Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.06.2011, Page 27

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 7 — 2011
Art | Nordic Biennial
Laugavegur
Bankastræti
Hverfisgata
Læ
kja
rg
at
a
Pó
st
hú
ss
træ
ti
Vonarstræti
Austurstræti
HafnarstrætiAð
al
st
ræ
ti
Geirsgata
Harpa
Tryggvagata
G
ar
ða
st
ræ
ti
Find us at:
Tryggvagata 11, 101 Reykjavík
EXPERIENCE
THE FORCE
OF NATURE
Our two excellent films
on eruptions in Iceland
start on the hour every hour.
The films are shown in english
except at 09:00 and 21:00 when
they are in german.
Volcano House also has an excellent
café, Icelandic design shop and booking
service for travels within Iceland.
Opening hours: 8:30 - 23:00
www.volcanohouse.is
The sixth-annual Nordic Biennial
is coming up on June 18 in Moss,
Norway. But don’t worry if you can’t
be there. The theme, ‘Imagine Be-
ing Here Now’, stretches time as far
as it will go.
The Biennial will showcase over 80
artists from Iceland, Norway, Swe-
den and beyond. Icelander (and oc-
casional GV contributor) Markús
Þór Andrésson—one of the Bien-
nial’s five curators—explains it’s
a venture that will have roving art
projects, including some that won’t
be revealed until 2051.
WHAT CAN WE ExPECT TO SEE AT
THIS YEAR'S NORDIC BIENNIAL?
The sixth Momentum Biennial is an in-
ternational project curated by five Nor-
dic curators. It will take place in and
around Moss in Norway, but there will
also be an itinerant performance event
travelling around the Nordic capitals.
You may expect to get an excellent
chance to consider what it is to actu-
ally see art, given that the exhibition
revolves around the notion of the ex-
perience of art in a specific time and
place. ‘Imagine Being Here Now’ invites
the viewer to fulfil his or her part of the
deal that art and artists try to make with
their audience that they see actively.
Some projects challenge this by
presenting works that are scarcely vis-
ible; they may take time to be realised
and require the imagination of the
viewer to become real. We are collabo-
rating with The Long Now Foundation
(www.longnow.org), an institute in-
vested in slowing down the momentary
experience and thinking within a time
frame of 10.000 years. This focus lends
the exhibition project as a whole a di-
mension, within which we hope to bring
forward the concerns of today's art
with the passivity of a fleeting moment-
to-moment culture.
THERE ARE FIVE CURATORS IN-
VOLVED FOR THIS EDITION. IS THIS
YOUR FIRST TIME PARTICIPATING?
Yes, this is the first time for all of us to
be involved with Momentum. In recent
years, there have been two curators for
the biennial, one from within the Nordic
scene and a person that comes from a
different background. Now, the idea
was to break up that routine by asking
five insiders to do the job, and of course
the first decision we took collectively
was to make it an international project.
We invited around fifty people from
around the world. Still, we have a high
percentage of Nordic artists simply be-
cause this is where we have based our
work and research in the past.
ARE YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR CU-
RATING ALL THE ICELANDIC ART?
The process of bringing together the
eighty artists has been very intense,
as you can imagine, with five people
working together. We have all contrib-
uted names and works to the table, and
as we mutually know the Nordic scene.
We have all crossed lines in terms of
one curator lobbying for an artist from
someone else's country. At the end of
the day we collaboratively chose the
group so that it would make sense as
a whole, not in terms of each curator
selecting ten artists. Perhaps it may
have ended up like that, but at least it
wasn't intentional. We then somehow
organically came to terms with who is
responsible for which artist and in case
of the Icelandic participants I can say
that I am not responsible for all of them.
GIVE US ONE PROJECT IN WHICH
WE CAN LOOK FORWARD TO.
The Icelandic artist Magnús Logi Kris-
tinsson will be organising a perfor-
mance tour with the well-known Finnish
artist Roi Vaara. They will invite artists
to join them and local artists to take
part in this with them and do a tour, like
a rock and roll group, from one place
to the next. Except we don't quite know
where and when. They will pop up in art
institutions or in public spaces in the
Nordic countries sometimes in the fall,
before the Biennial ends in the begin-
ning of October. I am very excited to see
how this project develops, if I manage
to be at the right place at the right time.
I also wonder if I will be around in fifty
years to see the works that have been
included in this show but placed in a
time capsule so the works will not be
known to the public until 2051. You can
look forward to that, too, and imagine
being there then.
Step into
the Viking Age
Experience Viking-Age Reykja­vík a­t the
new Settlement Exhibition. The focus of the
exhibition is a­n exca­va­ted longhouse site which
da­tes from the 10th century ad. It includes
relics of huma­n ha­bita­tion from a­bout 871, the
oldest such site found in Icela­nd.

Multimedia­ techniques bring Reykja­vík’s
pa­st to life, providing visitors with insights
into how people lived in the Viking Age, a­nd
wha­t the Reykja­vík environment looked like
to the first settlers.
The exhibition a­nd
museum shop a­re open
da­ily 10–17
Aða­lstræti 16
101 Reykja­vík / Icela­nd
Phone +(354) 411 6370
www.reykja­vikmuseum.is
Building Momentum In Moss
NADJA SAYEJ
Markús Þór Andrésson is curating the Nordic Biennial
Øystein Aasan (NO)
Caroline Achaintre (FR)
Harpa Árnadóttir (IS)
Michael Baers (US)
Margrét H. Blöndal (IS)
Paolo Botarelli (IT)
KP Brehmer (DE)
Elina Brotherus (FI)
Heman Chong (SG)
Bruce Conner (US)
Jason Dodge (US)
Aleksandra Domanović (RS)
Leif Elggren (SE)
Luca Frei (SE)
Ellie Ga (US)
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir (IS)
Hamza Halloubi (MA)
Magnús Logi Kristinsson (IS)
Matti Kujasalo (FI)
Oliver Laric (AU)
Karl Larsson (SE)
Ann Lislegaard (NO)
The Long Now Foundation (US)
Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio (IT)
Katarina Löfström (SE)
Daniel Medina (VE)
Maria Miesenberger (SE)
Naeem Mohaiemen (BD)
Ulrike Mohr (DE)
Eadweard Muybridge (UK)
Simon Dybbroe Møller (DK)
Rosalind Nashashibi (UK)
Ioana Nemes (RO)
Finnbogi Pétursson (IS)
Prinz Gholam (LB/DE)
Raqs Media Collective (IN)
Mandla Reuter (ZA)
Nikolai von Rosen (DE)
Hans Rosenström (FI)
Andreas Siqueland (NO)
SEXTAGS (NO)
Simon Starling (UK)
Fiete Stolte (DE)
Superflex (DK)
Ines Tartler (DE)
Roi Vaara (FI)
Kjell Varvin (NO)
Bettina Camilla Vestergaard (DK)
Wooloo (DK)
George Young (UK)