Kunstkritikk launches its new editorial comments column today. Our opening batsman is the Swedish curator and writer Anders Kreuger. He is a curator with M HKA in Antwerp and editor of the journal Afterall, London, and has previously been director of the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art (Nifca) in Helsinki, director of the Malmö Art Academy, and deputy director at Lunds konsthall.
In today’s comment Kreuger takes a closer look at the conflict surrounding Lunds konsthall on the occasion of a panel discussion taking place at that venue on this day, Thursday 4 February. The discussion is arranged by Nätverk till stöd för Lunds konsthall (The Lunds konsthall support community), Galleri Pictura and Skånes kunstforening (Skåne Art Association).
In the months to come we will also present comments by Marta Kuzma, Mathias Danbolt, Henriette Heise, Ina Blom, Will Bradley, Vanessa Ohlraun and Vibeke Tandberg.
Marta Kuzma is Rector of the Royal Institute of Art Stockholm; from 2005 to 2013 she was Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo. As a curator she has spearheaded a number of projects. For example, she was a co-curator for the Norwegian contribution to the Venice Biennial in 2011 and a member of the working committee for Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s Documenta 13 in 2012.
Mathias Danbolt is a Norwegian art historian based in Copenhagen. His research puts particular emphasis on queer, feminist and anti-racist perspectives in contemporary art. In 2013 he successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis Touching History: Art, Performance and Politics in Queer Times at the University of Bergen. Danbolt is an associate professor of Art History at the University of Copenhagen, and is currently involved in a research project that explores the impact of Danish colonialism in art – a project which builds on the postdoc project Colorblind? Theorizing Race in Danish Contemporary Art and Performance.
Henriette Heise is an artist and associate professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where she lives and works. From 2001 to 2007 Heise ran Det Fri Universitet (The Free University) together with Jakob Jakobsen. Heise’s work encompasses a wide range of media, formats and materials, and she regards it as her duty as an artist to “defend the vulnerable and fragile”.
Ina Blom is an art historian, curator and critic, and a professor at the University of Oslo. Her research puts particular emphasis on media aesthetics and the relationship between art, technology, media and politics. In 2007 she published the book On The Style Site. Art, Sociality and Media Culture, and later this year she will publish The Autobiography of Video. The Life and Times of a Memory Technology (both published by Sternberg Press). From 2011 to 2013 Blom headed the NFR-funded research project The Archive in Motion.
Will Bradley is an art critic and curator based in Oslo. He has been Artistic Director of Kunsthall Oslo since its opening in 2010. His other curatorial activities include Forms of Resistance at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, 2007, in co-operation with Charles Esche and Phillip van den Bossche, and Radical Software at Wattis Institute, San Francisco, 2006. He was also editor of Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader (published by Tate Publishing in association with Afterall).
Vanessa Ohlraun is Dean of the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo, where she also lives. She has worked as a freelance and guest curator on a range of art exhibitions in Berlin and Rotterdam, for example at the Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Ohlraun has also been Course Director for the Master of Fine Arts programme at the Piet Zwart Institute at the University of Rotterdam.
Vibeke Tandberg is an artist. She lives and works in Oslo. In recent years she has presented a range of “self-devouring” shows, often based on her own previous work, most recently Infinite Signature at the OSL Contemporary last autumn. She is also a novelist: her debut was Beijing Duck in 2012, which she followed up with her second novel Tempelhof in 2014 (both published by Forlaget Oktober).
