Art Institutions and the Economy of Desire
15 April-15 June 2005
Opening: 15 April, 8 pm
Preopening and launching of the Opacity fanzine: April 14, 8 pm
UKS, Unge Kunsternes Samfund
Lakkegata 55 D, 0187 Oslo
www.uks.no
www.nifca.org
Participating artists: Kajsa Dahlberg, Danger Museum (Oyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizo), Markus Degerman, Stephan Dillemuth, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Sofie Thorsen
Curated by Nina Montmann and Trude Iversen.
Opacity is initiated by Nina Montmann, NIFCA, produced by NIFCA and presented by UKS.
This exhibition explores in what way today’s art institutions are used and challenged within artistic processes. The starting point is the observation that institutions have changed after the ‘institutional critique’ in the 70s, as well as, in the 90s. What could be the future impact of current critical tendencies? Today a critique is no more put against the institution in order to deconstruct it. Instead, a certain opacity, which has been criticized in the work of powerful institutions, can on the other hand be useful for smaller institutions, in order to try out new forms of collaboration between different positions in the art field (artists, curators, academics or activists), creating an alternative agenda for institutional work.
The project is developed in a close collaboration between the curators and the artists. Therefore several workshops have been scheduled. The terms autonomy, freedom, internal process, uncertainty were discussed in relation to opacity. As well as the history of critical and affirmative work respectively within institutions: What happened in the 80s and 90s to institutional models in relation to notions of democracy? Only now the new forms of institutions of the 90s are at a point, where you can evaluate them.
The exhibition is not seen as the culmination point of these discussions, rather as an integral part of an ongoing process. Considering the internal perspective of the artist as an involved team mate in cultural production, the question arises, how can an art institution be used from within – as an arena or a tool for re-politicization. Where lie the possibilities, and what do the presumable failures tell us about the societal role and
reaching area of the diverse art institutions?
The exhibition proposes and discusses a collaborative and productive model, which researches current conditions of institutional work and develops alternative strategies – be they activist, appropriated, mocking, actual or purely utopian.
By the end of 2005 a comprehensive reader on current institutional conditions and the role of institutions within artistic processes will be published by NIFCA, edited by Nina Montmann, which will also contain a documentation of the project “Opacity”.