Metode vol. 3 Currents

ROM for kunst og arkitektur proudly announces the publishing of the third volume of Metode “Currents” in collaboration with Lofoten International Art Festival 2024 (LIAF). The editors of Currents are Kjersti Solbakken (curator of LIAF 24 and current Director at Bergen Kunsthall) and Ingrid Halland (editor-in-chief of Metode).

The publishing platform Metode is a gathering place for work- and text-based thinking in art and architecture where the path is more important than the ultimate goal. The publishing platform works with an open, in-depth peer review method, aiming to offer theorists and practitioners a discursive platform for generating original and compelling critical thinking on art, architecture, design, and aesthetics that challenges conventional academic publication formats. The first volume Deep Surface was published in January 2023, the second volum Being, Bathing, and Beyond was published in January 2024. 

Metode vol. 3 “Currents” consists of ten experimental essays. The starting point for the Open Call, launched in March 2024, was Kjersti Solbakken's curatorial approach of using LIAF as a platform to examine local stories, archives, collections, and conditions that can help uncover our recent history. The Open Call posed questions about how artists, curators, philosophers, and art theorists have utilized local heritage for current critiques. How can this tendency be historicized and theorized? Which projects serve as forgotten forerunners in the arts-based turn toward local heritage? How do contemporary art practices negotiate the relationship between art, cultural heritage, and/or natural heritage to provide ethical remedies for the challenges that lie ahead?

Contributors to Currents include Sigbjørn Skåden, Alison Burstein, You Nakai, Miriam Sentler, Martin White, and Sol Archer, along with four collaborative writing groups: Nodes Collective (Elisabeth Brun, Katja Pratschke, and Gusztáv Hámos); Åsne Kummeneje Mellem, Tarja Tuulia Salmela, and Gyrid Øyen; Alena Rieger, Jumana Manna, and Drew Snyder; and Ian Callender, Yueyang Luo, and Ann Wang. The writers and artists explore how signals can be transmitted from afar through space and through time, in a manner which can offer seeds for new beginnings.

The volume was introduced by three essays by Burstein (USA), Nakai (Japan), and Skåden (Sápmi and Norway)—launched during LIAF's opening weekend, September 20–22, 2024—in which the authors situate themselves in close proximity to their local contexts when exploring the more wide-ranging spatial and temporal connections inherent to their inquiries. Together, these three essays provided a foundation for the matters and methods underlying the Open Call for participants.

Over the course of nine months, the group of writers has engaged in a series of workshops, providing in-depth feedback on one another's ideas, texts, and drafts—dialoguing within the editorial board, alongside invited scholars and artists.

The Currents essays are crafted with what participant Elisabeth Brun characterizes as a "dialogical ambition that explores a layering of time that is not linear." The essays circulate and evolve through diverse locations and historical periods: Lerwick, Shetland, in the 1970s; Walvis Bay, Namibia, in the 1940s; Olggosvuotna/Moskivuono/Ullsfjord in 2024; Nyksund and Berlin, in the 1980s; Mauritsstad (now Recife), Brazil, in the 1640s; Elverum, Norway, in the 1980s; and wires connecting New York City, Lofoten, and China. Tangible matters—including wool, wires, lumber, landscape paintings, theatre costumes, and archival boxes—are intricately linked to intangible heritage such as weaving practices, auditory experiences within museums, and the ambient resonance generated by signal-carrying feedback cables.

All “Currents” essays bear witness to an utmost dependency between local matters and expansive worldly effects both spatially and temporally—methodologically underpinned by a renewed interest in the relationship between ethics and aesthetics.

Metode is run by ROM for kunst og arkitektur: editor-in-chief Ingrid Halland, editorial assistant Solveig Tjetland and director Gjertrud Steinsvåg. The editorial board for volume 3 consists of Victoria Bugge Øye, Gustav Jørgen Pedersen, Petrine Vinje, Hanne Hammer Stien, Wolfgang Hottner, Malin Graesse, and Gunhild Mathea Olaussen.

The open call for Metode volume 4 “Exhibition as Method” will be announced in March 2025. 

Metode is generously supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.