THE PRINCESS AND THE MONOLITH

In 1656, Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor) in the court of King Philip IV. The painting extends the illusionary space of its image by establishing a fixed position for the live viewer in relation to the work's flat surface. In 1672, at the age of 21, Princess Margarita died.

In 1968, Stanley Kubrick released the science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey.  

The film centers on the interactions between human beings and a group of scaleless, though consistently proportioned (9:4:1), black magnetic monoliths. In 1999, at the age of 70, Stanley Kubrick died.

In 2001, The Bruce High Quality Foundation was formed in New York City. The Foundation honors the legacy of the social sculptor, Bruce High Quality, through the instigation of confrontations between cold hard fiction and cold hard fact. In 2001, Bruce High Quality died.

The Bruce High Quality Foundation, the official arbiter of the estate of Bruce High Quality, is dedicated to the preservation of the legacy of the late social sculptor, Bruce High Quality. In the spirit of the life and work of Bruce High Quality, we aspire to invest the experience of public space with wonder, to resurrect art history from the bowels of despair, and to impregnate the institutions of art with the joy of man’s desiring ...

Professional Challenges. Amateur Solutions

www.thebrucehighqualityfoundation.com

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 22nd at 7pm

In conjunction with Belgian artist Sven Augustijnen residency at OCA’s International Studio Programme we are happy to, in collaboration with OCA, screen three of his films:

L’École des Pickpockets (2000, 48 min) 

The film unfolds as kind of documentary around two professional pick-pockets who give a master-class in their craft. 

Le Guide du Parc (2001, 44 min)

A film centred on one individual, a middle-aged businessman who incessantly speaks into the camera in a guided tour through a park located in the centre of Brussels. He brings the viewers' attention to the instruction inscribed on the palace wall that informs in detail of how it is possible to sexually solicit another individual in the park, and the film proceeds according to this narrative. 

Une Femme Entreprenante (2005, 72 min)

A film that documents how a museum for contemporary art is literally talked into existence. The film follows the accounts of several people as they meet to speak about plans for the development of a contemporary art centre on the site of a disused and more or less derelict brewery in Brussels. The central figure in the story is a real estate developer who has decided to support the plans for the redevelopment of the brewery into a place for art. A story evolves around the evolving inclusion of other characters: advisers, wealthy patrons and art professionals who convene at the site, standing upon its ruins and projecting its future.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Augustijnen (b.1970 in Mechelen, Belgium, lives and works in Brussels, Belgium) is an artist and film-maker who, according to writer T.J. Demos, has elaborated a 'longstanding deconstruction of documentarism wherein the object is not to record speech as a transparent medium of reality, but instead to investigate how his subjects construct one version of reality, rather than revealing some faithful transcription of a social and political truth'. Augustijnen seeks to enact a paradigm shift in terms of the history of cultural representations of power by exploring the specificity of familiar places usually located in or associated to the history of Brussels. Renowned as a subtle chronicler of the city, Augustijnen recently premiered Spectres (2010), his first feature film, which establishes a link between the city of Brussels, its current role as administrative capital of Europe and its country’s colonial past. Sven Augustijnen studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium; the Hoger Sint-Lukas Instituut in Brussels, and at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, the Netherlands. His films have been included in exhibitions and festivals in Athens, Greece; Basel and Fribourg, Switzerland; San Sebastián, Spain; Siegen, Germany; Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Tunis, Tunisia; Tel Aviv, Israel; Tokyo, Japan and Vilnius, Lithuania, among others. In 2007 he participated in the documenta 12 magazines project, in collaboration with A Prior, and in 2011 he was awarded the Evens Prize for Visual Arts.

ABOUT OFFICE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART NORWAY:

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway is a foundation created by The Norwegian Ministry of Culture and The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in autumn 2001. The main aim of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway is to develop collaborations in contemporary art between Norway and the international art scene. The Office for Contemporary Art Norway aims to become a key contributor to the discourses of contemporary art.

OCA’s International Studio Programme

The International Studio Programme Oslo is available for international artists and curators by invitation for a stay from two weeks up to six months, independently or in connection with research in Norway.

www.oca.no

EVA DRANGSHOLT (NO)

feat. George Kuchar (US) & Paul Gauguin (FR)

Curated by Linus Elmes

OPENING on Friday, Sept. 2nd at 7pm

Sailing is not only about leaving it is also about returning …

In the autumn of 1968 Donald Crowhurst set out from England in a plywood trimaran to take part in the first single handed non-stop round-the-word sailboat race. With little previous sailing experience, Crowhurst’s boat was badly equipped and his homemade electronic gadgets unreliable. Only through persistence had he managed to persuade the judges to give him permission to take part in the race.

During the race Crowhurst radioed reports of record-breaking sailing performances on the Atlantic, but later he reported that low battery power led to radio silence throughout his sailing the Indian and Pacific oceans. Eleven weeks later, Crowhurst breaks the silence only to report to the world that he succeeded to round Cape Horn and proceeded to sail north for England towards victory and triumph.

But Crowhurst never showed up to the expected destination and his boat was found adrift in an eerie mid-Atlantic calm without her skipper. Crowhurst’s story has become a legendary tale of a journey into the heart of darkness. It is an intricate play of identities and a haunting story about a complex, deeply troubled man.

His personal logbook turns totally delusional, increasingly desperate and revels a man with no hope. At one point he give voice to his melancholy through a mathematical formula:

+∞

         ƒ         Man = [0] – [0]

–∞

Calling it the Cosmic Integral, Crowhurst intended it to mean that the summation of man from minus infinity to plus infinity is nothing – or, in general terms, that mankind, over the whole course of time, adds up to a blank null.

Eva Drangsholt’s The New Lands originates from her own sailing experience along the American West Coast, although it might as well have begun on April 6th, 1891, when an ill, tired and poor Paul Gauguin embarked on a four-month journey by sea from Marseilles to the island of Tahiti. He had left not only his family behind but also an insane Vincent van Gogh with whom he spent a summer of painting in Arles. Their friendship ended in a dramatic fight over unreturned love that deprived van Gogh of his ear.

Gauguin’s struggle to pursue a life of artistic purity on Tahiti marked the end of his tragic life in as a bourgeois stockbroker, family man, and amateur painter in Europe. “I do not hold his vermilion background against him […] I hold it against him that he failed to apply his synthesis to our modern philosophy, which is absolutely social, anti-authorian and anti-mystical” - wrote art critic Albert Aurier about Gauguin. 

In the 1950’s George Kuchar together with his brother Mike started an experimental journey with homemade Super-8 and 16mm melodramas that would contribute to the genre of Camp. Leonard Lipton has called Kuchar’s films overtly insane and speculated on their ability to drive one insane. Lipton wrote that: “the Marx Brothers might survive them but he doubts it. But the utter insanity, the insanity of perverted cliché, is the genuine unwholesome appeal of Kuchar’s outlook.” Corruption of the Damned (1965) is pervaded with twisted violence and sex. Kuchar’s casting of friends and family is a key to his orchestration of this human drama.

Humans don’t search for relationships as little as we search for air to breath. We are constructed for relationships and cannot exist without them. The human psyche has a contextual nature and is affected in the constantly ongoing process of our current relationships. For a single-handed sailor, even the loneliness stands in relation to the context. Loneliness is experienced in relation to self-image and the image of the surrounding world. It reflects both previous relationships and present interactions with others. In other words, we are our own experiences.

Gauguin shared his fascination for the exotic and uncontaminated with other French artists and intellectuals at the time like Rousseau and Baudelaire. An ideal of the tropics said by Hal Foster to be inspired in part by “native villages” that where set up like zoo displays of indigenous peoples at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris. The other as a study object in Gauguin’s practice omens other narratives like Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World and Robert J. Flaherthy’s cinematic salvage ethnography in Nanook of the North.

Eva Drangsholt has followed this trajectory into a new terrain. She interviews John Nielsen, a temporary acquaintance she met during her own sailing ventures along the American west coast. Drangsholt has not hesitated to leave her secure position behind the lens. She invited John Nielsen to practice his incarnated aesthetic ritual of stone balancing in the exhibition. By entering into this social contract with him, she puts her own project at risk. Her own influence to the New Lands is out of control and in the hands of others, into a parallel narrative where Eva, like Crowhurst is a double agent with dual logbooks.

Eva relies on her outsider position as a transsexual in an act of seeing and documenting her journey. A position Crowhurst delicately touches upon several times during his last journey, not at least in his fable The Misfit: “Poor bloody misfit! A giant albatross, its great high-aspect wings sweeping like scimitars through the air with never a single beat slid effortlessly round the boat in mocking contrast to his ill-adapted efforts of survival.”

This is where we are now, in constant movement ...

Works in exhibition:

Eva Drangsholt (b. 1962) 

a. John Nielsen rock installation (2011) variable sizes 

b. The New Lands (2011) Video 16:35 Min

George Kuchar (b. 1942)

Corruption of the Damned (1965) B/W 51 Min

Courtesy of the artist

Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903)

a. Les drames de la mer (1889)

b. Les Cigalez et lez fourmiz (1889)

c. untitled (1889)

All zincographies from the Volpini suite

Last night we jumped fences and climbed fruit trees. We are redistributing about 20 kilos of stolen fruit - mostly apples, but also some pears - today at OCA for their green gathering: 3pm - 7pm.

Stealin' Apples - Benny Goodman

OPENING: SCREENING PROGRAM – WEDNESDAY 24th at 7pm - 10pm

LECTURE: BHQFFAQ – SUNDAY 28th at 5pm 

The Bruce High Quality Foundation, the official arbiter of the estate of Bruce High Quality, is dedicated to the preservation of the legacy of the late social sculptor, Bruce High Quality. In the spirit of the life and work of Bruce High Quality, we aspire to invest the experience of public space with wonder, to resurrect art history from the bowels of despair, and to impregnate the institutions of art with the joy of man’s desiring ...

Professional Challenges. Amateur Solutions

 www.thebrucehighqualityfoundation.com

THE SCREENING PROGRAM: (on loop during opening hours)

Art History with Food” – 2008 (17 min)

The Gate: Not the Idea of the Thing But the Thing Itself” – 2006 (11 min)

Public Art and Collaboration” – 2008 (7 min)

We Like Amerika” – 2010 (22 min)

2001: Art History with Metaphor” – 2010 (16 min)

ABOUT THE LECTURE:

BHQFAQ is a talk on ... the Paradoxes of working simultaneously as an organization and an artist, the construction of history, the progress of garbage, the politics of specificity, how to run a free art school, how to get rich, the auction market from 1973 to present, community spirit, drinking in public, the individually momentous, momentary solidarity, and how to build a better tomorrow.  

In collaboration with Harpefoss Hotell and Torpedo, we invite you to join us for a summer festival with concerts, food, self-brew, plays and poetry.

Harpefoss Hotell opens WunderbaumWanderlustWunderkammer on the 1st of July with a 2-day festival, UKS is organising a road trip to the festival.

Price for bustrip, food, concerts and overnight stay: 200 NOK
(Ticket without bustrip: 100 NOK)

Registration at info@uks.no or phone 22195050 (registration deadline Friday 17th July)

 
Friday July 1st:

2pm: Bus from UKS with guided tour and metalquiz by True Norwegian Cultural Mediation.

6pm: Exhibition opening – WunderbaumWanderlustWunderkammer Food, self-brewed beers and bar.

8pm: concerts – Dan-Ola Persson / De Press/ Phaedra / Jon Øystein Flink

Saturday July 2nd:

1pm: Harpefoss spelet – Steinar Haga Kristensen

3pm: Bus leaves for Oslo. Around Norway-series and metal-karaoke by True Norwegian Cultural Mediation.

4pm: Bus arrives at the exhibition opening of VERSAILLES, Kulturhuset Banken Lillehammer. Curators: Mads Andreas Andreassen and Anders Holen.

6pm: Bus returns to Oslo, estimated arrival at 8 pm.

More info will be posted at www.harpefosshotell.no

For sleeping outdoors we suggest Harpefoss Hotell’s own base camp, provided you bring along a tent or hammock! If you prefer indoor accommodation, Harpefoss community centre is another ideal opportunity; only 5 minutes walk from Harpefoss Hotell but you’ll need to bring a sleeping bag and sleeping mat. For other accommodation options please check www.harpefosshotell.no

Getting There:

Harpefoss Hotell is situated about 3 hours drive by car on E6 from the cities of Oslo and Trondheim. When arriving Harpefoss, turn to Gålå and Peer Gyntvegen, you will come to Harpefoss Hotell after 500 m (just after the railroad bridge). Parking at Harpefoss Hotell or Brudalen below Harpefoss Community Centre (continue over the river then take 1st turn right). For public transport take the train to Vinstra/Ringebu or bus to Harpefoss.

Harpefoss Hotell / Gålåvegen 58 / 2647 Sør-Fron
www.harpefosshotell.no
kontakt@harpefosshotell.no

DANIEL TEIGEN, STEINAR BRAA, ANDREAS HEGERMANN RIIS

CURATED BY: ANDERS DAHL MONSEN

As an UKS one-shot venture Dronebrygg microbrewery will present their latest experiments in contemporary beer production. Infamously known for their previous brews Crystal Mesk and Busty Milf Dronebrygg’s maiden public appearance carries a promise of divine proportions for all and every thirsty throat.

CHARLOTTE THIIS-EVENSEN & EIVIND BUENE

Try Again is a one-night venture following a strict script. The artists have chosen to perform this as a public event within the realms of the exhibition room at UKS. It is an attempt to test the conditions of a social contract within the institution and at the same time perform an act that will have real effect outside the institution, legally and socially.

Curtator: Linus Elmes

Maids:  Ivan Galuzin and Anders Dahl Monsen

Entrance Music:  Lars Petter Hagen, performed by POING

Speech:  Trond Reinholdtsen

Performance:  DJ Gud Junior

Exit music:  Øyvind Torvund, performed by POING

Architecture:  Siri Liset

Design:  Iselin Engan and T-Michael

Photo:  Signe Marie Andersen

Party music:  DJ Kavalér

As a curator for this event I talked a lot with the two organising artists Eivind Buene and Charlotte Thiis Evensen about the implications of realizing this attempt as a test of the conditions of a social contract within the walls of an exhibition space. Since – in opposite to most art works – the full effect of this program affects the common future of the artists, both legally and socially it interested me as well as it challenged me.

Through out modern history there are endless testimonies of how marriage has become an impossible institution, with divorce or death as the only logical conclusion. Max Kauffman once said that he never knew what real happiness was until he got married, and by then it was to late.

We all know that marriage is for show, like a real life commercial for normality and promotion of the nuclear family, the stinking normal and mainstream life lived in suburbia. It is a constellation of two people trying the impossible act of dancing a duet and two solos at the same time.

Eivind and Charlotte refuses to accept such facts. They are a grownup and mature couple and both of them has been married before, they can’t be defended on basis of sever knowledge when they consciously organise their own collapse in the format of yet another wedding.

Despite all statistics and empirics they choose to subject them self to the ritual of exchanging vows. But they have not ended here; they have purposely involved their friends and family into this spectacle, not only to attend as witnesses but also to be actively involved in the design, the architecture, the composing and the performance of their project.

You have to admire them the same way you admire that unknown rebel on Tien Men Square who was standing completely alone in front of all those tanks, ready to be trashed by a predominate power but still determine to fight against the odds.

They don’t have to change the world. They don’t have to see stars exploding in the night, or electric eels under the cover, they don’t have to be anything quite so unreal, let them just be lovers. 

This presentation of the works of Øivind Brune and Talleiv Taro Manum marks a point in history where multiple timelines meet in order to manifest themselves again. The exhibition is an intersection between now and then, and an obligatory right of passage between two artists linked to each other beyond formal expressions and aesthetic values.

Øivind was part of the infamous GRAS-group in the 60’s and Talleiv has over the past ten years established a unique position within the Norwegian art scene. With their individual works now presented side by side for the first time we are happy to be the same institution where they both once debuted, Øivind in 1971 and Talleiv in 1997.

In a search for fragile dialogical connections between generations we discovered an interrelationship fundamentally based upon their characters. Both Talleiv and Øivind are stubborn individuals who in a search for autonomy have developed deeply personal agendas that are to be found in their work.

The exhibition is curated by the UKS director Linus Elmes. In conjunction with the exhibition we have produced a publication with contributions from: Talleiv Taro Manum, Geir Tore Holm, Morten Krogh, Peter Amdam and Linus Elmes. 

NEW AUTHORS/NEW VISIONS

CURATED BY: CAROLINA HELLSGÅRD & ASTRID RIEGER

The French director Francois Truffaut once famously said, “I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.” Truffaut’s words best describe the selection of films presented at the NEW AUTHORS / NEW VISIONS film screenings 2011. None of these filmic works are in between, instead they are all a result of a personal endeavor, a vision, a need to tell a story, convey a mood or present a situation in a certain way, without compromises and often by going through both the joy and agony of filmmaking. In all, NEW AUTHORS / NEW VISIONS pays tribute to the idea about the director as the main creative force behind a filmic work. Each of the selected films reflect a strong personal vision and present a unique artistic viewpoint of the world.

While many of the films utilize a variety of filmic strategies to exploit the narrative and formal potential of film, others delve into sensations and feelings, rather than a story. Yet some use low-fi animation or advanced stage design to get their message across. The filmic works are all bound together by a certain seriousness and devotion toward their subject and center around reoccurring themes such as isolation, adolescence, longing and relationships.

Over the course of 7 months NEW AUTHORS / NEW VISIONS will explore contemporary perspectives in short fiction, documentary, animation and experimental film. In all, there will be 57 international works shown in 12 theme based screening programs. Ultimately the screenings seek to highlight recent filmic work and give a cross section of exciting new authors and new visions from around the world.

Carolina Hellsgård & Astrid Rieger