Unwoven World: Beyond the Pliable Plane

The catalysts of heated debates about the role of artists within society Fuglevaag, Haarr and Paaske aimed to challenge the means deemed appropriate to the creation of a work of art, as well as question the values that place that art in the public realm. Presenting key works, some of which have never been seen publically before, the exhibition ‘Unwoven World: Beyond the Pliable Plane’ aims to function as an index of a historic genealogy, reactivated through the performativity of words, texts and concerts. On the occasion of this exhibition OCA also presents the first English translation of Paaske’s poem Indigo, originally published in 1979.

'Unwoven World: Beyond the Pliable Plane’ marks the completion of the programme ‘Fashion: the Fall of an Industry’, a series of lectures held at OCA in the autumn of 2013. The lectures analysed the decline of the textile industry during the 1970s in Norway as well as artistic reaction to and reflection upon the unforeseen aspects of industrialisation, the need to care for environmental and working conditions, and the social impact experienced through the outsourcing of production. The exhibition is also accompanied by a selection of Alexander Kluge’s eclectic collection of ‘raw materials’, a series of television programmes assembling photographs, drawings, diagrams and diverse footage construed to 'strengthen the muscles of [our] power of imagination'. Alexander Kluge, a central figure of the German cultural landscape – as a filmmaker, writer and television producer – has for the past fifty years been tackling the capacity of fantasy to organise individual experience otherwise concealed by structures of conciousness and the screens capturing our attention.