Office for Contemporary Art Norway AR2012_inside_final.indd 1 13-09-2013 14:36 Annual Report 2012 AR2012_inside_final.indd 2 13-09-2013 14:36 Annual Report 2012 AR2012_inside_final.indd 3 13-09-2013 14:36 4 AR2012_inside_final.indd 4 13-09-2013 14:36 HANNAH RYGGEN Jul Kvale, 1956 Installation view at the Museum Friedericianum as part of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Courtesy of Nordenfjeldske5 Kunstindustriemuseum, Trondheim. Photo: Rosa Maria Rühling AR2012_inside_final.indd 5 13-09-2013 14:36 Director’s Foreword HANNAH RYGGEN Variuos Artworks Installation view at the Museum Friedericianum as part of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Photo: Roman März AR2012_inside_final.indd 6 13-09-2013 14:36 Director’s Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev pre- sented dOCUMENTA (13) in her statement as ‘a belief in the poten- Foreword tial of re-enactment, in the hope that by allowing more layers of meaning to be added, a form of closure can be avoided’. Hannah Ryggen, the composer Arne Nordheim, Matias Faldbakken, Toril Johannessen, and Aase Texmon Rygh were selected by Christov-Bakargiev to be included within the dOCUMENTA (13) exhibi- tion. The production and projects of these individual artists folded into Christov-Bakargiev’s curato- HANNAH RYGGEN rial thinking around the documenta Gru. Fra borgerkrigen I Spania (Horror. From the Civil War in exhibition, a project that, since its Spain), 1936 inception – according to Ian Wal- Installation view at the Museum lace – ‘had become a focal point for Friedericianum as part of ideological as well as aesthetic dis- dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Courtesy course surrounding contemporary Nasjonalmuseet vor kunst, art’. It is therefore appropriate that arkitektur og design / the National in the tenth year of OCA’s existence Museum of Art, Architecture and as an institution and public founda- Design, Oslo. Photo: Rosa Maria Rühling tion, this representation is high- lighted within this year’s publication. Marta Kuzma Director, Office for Contemporary Art Norway 7 AR2012_inside_final.indd 7 13-09-2013 14:36 HANNAH RYGGEN Spania / La Hora se aproxima (The Two Spanish Front: the Hour of decision is Near), 1938 Installation view at the Museum Friedericianum as part of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Courtesy Nasjonalmuseet vor kunst, arkitektur og design / the National Museum of Art, Architecture and 8 Design, Oslo. Photo: Rosa Maria Rühling AR2012_inside_final.indd 8 13-09-2013 14:36 Actively engaged with the Norwe- gian Communist Party, a pacifist, and a proponent of international workers’ movements, Ryggen devel- oped a socialist and political con- sciousness that by the mid-1930s radicalized her role with respect to her tapestry weaving. As the mass- cultural public sphere transformed into the totalitarian fascist sphere, the state of personal privacy was in continual threat of violation. During the interwar period, Ryggen set out to produce a body of work that challenged the prevailing sense of apathy, as well as the prevailing codes of legibility and legitimacy. With an upfront and adamant will to demystify, she prolifically produced works that chronicled the social regression that attested to a life collapsing. Although she shared an affinity with Käthe Kollwitz, who also selected as her narrative the social, spiritual, and political disor- der of ther time, Ryggen bypassed Kollwitz’s tendency to draft alle- gorical figures (such as Black Anna, 1921) and instead identified histori- cal individuals who forged, installed, and enabled the totalitarian regime in those years – Mussolini, Hitler, Goring, Quisling, Churchill, and the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun. – Marta Kuzma, Hannah Ryggen, (100 Notes – 100 Thoughts published by dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz, 2012. 9 AR2012_inside_final.indd 9 13-09-2013 14:36 10 AR2012_inside_final.indd 10 13-09-2013 14:36 HANNAH RYGGEN Etiopia (Ethiopia), 1935 Installation view at the Museum Friedericianum as part of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Courtesy of Nordenfjeldske11 Kunstindustriemuseum, Trondheim. Photo: Rosa Maria Rühling AR2012_inside_final.indd 11 13-09-2013 14:36 ARNE NORDHEIM Original score of Vevnad [p.6] as exhibited at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Courtesy Norwegian Academy of Music / Rannveig Getz Nordheim 12 AR2012_inside_final.indd 12 13-09-2013 14:37 Vevnad was originally composed by Arne Nordheim in 1993, as a homage to Hannah Ryggen. A pio- neer in electronic music, Nordheim reflected upon Ryggen’s unique approach to her medium to pro- duce a score that was drafted in such a way to connote the arrange- ment of notes with a woven fabric. Composed of three sections, each is named after a technical term in weaving: ‘Woven Piece’, ‘Weft’, and ‘Warp’. The work was composed and is performed on a disklavier – an instrument whose inner strings and mechanical movements resemble a shuttle moving through the warp of a loom. – Marta Kuzma, from dOCUMENTA (13) Catalog 3/3 – The Guidebook, published by dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz, 2012. 13 AR2012_inside_final.indd 13 13-09-2013 14:37 MATIAS FALDBAKKEN Installation view at the Library in City Hall as part of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Courtesy the artist. Photo: David Maroto 14 AR2012_inside_final.indd 14 13-09-2013 14:37 Faldbakken’s work as an author of the Scandinavian Misanthropy triol- ogy of books (2001–08), amongst others, runs parallel to his artistic practice, in which he creates a field of signifiers of interruption that point to the eradication of cause and effect in a mechanical, com- modified, hyper-mediated society. In doing so, his works adopt the conceptual patterning of Stephane Mallarme’s Un coup de dés jamais nábolira le hasard (1897), whereby words are transposed into incoher- ent image and spatial arrangements that abandon any legibility in order to highlight the spaces between the words rather than the words them- selves. Faldbakken in his work Unti- tled (Book Sculpture) (2008–2012), updates Mallarme’s original work by putting in spatial disarray the components of a categorised library as a sign of absence that announces a broader, cannily coded discourse on loss and catastrophe. Faldbak- ken uses this violent rearrangement to set up a field of nothingness and, essentially, of worklessness, whereby the book extends beyond itself toward another meaning that has yet to arrive as comprehensible and legible. – Marta Kuzma, from dOCUMENTA (13) Catalog 3/3 – The Guidebook, published by dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz, 2012. 15 AR2012_inside_final.indd 15 13-09-2013 14:37 TORIL JOHANNESSEN Extraordinary Popular Delusions Installation view from ‘When you step inside it is filled with seeds’ at Ottoneum as part of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Anders Sune Berg 16 AR2012_inside_final.indd 16 13-09-2013 14:37 Toril Johannessen’s practice – span- ning media such as photography, text, drawing, sculpture, storytell- ing, and installation – engages in scientific topics through empiri- cal and theoretical investigation. Paralleling scientific and artistic research, Johannessen sheds light on the creative elements inherent to the various methods of knowledge production and bring them to poetic conclusions. Occupied with notions and conceptions of time on the one hand, and with cycles of energy and economy on the other, she explores natural and financial phenomena and their representations. Extraor- dinary Popular Delusions (2012) addresses issues relating to energy, cycles and economy, taking the sun, petroleum, and the production of images as the point of departure. The artist establishes a metaphoric and material relationship between the source of light and the pro- jected image – projector and image become a self-referential energy system. Using the larger scheme of the energy system, Johannessen further asks how matter and ideas are linked and form systems and short-circuits, what the illusions and delusions of today are, and how to find a poetic language to address the crisis of our times: of environ- ment, energy, and finance. – Eva Scharrer, from dOCUMENTA (13) Catalog 3/3 – The Guidebook, published by dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz, 2012. 17 AR2012_inside_final.indd 17 13-09-2013 14:37 AASE TEXMON RYGH Various Artworks Installation view from ‘When you step inside it is filled with seeds’ at Ottoneum as part of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany / 9 June–16 September 2012. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Anders Sune Berg 18 AR2012_inside_final.indd 18 13-09-2013 14:37 The Möbius strip has been central to Aase Texmon Rygh’s sculptural pro- duction for the past three decades, emphasising the artist’s fascination with its paradoxical conceptual abil- ity to hold both an ‘inside exterior’ and an ‘outside interior’. In reflecting this duality, Texmon Rygh’s sculp- tures apply Merleau-Ponty’s idea that art is born out of a scheme of contrasts, modulating a crystallisa- tion of time, and a possible cipher of transcendence. The artist has noted her ‘preference to work with pure, simple form with the aim to achieve the maximum expression with minimal measures’. Texmon Rygh’s early work was influenced by Henri Laurens, whose sculptural practice fused on musical and architectonic principles of form to take pos- session of space, constructing an object through alternating and con- trasting cavities and volumes, full- ness and emptiness. This provided the foundation of her