Projects 2004

LIAF - 04

Lofoten International
Art Festival LIAF - 04
29 May - 25 July 2004
Lofoten, Norway

Age of Permanent Warfare Symposium in Lofoten, May 28th, 2004



(Now, we come to discover that moments of agony/are likewise permanent/With such permanence as time has/People change, and smile: but the agony abides/)
T.S. Eliot

In the curatorial statement for Human, Fucking Human, the central exhibition of Lofoten International Art Festival LIAF - 04, curator Tor Inge Kveum assigns to the field and the practice of contemporary visual art the opportunity to function as an other kind of discourse, in opposition or juxtaposition to the presumed or demonstrated entrenched everyday of media culture. It is perhaps not the first time in history that the arts are handed such a role as to realize the hopes for a critical or oppositional, if not revolutionary, discourse. But it is certainly a relevant concern of the present since the visual arts today occupy a special, even peculiar public position. Belonging to public space and public discourse, continuously encroached upon by the market, private enterprise, state infringements; art is still a remarkably incomplete system. In fact, art may resemble the market in that it devours discourses; it is constantly on the move, and embraces and enters all possible systems of knowledge and experience today ¬ philosophical, political, social, ethic, aesthetic.

But is there still any real autonomy? What practices are possible in our neo-colonial era? How might public discourse be enacted as it is continuously encroached upon by the republic of fear created by the so called ³war on terrorism²? What speech, verbal or visual, is possible as the only remaining super-power occupies increasing territories in order to feed its military-industrial complex? Is art an alternative to media? How to narrate the human experiences of the present ¬ migration, exile, war, terror, fear, bulldozed homes, fundamentalism,Š?

Having invited speakers/practicioners from several disciplines, this symposium will attempt a deep dive in such issues and concerns. Performed in the context of a festival of visual arts, the symposium will however not focus the visual arts as its immediate concern, but rather engage this very much larger political and social context just mentioned.



Programme of the symposium:

12.00 Jan-Erik Lundström: Introductory lecture: Aftermaths, Closures, Posts, Neos: What to do with ³political², what to do with ³art²?
12.30 Tor Inge Kveum, curator of the Lofoten International Art Festival: Introduction to LIAF 04.
13.00 - 14.00 Lunch
14.00 Marina Grzinic: Art, Politics and The State of Exception
14.45 Amar Kanwar: Artist talk
15.30 Dariush Moaven Doust:
16.00 Coffee
16.20 Lene Johannessen: Anatomies of Exile
17.00 Mary Beth Edelson: Artist talk
17.30 Discussion


Moderator: Jan-Erik Lundström

Jan-Erik Lundström is the director of BildMuseet, Umeå and a freelance curator, critic and cultural organizer. Among his latest exhibitions are Politics of Place, Killing Me Softly (Tirana Biennial), Projects for a Revolution (Mois de la Photo, Montreal) and Same, Same, but Different. He is the artistic director of the coming Berlin Triennial of Photographic Media. He works with contemporary African art for The Museum of World Cultures in Gothenburg. Lundström is a prolific international lecturer and writer, contributer to symposia internationally and to magazines such as European Photography, Paletten, tema celeste.

Prof. Dr Marina Grzinic lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She works as researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the ZRC SAZU (Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art) in Ljubljana. She is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Grzinic also works as freelance media theorist, art critic and curator. She was co-curator of the Kyoto Biennale 2003. She has published hundreds of articles and essays and 9 books. Grzinic has been involved with video art since 1982. In collaboration with Aina Smid she has produced more than 30 video art projects, a short film, numerous video and media installations, Internet websites and an interactive CD-ROM (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany). Together, they have received numerous international awards (ZKM Video Award, San Francisco Film festival Award, Videonale Bonn, Video award 1. video bienale Buenos Aires, etc.). A major retrospective of their work was shown at The International Short Fim Festival in Oberhausen, Germany in 2003.

Lene Johannessen is NFR Post.doc research fellow at the English department, University of Bergen. Dr.art, in American Studies with dissertation Reading from Thresholds: The Aesthetics of Time in Chicano Literature (Bergen, 2002). Research interests: American literature, Postcolonial literatures and cultures, theories of language, politics and identity. The current post.doc project is called "The Architectonics of Memory in Exile and Migration," and explores the tropology of the migratory in American literature.

Mary Beth Edelson lives and works in New York City. She has been featured in over 30 books, and her art work is widely exhibited and critiqued in the US and abroad, in the literature of fields as diverse as psychology, women¹s studies, feminist theory, photography, theology and art, and is collected by major museums including MOMA, NY, Guggenheim, NY, Corcoran, D.C., Walker Art Center, MN. Recent exhibitions include: Century City, Tate, London; Modern Amazon, New Museum, NY; Malmo Museer, Sweden; Galleri LeLong, NY; Shedhalle, Zurich and Mumok Museum, Vienna. In addition to international recognition, as a feminist pioneer she has founded numerous feminist enterprises over the years. A survey of Edelson¹s work toured seven exhibition sites in the US between 2000-2002, and is currently being booked to tour Europe. She is a lecturer, and has written four books the most recent is² The Art of Mary Beth Edelson² which surveys 30 years of her art work also interlaces her activism and conversations with other artists.

Amar Kanwar is an independent film maker working from New Delhi, India. His films were exhibited at DOCUMENTA 11 and in several international film festivals.
He has received the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, 1999 for A Season Outside¹, the Golden Conch at the Mumbai International Film Festival 1998 for 'A Season Outside' , the Jury's award at Film South Asia -Kathmandu in 2002 for his film ' King of Dreams ' and The Grand Prix at EnviroFilm 2002, Slovak Republic for the film FREEDOM . Other exhibitions have been at the The Renaissance Society, Chicago, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art - Geneva, the Tensta Konsthall - Stockholm, Fri-art Centre d'art Contemporain Kunsthalle - Fribourg, the Werkleitz Biennale - Kassel , the Whitechapel Art Gallery , London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

A bus to the symposium will leave from Svolvaer at 9 a.m. on May 28th for reservations and programme contact Vågan Kommune +47 75 42 01 20, post@liaf.no

LIAF symposium is organized in the collaboration with OCA Office for Contemporary Art Norway and NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art


Lofoten International Art Festival, Liaf - 04

May 29th - July 25th – 2004

LIAF - 04 participants:
Pavel Brâila/MD
Gunilla Bresky/NO
Elina Brotherus/FI
Mary Beth Edelson/US
Gardar Eide Einarsson/NO
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset/DK/NO
Thor Erdahl/NO
Mark Harrington/US
Pål Hollender/SE
Amar Kanwar/IN
David Krantz/SE
Annika Larsson/SE
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen/DK
Pipilotti Rist/CH
Mari Slaattelid/NO
Erik Snedsbøl/SE/NO
Per Teljer/SE/DE
Jasmila Zbanich/BA

More information: http://www.liaf.no

Annika Wiström
e-mail: ss882x@tninet.se, tel. + 46 40 12 68 52 / + 46 70 430 59 15