Underskog

TJ Demos, Marta Kuzma, Pablo Lafuente, Joanna Warsza
Moderator: Andrea Kroksnes

What is the relationship between art and politics today? In recent years, many artists have refrained from articulating political views and withdrawn into atavistic worlds far removed from the real predicaments of the world they live in. At the same time there are artists who still use their artistic production as a medium of political struggle and counter-articulation. There are many facets of political artwork. Commentaries, social engagement, critique and the imaginary transcending of existing conditions can all be regarded as forms of political articulation, in so far as they adopt a stance on real, existing political circumstances.
The exhibition space has also turned into a political arena. The main focus of the panel will center on alternative ways of exhibition making as format and platform for political articulation. The political focus and divergent curatorial practice of this year‟s Berlin Biennial will be the main axis of the panel. The other axis will be Marta Kuzma and Pablo Lafuente‟s lecture series The State of Things, co-curated as part of Norway’s contribution to last year’s Venice Biennial. The State of Things was conceived as a critical counter practice to the conventional exhibition format of national representations at the Biennial.

In this panel co-curator of the upcoming Berlin Biennale, Joanna Warza; the curators of the lecture series The State of Things at the 2011 Venice Biennale, Marta Kuzma and Pablo Lafuente; and art-historian Dr. TJ Demos discuss how and why alternative strategies for political intervention within contemporary art can have an impact. The panel is moderated by senior curator Dr. Andrea Kroksnes, who curated the exhibition Fantastic Politics – Art in Times of Crisis at the National Museum.

Joanna Warsza is a curator on the cusp of the performing and visual arts. She has worked mostly in the public realm, curating projects that examine social and political agendas. Warsza is a founder of the independent platform Laura Palmer Foundation. Since the beginning of 2011 she is the associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale, and has worked with Artur Żmijewski on the development and realization of the concept of the Biennale. Joanna Warsza lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw.

Marta Kuzma is the Director of OCA, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo since 2005. She is also a member of the curatorial team for documenta 13. Kuzma was Co-Curator of the European Biennale of Contemporary Art, Manifesta 5: San Sebastian, Spain in 2004. She has taught and lectured at various leading institutions and is a contributing writer to the journals Radical Philosophy, Afterall, Artforum, Art Review, Flash Art, and Mousse. In 2011 she was a co-curator with Pablo Lafuente and Peter Osborne of Norway‟s official representation for the 54th Venice Biennale, which included the lecture series The State of Things.

Pablo Lafuente is the Associate Curator at OCA, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, for which he has developed a number of projects, among others the anthology Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia? In 2011 he was a co-curator with Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne of Norway‟s official representation for the 54th Venice Biennale, which included the lecture series The State of Things. Lafuente has written for numerous magazines and books, and since 2005 he is an editor for the publishing and research organization Afterall. Lafuente is also a lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

T.J. Demos is a critic and Reader in the Art History Department at University College London. He writes about modern and contemporary art, and is the author of Dara Birnbaum: Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (Afterall Press, 2010), and The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press, 2007). Demos co-curated “Uneven Geographies: Art and Globalisation,” at Nottingham Contemporary in 2010, and directed the research-exhibition project “Zones of Conflict: Rethinking Contemporary Art during Global Crisis” in 2008-09. He is presently completing two new books: The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis (Duke University Press); and Return to the Postcolony: Spectres of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press).

Moderator: Andrea Kroksnes is an art-historian, curator and critic. Since 2001 she has been Senior Curator at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway. She has taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, at the University in Lüneburg, and at the Art Academies of Oslo and Bergen. Kroksnes has curated and written extensively on the conjunctions of contemporary art with critical theory with particular reference to issues of Visual Culture. She has published catalogues, edited books, and contributed to art magazines and compendia.