Download the Catalogue PDF - Afgangs-undstillingen 2010

what you consider to be the true, the proper, the
usable, the effective knowledge.» 9
Denne katalogen vil på forskjellige måter gi en introduksjon
til 11 unge kunstnere som alle vil skape sine egne
historier og lage sine egne rom. I arbeidet med avgangsutstillingen
var det viktig for oss at kunstnerne selv fikk
definere sitt eget verk. Samtidig må en felles forståelse
være tilstede av at verk alltid er i bevegelse i møte med
både andre verk, andre rom og en skiftende samtid. Som
Karl Marx-sitatet i begynnelsen av denne teksten sier, vil
et skapende virke alltid finne sted innenfor en kontekst,
enten denne er som et tyngende mareritt fra tidligere generasjoner
eller noe stadig flytende der nedarvede idealer
blandes og redefineres. Det er viktig for en kunstner å
kunne manøvrere med slike bevegelser i tid, rom og kontekst.
I arbeidet med utstillingen har det derfor vært viktig
at vi i fellesskap lager et samhold innenfor en avgangsklasse
som i det siste året av utdannelsen naturligvis er
fokusert på å arbeide med sin egen individuelle produksjon.
Utstillingen og avgangsklassen danner således et
samfunn eller et kollektiv som beskrevet av Urry:
«(…) there is communion, a human association
that is characterised by close personal ties,
belongingness and warmth between its members.
[This] is what is conventionally meant by the idea of
‘community’ relationships.» 10
Som i historien om de vulkanskyreisende, kan ytre grenser
(som Vest-Europa) danne en felles indre identitet og nærhet.
Denne utstillingens vegger, denne katalogens permer
og den tiden som kunstnerne har delt ved Det Fynske
Kunstakademi, er den konteksten som de skaper sine
egne historier innenfor.
Åse Løvgren / Karolin
Tampere, Curators,
RAKETT
(Fodnoter) 1 / http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/
works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm. 2 / http://www.scribd.com/
doc/16443296/Tallverdens-flyktninger-og-internt-fordrevneFlyktningregnskapet-2009.
3 / John Urry, Mobility and Connections,
http://www.ville-en-mouvement.com/telechargement/040602/
mobility.pdf. 4 / Ibid. 5 / Ibid. 6 / Zygmund Bauman, forelesning
ved ANSE-conference 2004 i Leiden, http://anse.eu/html/history/2004%20Leiden/bauman%20englisch.pdf.
7 / Boltanski og
Chiapello, 1999. 8 / Bauman, op.cit. 9 / Ibid. 10 / Urry, op.cit.
UK:
Compulsion to proximity
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as
they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances,
but under circumstances existing already,
given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of
all dead generations weighs like an nightmare on the
brains of the living.- Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte (1852) 1
As we write this text, the world has suddenly gone
through a slight change. The eruption underneath the
Eyjafjallajøkull glacier has grounded almost all airplanes
in Europe, and people are stranded. Still we can’t really
decide if the world has become smaller or bigger during
the last days.
Western and Eastern Europe
Yesterday we were in touch with the artist duo Bik Van
der Pol, who had just participated in an exhibition in
Trondheim in Norway together with other European
artists. As one flight after the other got cancelled, the
organizers had to find alternative ways to get their artists
back home. All regular trains and buses were fully
booked, so they ended up rented two small buses.
One got the tag Western Europe and the other Eastern
Europe. Bik Van der Pol, who was going to Rotterdam,
thus shared bus with travelers to Calais and Paris, while
artists from Belgrade and Krakow shared the other.
There was something strangely anachronistic about this
concrete dividing of Europe, where the two parts shared
fates, cut off from the other. It was reminding of a time
when the Warsaw Pact and NATO divided Europe into
two worlds with their own pre-determined and opposite
identities. The world suddenly felt smaller, as large areas
in one stroke was represented on one single bus. No
matter where you were headed in that part of the world
you were all in the same boat (or bus).
Long way back home from Odense
At the same time the world also felt bigger. The distance
between the neighbouring countries of Denmark and
Norway became more physically understandable when
travelling took several days, depending on whatever
means of transport were available. The long way home
after our visit to the Funen Art Academy went by train,
then an overnight stay and a long ferry ride.
John Urry is a sociologist dealing with mobility, and he
writes about how mobility increasingly central to our
lives – both in terms of physical travels (for example,
Englishmen travel five times as much today than in the
1950s and 41 million people are refugees all over the
world 2 ) and in terms of new media, for example travels in
virtual media which he describes as «virtual travel often
in real time on the internet so transcending geographical
and social distance; as Microsoft asks: ‘where do you
want to go today?’» 3
In April, on her way to visit the Funen Art Academy,
Karolin was stuck at the airport in Oslo, seeing one
flight after the other get cancelled. Later she came to
rescue as a driver for two stranded artists from the Sami
Art Festival in Trondheim, trying to make their way to
Oslo from Trondheim (500km). On the ferry Åse was
on Skype, gathering a small crowd of colleagues who
were stuck someplace or another. As the days passed,
we were in touch with more and more people who were
stuck somewhere. Seminars got cancelled, plans remade.
«The more people travel corporeally, the more that
they seem to connect in cyberspace.»4 These people
were indeed present on the Internet while waiting, or
while travelling by alternative itineraries (the alternative
means of transportation were mostly trains, buses or
boats where Internet was available, unlike on planes).
Urry investigates the quality of meeting someone face
to face. Why do people travel for hours just to meet with
other people? What is this compulsion to proximity? A
meeting in cyberspace is often viewed upon as less real
or authentic than a meeting where you are physically in
the same room.
«Real life is seen to comprise enduring,
face-to-face, communitarian connections, while the
mobile world is made up of fragile, mobile, airy and
inchoate connections. Examining the consequences
of the various new technologies rests upon a series
of what are seen as overlapping and reinforcing
dichotomies: real/ unreal, face-to-face/ life on the
screen, immobile/ mobile, community/ virtual and
presence/ absence.» 5
Urry states that such dichotomies are no longer viable or