TALK SHOW “Display on Display” Tensta Konsthall April 15, 2015

Monday April 27th 2015 by Peter Thomas Lang

LOCATION: TENSTAKONSTHALL /TIME: 15:00-16:30/ TALKSHOW GUESTS: Thordis Arrhenius__Donatella Bernardi__Maria Lind__Sven Olov Wallenstein__Axel Weider/ MODERATORS: Celine Condorelli__Peter Lang/
A WILDSIDE/KKH PRODUCTION: with the participation of  the KKH students in the course Take a Walk on the Wildside: Learning from the City and Beyond, the Displaying Kiesler Research Group.

Talk Show Display on Display Part 1.

Talk Show Display on Display Part 2.

coming soon:

Talk Show Display on Display Part 3.

Talk Show Display on Display, Questions

 

Display on Display questions the medium of the exhibition as both a physical and conceptual construct, taking as its principle cue of the singular works of Frederick Kiesler, whose many creative investigations and built objects are currently on view at the Tenstakonsthall. A panel of curators, artists and related experts are invited to reflect on methods of display, examining how the act of making viewable cuts across institutions, communities, public networks and individuals. In a literal sense the term “display”, in Middle English means ‘unfurl, unfold’. In Old French “despleier” or in Latin “displicare” is connoted as ‘scatter, disperse, unfold.’  In the context of the Tenstakonsthall exhibition it suggests the invention of an infrastructure that reveals, makes visible, or spreads around of a particular art form, object or conceptual program. The challenge is to reconcile a display’s tectonic function with the message it reinforces.

At its most basic, display is about establishing a dialectic between context and content, engaging the viewer in the process. But it is this relationship with the viewer that is most susceptible to manipulation, precisely because the displayed content is never neutral. Oscar Wilde aptly framed this predicament more then a century ago when he wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, the story about a portrait painting and the captivating relationship to its title character. Despite being locked away behind closed doors, the picture continues to hold a spell over it subject, illustrating the powerful bind between the object and its viewer. There is much more to display then meets the eye, and the Tensta Konsthall’s Kiesler exhibition provides this opportunity to examine this issue in greater detail.

 

 

What Does an Exhibition Do? is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Frederick Kiesler: Visions at Work. Annotated by Céline Condorelli and Six Student Groups at Tensta konsthall (11.2–3.5 2015). Kiesler was active within the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, set design, curating, exhibition architecture, furniture design, journalism, criticism, organizing and teaching. Among his achievements, was the invention of a new kind of exhibition architecture which meant an entirely new way of presenting not only documentary material but also painting and sculpture. The artist and architect Céline Condorelli has contributed to the exhibition, as well as students from six different art, architecture and design educations in Stockholm.

The series is a collaboration with the KTH School of Architecture (Helena Mattsson), The Royal Institute of Art (Peter Lang) and the Stockholm University of the Arts (André Lepecki). With support from ABF Stockholm and KTH School of Architecture and Architecture in Effect.

 

Biographies:

 

Thordis Arrhenius is an architect and architectural researcher with a strong engagement in contemporary architectural and urban practice and their theories.  Her teaching and research is characterised by a dedication to contemporary critical issues in heritage and urbanism where the historical perspective informs actions and strategies. Arrhenius’ research interests concern the exhibition of architecture in mass culture, the relation between architecture and the museum, and the curatorial aspects of preservation. Recent research projects investigate the role of the architectural exhibition in the reception of modern architecture in Scandinavia, the historiography of conservation, and the strategy of alteration and its architectural and theoretical implications. Under the working title Restoring the Welfare State she is at present developing a cross-disciplinary project on the welfare-state, its cultures, politics, materials and agents, that aims, through study the ‘making’ of the welfare state, to contribute to the understanding of how the material heritage from the post-war period today is valued.  The project is developed in collaboration the Nordic schools of architecture (AHO, KTH, KADK)

 

Arrhenius has an international profile in teaching, publication, and research dissemination. She has been appointed professor in Architectural History and Conservation at the Institute of Form, Theory and History, Oslo School of Architecture (2007-2014) where she initiated in collaboration Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies (OCCAS, http://occas.aho.no ) and directed the international research project Place and Displacement: Exhibiting Architecture (2011-2014) funded by the Norwegian Research Council as well as the research project Mediated Architecture; the Exhibition as a Discursive Field with the Swedish Architecture Museum (Arkdes), funded by the Swedish Art Council (2012-2014).  She has been visiting research fellow at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, GSAPP, Columbia University, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture, University of Bath, the Architectural Association Graduate School in London, and the Swedish Institute in Rome. In spring 2015 she is a guest scholar at the Getty Institute of Conservation Los Angeles.

 

Donatella Bernardi: A multi-disciplinary artist, Donatella Bernardi has developed a practice comprising installations, publications, films, essays and exhibition curatorship. Her interests cover questions of gender, colonialism, racial injustice and the current imbalance of capitalism. Co-director of theindependent art space Forde in Geneva (2002-2004), she was also active as part of the Zorro & Bernardo collective with Andrea Lapzeson (2001-2006), then co-founded the nomadic festival Eternal Tour (Rome 2008, Neuchâtel 2009, Jerusalem and Ramallah 2010, New York to Las Vegas 2011, Geneva and São Paulo 2012), which received an award from the Geneva Cantonal Contemporary Art Fund in 2013. She now lives in Stockholm, where she has been Professor at the Royal Institute of Art since January 2010. Winner of the Picker Bursary in 2013, she has released, with Jacqueline Burckhardt, her first artist’s monograph. After having been member of the Swiss Institute in Rome (2006-2008), researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (2008 and 2009), she joined in 2009 the CERCCO team (Centre for Experimentation and Realisation in Contemporary Ceramics) of Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD) as a theoretical contributor. In January 2014, she began a PhD on event and the contemporary art system in the context of globalisation, under the supervision of the Brazilian thinker Denise Ferreira da Silva (University of British Columbia, Canada) and the British organisational learning ethnographer Stephen Fox at the School of Business and Management of the Queen Mary University, London. Study, research and teaching are therefore part of Donatella Bernardi’s artistic practice. The project Smoking Up Ambition! in collaboration with Fabienne Bideaud at Pavillon Sicli in Geneva (2014) is exemplary in this regard. From January to June 2015, she is a guest curator at the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland and develops, as artist and curator, Morgenröte, aurora borealis and Levantin: Into your solar plexus.

 

 

 

Celine Condorelli is a London-based architect, whose practice is concerned with architecture as support and interface, developing critical models towards exhibition making and public space.

She is Senior Lecturer at London Metropolitan University, has worked with institutions working with local government such as in Space Syntax, UCL 2002, or culture and education such as London Open House and Architectural Dialogue 2001/2002, and is currently architect-curator, Eastside Projects, Birmingham. Recent work focuses on art and architecture collaborations and exhibitions, including GIL biennial (Ghuang Zhou, Shanghai, Beijing, 2007), 4’33” (Magazin 4 Bregenzer Kunstverein, Austria 2007), ‘Revisits’ (Architecture Forum Linz, Austria, 2007) ‘theatre pieces’ (Tate Triennial of British Art 2006)‘Alterity Display’ (Lawrence O’Hana gallery, london 2004). Recent projects include developing Support Structure, an RSA Art for Architecture and Arts Council England project with Artist-Curator Gavin Wade, (Chisenhale Gallery, London 2003, The Economist, London 2004, Portsmouth 2004, Greenham Common 2004, Essex University 2005, Birmingham Eastside 2007, and published in Two Minds: Art for Architecture, Black Dog 2006) as well as taxi_onomy with artist Beatrice Gibson, supported by Arts Council England, the British Council and V2 Rotterdam (‘Subcontingency’, Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo, Italy 2006, Turin, ‘Public Structures’, GuangZhou Triennial, China 2005, and ‘the thin line’ PEAM and and Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Italy 2005, and published in ‘did someone say participate’, MIT press 2006).

 

Peter Lang writes on post-war Italian architecture, focusing on sixties Italian experimental design, media and environments.  Lang has curated or has been featured in a number of international exhibitions, including with Storefront for Art and Architecture New York, the Graham Foundation Chicago, the Architecture Biennale Venice, the Milan Triennale, DHUB Barcelona, the NAI Rotterdam among others. Since 1996 he has been a member of Stalker, the Urban Arts group based in Rome, as well as frequent collaborator with Stealth.unlimited.

 

 

Maria Lind

A curator and critic based in Stockholm. She is the director of Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm. 2008-2010 director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. 2005-2007 director of Iaspis in Stockholm. 2002-2004 she was the director of Kunstverein München where she together with a curatorial team ran a programme which involved artists such as Deimantas Narkevicius, Oda Projesi, Annika Eriksson, Bojan Sarcevic, Philippe Parreno and Marion von Osten. From 1997-2001 she was curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and, in 1998, co-curator of Manifesta 2, Europe’s biennale of contemporary art. Responsible for Moderna Museet Projekt, Lind worked with artists on a series of 29 commissions that took place in a temporary project-space, or within or beyond the Museum in Stockholm. Among the artists were Koo Jeong-a, Simon Starling, Jason Dodge, Esra Ersen. There she also curated What if: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design, filtered by Liam Gillick. She has contributed widely to newspapers and magazines and to numerous catalogues and other publications. She is the co-editor of the books Curating with Light Luggage and Collected Newsletter, Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art, as well as the report European Cultural Policies 2015  and The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art. Among her recent co-edited publications are Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets: A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios and Performing the Curatorial: With and Beyond Art. She is the 2009 recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In the fall of 2010 Selected Maria Lind Writing was published by Sternberg Press.

 

 

Sven-Olov Wallenstein teaches Philosophy at the University College of Södertörn, and Architectural Theory at Royal Institutute of Technology,both in Stockholm. He is the editor-in-chief of SITE (www.sitemagazine.net), the author of several books and essays on contemporary art, philosophy, and aesthetics, and the translator of works by Kant, Frege, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and Deleuze. Recent books include Bildstrider: Föreläsningar om estetisk teori (Image Wars: Lectures on Aesthetic Theory, 2001), Den sista bilden: det moderna måleriets kriser och förvandlingar (The Last Image: Crises and Transformations of Modern Painting, 2002), and Den moderna arkitekturens filosofier (The Philosophies of Modern Architecture, 2004), as well as Swedish translations of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement (2003) and Gilles Deleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (2004)

 

Axel Wieder  is a curator and writer, is director of Index – the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm since 2014. He has been Head of Programme and Curator of Exhibitions at Arnolfini Center of Contemporary Arts in Bristol since 2012, where he organized, amongst others, “The Promise” (2014, with Lucy Badrocke), involving works of artists and offsite projects alongside urban planning and architectural models of Bristol, and solo exhibitions with Joëlle Tuerlinckx and Ian Hamilton Finlay. Wieder studied art history and cultural theory at the University of Cologne and the Humboldt University in Berlin, specializing in conceptual art, the history of exhibitions and modern architecture. Since 1990 he has taken part in numerous exhibitions in collaboration with Jesko Fezer, including the 9th International Istanbul Biennial in 2005. In 1999, together with Jesko Fezer and Katja Reichard, he founded Pro qm, a bookstore and a venue for experimental events in the field of art and urbanism in Berlin. For the 3rd Berlin Biennale in 2004 Wieder and Fezer devised a section on urban spatial development in Berlin. Among his many other projects, Wieder curated the exhibition “Now and Ten Years Ago” at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. He has also held lecturing posts at various universities and art academies, including the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. From 2007 to 2010, Wieder was artistic director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. In 2010 he worked as Visiting Curator at Ludlow 38, Goethe-Institut New York. Under his directorship the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart repositioned itself both locally and internationally. Wieder developed an interdisciplinary programme aimed at forging closer links between theoretical formats and exhibition presentations.

 

Axel Wieder’s work frequently focuses on the history and theory of exhibitions, architecture and social space, and issues of political representation. Wieder has lectured internationally and published numerous books and contributions to catalogues, anthologies and magazines, such as Spike, Frieze, Mousse, and Texte zur Kunst. He also sits on numerous juries and panels.

 

TALKSHOW Video production:

Lucia Pagano Born in Stockholm 1984. Studied film at the Polish National Film School in Lodz and is currently taking her masters degree at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm after a bachelor’s degree at Konstfack. Pagano works with film and video on the verge of narrative film and artfilm/videoart.