Hampus Lindwall, Dusk Meditations II, Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival
For barely an hour of what was otherwise an overly long and suspenseful 2024, time finally stood still and folded itself into perfect layers of puff pastry as organist Hampus Lindwall performed two works for church organ by the late artist and composer Phill Niblock. Its form-dissolving drones and overtones concluded this year’s Ultima festival with a new opening, a reconciliatory flash of eternity as we melted into the texture of the present. For a brief moment, the cathedral was the closest you could come in Oslo to an early morning at legendary Berlin club Berghain – or perhaps being abducted by aliens.
Dragons and Logs, The National Museum of Art, Oslo
An architecture exhibition, yes. But also an exuberant dissection of the very idea of a national architecture. In an era marked by mega-institutions and the tyranny of audience engagement, the National Museum’s exhibition Dragons and Logs was nothing short of a rare triumph of expertise: a research-based presentation with carefully considered perspectives that upheld the notion of an exhibition as a conversation in which one seeks to say something. More importantly, it demonstrated that expertise is not a barrier to widespread appeal but a prerequisite for it. This became evident to all of us who tried to squeeze into Bente Aass Solbakken’s curator-led tour, which, to the great surprise and bewilderment of the guards, turned almost as hectic as when the influencer Speed had to barricade himself inside a tourist shop on Oslo’s main street to escape his fans this summer.
Warren Brodey and Kai Gjelseth, Guttormsgaards Archive, Blaker
This wondrous place – where does one even begin? Housed in the old Blaker dairy, it is an ongoing and exceptionally inspired exploration of countercultural historiography through what presents as part exhibition space and part archive rooted in the late artist Guttorm Guttormsgaard’s collection of, amongst other things, printed matter and outsider art. Two highlights from this year’s programme: a contemporary revisitation of the ecological concepts of the centenarian, former psychiatrist, and MIT researcher Warren Brodey and his techno-philosophical collage book Earthchild (1974) presented as an experimental online interface; and the exhibition Ingen hater messing (Nobody Hates Brass), comprising graphic designer and former professor at Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry Kai Gjelseth’s collection of (mainly) utilitarian brass objects. What other art institution – if one might even call it that – could present such a diverse range of projects with the same level of integrity?
Maria Moseng is a critic with a background in film and visual arts. For many years, she was the editor of Wuxia, a journal dedicated to film culture. She is currently completing a PhD on political landscape imagery at the University of Oslo.
Translation: Marie-Alix Isdahl
For this year’s contributions to the Advent Calendar, see here.
