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Theory as Dystopia Industry (To Think With One’s Hands 2)

If everyone knew that control society was being realized, then why did panic not erupt?
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States of Undress

Presented at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo, Marthe Ramm Fortun’s obstacle course through the city teases out the prejudices that govern public behaviour.
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A Farewell to Canons

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway invites us to step away from the Western canon. A radical multi-voicedness awaits on the other side. But how does this affect the tradition of canon criticism?
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The Ghost Particle and The Third Eye

Lea Porsager combines the zany with the stringent as she casts herself as a sex-obsessed shaman, conjuring images of things that are not visible to the naked eye.
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Technological Eruptions

A new book on the singular artist, filmmaker, and electronic musician Åke Karlung redraws the map of Sweden’s experimental scene in the 60s.
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Volcano Power? Yes, Please!

Ursula Reuter Christiansen tears up the soil and the canvas with mythology and history, allowing her female subjects to break free from oppressive norms.
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Notable Art Venue Closing

X-rummet is officially part of the National Gallery of Denmark, but over the course of its existence it became an institution in its own right.
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Trouble With Politics

Bergen Assembly 2019 mainly shows political art that is densely packed with information. This creates a sense of community, but it also produces new exclusions.
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The Art Sees Me, But I Don’t See It

Experiential art is the new black on the exhibition scene. It does everything it can to ensure its audience has fun, and tickles the narcissist in us all. Because it’s all about us, the viewers.
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The Limits of Friendship

Our Friend, Valerie Solanas at Signal in Malmö pays tribute to women artists who find strength in fragility, but forfeits on a broad anti-capitalist feminism.
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Putting Out a Fire With Gasoline

Anne Imhof’s new exhibition at Galerie Buchholz in Berlin makes a tantalising theatre of the zeitgeist. But what happens when the vape runs out of battery?
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To Think With One’s Hands

How can art and culture overcome the fatalism of today? Can thought and hand once again be united? Only Boris Johnson’s id can save us now

Recently published

A Farewell to Canons

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway invites us to step away from the Western canon. A radical multi-voicedness awaits on the other side. But how does this affect the tradition of canon criticism?

States of Undress

Presented at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo, Marthe Ramm Fortun’s obstacle course through the city teases out the prejudices that govern public behaviour.

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Learning to Do Things Differently

The new director of Kunsthall Trondheim, Stefanie Hessler, wants to engage the local technology and science community, but not to affirm staid notions of progress.
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Optimism Interrupted

Michael Rakowitz’s exhibition in Malmö deepens the narrative of the Middle East’s lost cultural heritage.
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Starfish Embrace

A slow pace, collective efforts, and firm local ties facilitate LIAF 2019’s successful integration with its setting.
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The Blind Leading the Blind

Our present day has a desire for images so fierce that it threatens to destroy us, according to Irena Haiduk, whose exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg is shrouded in total darkness.
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Not Beyond Politics

‘Climate emergency is about much more than global warming or melting ice’, says art historian T. J. Demos, who recently gave a lecture in Bergen.
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When Everything Is Poetry, Nothing Is

At Virserum Konsthall, Ane Hjort Guttu reflects on the challenges confronting rural areas in Sweden at a time when individuals are poised to be creative and free.
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Göteborg Is the World

Unlike a superhero movie, the 10th Göteborg Biennial does not seek to reach an audience consisting of all the people on earth.
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Dangerous Liaisons

At Statens Museum for Kunst, Shahryar Nashat has produced a captivating immersive experience that is both seductive and claustrophobic.
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Travis Jeppesen’s Accelerating Perversion

Dealing with bad art, the book Bad Writing is gloriously perverted in places. But it is also a slightly surly attack on what it calls ‘political correctness’.
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Curating Interconnectedness

‘In order to move on, you must also turn back’, says Lisa Rosendahl, curator of the 10th edition of the Göteborg Biennial, opening this Saturday.
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Autumn’s Carousel

Carsten Höller looms large over the Danish art scene this autumn, alongside dreadfully thin-skinned pottery and a hospital for self-medication.
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The Murmur of the Mains

This autumn season, the Norwegian art scene will see a record-breaking number of mid-career solo shows, and paintings that engage with nature and architecture.
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Farewell to the Techno-Patriarchy

In Sweden, authors like Ursula Le Guin, Valerie Solanas, and the Danish poet Inger Christensen set a literary tone for an auspicious autumn season.

Venice Biennale 2019

The 58th Venice Biennale opened on 11 May and lasts until 24 November. Here are Kunstkritikk’s reviews and other articles relating to this year’s event.
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Spiky Seating

In the Nordic Pavilion in Venice, insects, green growths in glass containers, and clusters of seaweed all thrive. Whether it is inhabitable to us humans is less certain.

Dark Inheritance

In her beautiful sci-fi noir installation at the Danish Pavilion in Venice, Larissa Sansour asks what the memory of national identity means once a tsunami has washed away everything.

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