Office for Contemporary Art Norway

Venue: Melahuset, Mariboes Gate 8, 0183, Oslo
Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, New York, will speak about Maria Thereza Alves’ recent book, Recipes for Survival (University of Texas Press, 2019), for which he wrote the introduction. The book is a newly published collection of texts and photos that Maria Thereza Alves produced in 1983, when she went back to the towns where her parents grew up in Brazil. Following the lecture, writer and theatre producer Deise Faria Nunes (BR/NO), community mobiliser and activist Larissa Avelar (BR/NO), and artist Ina Hagen (NO), will use Alves’ book as a starting point for discussions about current political and ecological challenges in Brazil, the dynamics of Norwegian and Brazilian relations, as well as the roles artists are taking within these discussions today.

SápmiToo is a four-day programme in Máze and Guovdageaidnu, curated by artist collective Dáiddadállu, that seeks to empower women, artists and Sámi curatorial methodologies. SápmiToo addresses gender roles, violence and sexual abuse in Sápmi and Indigenous communities, their relationship to the colonial experience and how art can be at the centre of those conversations.The programme consists of lectures, conversations and discussions, film screenings, performance, poetry, yoik, music and exhibitions.

'I am confident that echoes of Sovereign Words. Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism will assist in strengthening existing collaborations and lead to new and ground-breaking connections where mutual respect and learning will become the norm when exchanging with First Nations ways of life.'
– Brook Andrew, artist and Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, 2020

'CANON NO CANON' is a conference series conceived to address and question the formation and status of art canons internationally from historical and contemporary perspectives as well as investigate the procedures and possibilities for de-canonical methodologies. The first iteration of 'CANON NO CANON' is dedicated to the Nordic context. 'CANON NO CANON' has been originally conceived by OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway and NIA – Nordic Institute of Art, and will develop in the future in multiple iterations led by the institutions jointly or individually.

The Alta Action (c. 1978-82) changed the course of Sámi and Nordic history. This exhibition showcases the role of Sámi artists in the action, and the solidarity of non-Sámi counterparts. It also presents contemporary artistic positions, Sámi and international, exploring the legacy of this Eco-Indigenous uprising today, at a time of growing global Indigenous power.

OCA is pleased to announce its return to the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 with ‘Sovereign Words. Facing the Tempest of a Globalised Art History’: a platform of panel discussions, lecture performances, group debates and readings during the Dhaka Art Summit 2018. ‘Sovereign Words’ is a new iteration of the ‘Critical Writing Ensembles’, committed to the strengthening of critical writing within and across communities of the world.

The programme for 2017—a year dedicated to Indigenous art and thought—marks a commitment to urgent, contemporary Indigenous issues of global importance, and honours the 100th Sami Jubilee which will commence in Tråante (South Sami for Trondheim) on February 6, 2017.

'The Missing One’ is an intergenerational exhibition assembling artworks from across Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Taking the tropes and technologies of science fiction as a thematic beginning, the exhibition’s perspectives are guided by a 1920s painting by Gaganendranath Tagore referencing the 1896’s science fiction story The Missing One by J.C. Bose.

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Art of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO), is pleased to announce ‘The Promise and Compromise of Translation’, a four day platform of reading groups and lectures taking place in Oslo during winter and autumn 2016. The programme is dedicated to the seminal theorist Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) who championed a new language within philosophy, interlocking his writings on language, history and the arts with the partisan perspective of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. Against the conformism of his contemporaries, his ‘untimely’ political aesthetics and materialist concept of history aimed at a redemptive interruption of modernity’s idea of progress.

OCA presents Critical Writing Ensembles (CWE): a four-day platform of panel discussions, lecture performances, group debates and readings, within the context of the Dhaka Art Summit 2016. The Critical Writing Ensembles will be launched by OCA Director Katya García-Antón (curator of the project) together with Diana Campbell Betancourt (Dhaka Art Summit Artistic Director), and are the result of a collaboration led by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Chandrika Grover (Head of Liaison Office India) with Diana Campbell Betancourt, Katya García-Antón and Bhavna Kakar (Director, Take on Art Magazine).

OCA is pleased to announce 'Thinking at the Edge of the World. Perspectives from the North' an ongoing project initiated in 2015 within the OCA’s 'Notations' series, researching the cultural history of Northern Norway, and developed in collaboration with local protagonists during 2016 and 2017. The project will manifest itself in various forms and locations across Norway (notably Svalbard, Karasjok and Oslo) and beyond – including international conferences and artist residencies across Northern Norway, as well as new art, exhibitions, various forms of documentations and writing commissioning.

OCA is pleased to announce ‘Of Love, Departures and Countering Defeats in Choleric Times. Three Stagings’, a project that evolves through three individual, yet interconnected presentations involving lecture performances, talks, unfinished moments and exhibition fragments, which speculate around the choleric moment we are experiencing globally. Click here for more information.