The next stage of the urban interface series is the exhibition and conference in Oslo in Septmeber 07. We created a second website for urban interface oslo and copied all blog entries which were posted during urban interface berlin.

If you have registered as a blogger to urban interface berlin, your login is still working, but your entries will only be shown on the UIB website. If you prefer to submit a blog entry to the new Oslo website then you would need to register again by sending your request to blog@urban-interface.net.

We are sorry for this inconvenience. Shortly we will update the urban interface websites with a joint first entry page.

urban interface oslo Exhibition 14 September – 7 October 2007 Conference 14 + 15 September 2007

Vacant shop in Gruoenerlokka

Conference The Porous City: Art claiming the urban void

Today’s city is a porous and dynamic terrain; the physical world constantly interfaces with the immaterial sphere of electronic and digital data which can easily and unobtrusively cross physical borders. At the same time, the complexity of the city and the widely undefined boundaries between private and public space create a variety of urban voids and grey areas calling for occupation and definition.

The Porous City is a two-day conference on contemporary art practices responding to the multivalent porousness of the urban environment. Artists, theoreticians and curators will discuss the constraints and potential of the urban voids and loopholes, contributing to a contemporary conception of art in public space.

The first day of the conference will focus on the impact of electronic, digital and mobile media on the city. The ubiquitous use of digital, networked and mobile technologies raises new questions about conditions of both private and public spaces. Imperceptible surveillance systems and spy bots, the semi-private on-line forums, the use of the cell phone in public space, easy-to-tap-in wireless data transmission in general – they all have a strong impact on our understanding of private and public space – demanding precise definitions and demarcations of these spaces.

Particularly the 70’s and 80’s celebrated the idea of new technology supporting an open, democratic and networked society. Although these optimistic expectations were not fulfilled, the potential of intercultural and intersocial communication still inhere in new media.

When it comes to public art, new media is capable of occupying physical, virtual and hybrid spaces, offering multiple points of access. In addition, the processual and audiovisual nature of new media results in multifaceted and time-based perception of this type of public art.

Building on the technology centred discourse of the first day, the second day will try to localise interventionist and process-based art within the public art field, the art market and art funding. We will look closely at how these works push the boundaries of the public art genre for its own good and the effect this has on the understanding of urban culture. Emphasis will be laid on the analysis of artistic strategies which invite the audience to interact, contribute to and become active voices in the public sphere.

On both days, the artists who created works for urban interface oslo will introduce the audience to their artworks, thus illuminating practical and conceptual issues related to public art production and the specific terrain of Oslo’s public space.

In addition, the Open Forum on day two will provide a platform for artists and designers to present current, upcoming and past projects to the conference’s audience and speakers. The Open Forum aims to provide an interactive exchange of knowledge and perspectives on the topic of public art. It gives its presenters the opportunity to draw attention to their individual art practice and to benefit from responses by the target audience.

Confirmed speakers:

Laura Beloff

HC Gilje

Habbestad&Larsson

John Hawke

Drew Hemment

Susanne Jaschko

Vibeke Jensen

Lev Manovich

Jan Inge Reilstad

Martin Rieser

Florian Rötzer

Sancho Silva

Michelle Teran

Jeremy Wesh

More to come.

Another book recommendation by urban interface.

Thanks to new wireless technologies (WIFI, GPS, RFID) and mobile media, public space is subject to drastic changes. It is being traversed by electronic infrastructures and networks, and alternative cultural and social domains are evolving, though often invisible from a conventional viewpoint. The traditional physical and social conditions of the public domain are being supplanted by zones, places and subcultures that transcend the local and interlink with translocal and global processes. The question is whether there are also new opportunities for the individual and for groups to act, participate and intervene publicly in this hybrid, seemingly flexible space. How do people appropriate the new public spaces? Where does the ‘public’ take place in this day and age? Who shapes and moulds it by devising spatial, cultural and political strategies?

With contributions by Drew Hemment, Howard Rheingold, Saskia Sassen, Frans Vogelaar/Elizabeth Sikiardi, Noortje Marres, Koen Brams/Dirk Pültau, Marion Hamm, Kristina Andersen, Ari Altena, Daniel van der Velden, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Esther Polak, De Geuzen, Max Bruinsma and Logo Parc Guest editor: Eric Kluitenberg, Jorinde Seijdel and Liesbeth Melis (eds.)

See Nai publishers for more details.

Drew Hemment will be a speaker at the UIO conference The Porous City in September 07.

—researches and spatial probes—-

as metaphor: The small aggressive dog (drug dealers inhabiting the park) The running moose (civil police and their startled response) = monument to tactical spatial victory of black economy.

The small aggressive dog (the norwegian state—freed from foreign domination) The running moose (foreigners—here, the impoverished third world that must be run off ) =monument to Norwegian vigilance; an inspirational goal.

as lived space—a preferred site for beer drinking due to protection afforded by sculpture—sculpture detourned to abet illegal uses.

the site Bordered by Securitas (private security firm) Oslo Corporate Headquarters, Oslo Department of Urban Planning.

intervention log: couch removed from dumpster, carried to site cone and sign removed from site of nearby minor road accident warning tape found as trash at various construction sites

-dialectical forces of Permission and Maintenance Law, code, permeability within the state apparatus (permission) versus site presence unfolding in time (maintenance). The static, binary gesture of permission versus the continuing insistence of maintenance.

We wonder, wether this monument praises the moose or the moose hunting dog…and who put the couch and the barrier in front of it…...

At this very moment we are having a workshop on the production of urban interface which started on Thursday 21 and ends on Monday 25 June. During this workshop we work on the development of artworks and define needs and processes for production. Also artists look for suitable sites for their works during their stay.

The artists articipating in this UIO workshop are: Michelle Teran from Canada, but based in Berlin. She is currently ‘scanning’ the city of Oslo for wireless transmitting surveilance cameras and has found aleady a couple of sites/surveillance camera images which she will use for her UIO project.

Vibeke Jensen from Norway, but based in New York. Besides discussing the production of her comparably laborious project, she found a very central site for her piece. Let’s keep fingers crossed that we will get the permission to use it.

John Hawke from New York and Sancho Silva from Portugal, but based in Kairo came to Oslo for a first site visit and in order to develop a piece within their Orange Works series for UIO. While we have still no clue if they have found a site and developed a concept for it (but we are all guessing that this is the case), we could already observe small interventions into public space across from the workshop venue.

Hans Christian Gilje is focussing now on 1-3 Soundpockets for UIO and found a number of sites where the sound interventions could be situated. Building the hardware seems to be the main challenge at this point.

HC Gilje, Susanne Jaschko, Atle Barcley

Siri Austeen, Sancho Silva, John Hawke, Vibeke Jensen

Michelle Teran

For urban interface oslo John Hawke (US) and Sancho Silva (PO) will conceive a new work in their collaborative series of Orange Works.

Orange Works is an ongoing collaboration project, started in 2004, to build unauthorized temporary urban constructions camouflaged as in-process construction sites in order to probe existing spatial pressures, and reorganize public spaces to allow for new social uses.

The emphasis of the project is more on the uses and reactions the different types of constructions trigger, within a specific social and spatial setting, than on the formal architectural features of the constructions themselves. In this sense, the constructions are never seen as the end result of the individual interventions, but rather as the triggering event of an indeterminately extended process that includes:

1. The documentation of the reactions of the local population to the constructions (use, appropriation, alteration, resistance, destruction);

2. The establishment of relationships between the artists and the local population as mediated by the constructions (explanations, interviews, discussions, disputations, collaborations);

3. Maintenance and/or alterations of the constructions as a reaction to points 1. and 2., aiming at the establishment of a feed-back loop between the artists and other agents that claim the site;

4. Research on the site’s situation within the surrounding urban context (i.e. historical background, zoning, actual and planned uses and constructions, economic value and speculation, exclusivity, social stratification, etc.)

Orange Works, Bus Stop, 2004

The interventions have lasted periods from two days to 10 weeks, depending upon the interaction between the structure’s degree of architectural integration into the environment, and the degree of spatial resistance enacted by authority actors (property owners, police etc.) with an interest in spatial control.

The intention is to make constructions too formally idiosyncratic to be easily digested into the strident visual noise of traffic and construction signage yet too ubiquitous in materials to allow immediate certainty as to the nature of the architectonic device. In this way, the temporary urban development construction provokes questioning as to the power dynamics of public space and the future of the built environment. The aim is that the public will question the constructions themselves, their intended function and who made them, triggering more participatory practices.

The interventions have made material connections between public and private spaces, created permeable private spaces within public spaces, or offered alternative forms of existing public functions, creating uncanny situations between recognition and confusion, and provoking diverse, long-term reactions from the public, varying from active questioning to consternation, wariness to laughter.

See the Orange Works blog.

The support of 150 000 NOK from Public Art Norway (formerly Utsmykningsfondet) is confirmed by the board.

The Blue Wall of Silence is an installation by the Norwegian artist Vibeke Jensen and will be premiered at urban interface olso in September.

Description

The installation takes place in a public space in Oslo. A wall is constructed and installed on a square. The wall has the shape of a 3 meter tall pentagon, each side is 3×3 meters. The wall consists of a wooden frame with the sides covered in a material that will disintegrate during the course of the exhibition. Initially the wall is smooth, while the weather and the interactions of birds and passersby transform it over time. Writing on and penetration of the wall is encouraged. As the wall crumbles, the barrier becomes an open framework that can be used for expression, play, view, tagging and public notice. Blue wall of silence is both an aesthetic object and art as energy/expression/action.

The global character of this thematic (boarder crossing, control, censorship) is emphasized by an interactive database on the Blue wall of Silence website. People can enter private stories and quotations related to walls and barriers and the act of crossing them. The quotations are transformed into shouts and whispers that are heard over the speakers inside the wall of the installation. The public can contribute to the discourse both locally and globally, and interact physically and electronically. The website url is written on the front of the barrier. The Blue Wall of Silence website also documents the progress of the project.

Essential to Blue wall of Silence is the combined use of physical space and the data sphere, and people’s ability to influence both. New technology is utilized in the form of web-based interaction, speech technology and sensor driven sound responses. One hyper-directional speaker is installed close to the wall. The speaker is projecting sounds that are swiping along the wall in a very “thin” beam guided by a motor. The sounds are generated from people’s contributions to the project website. A number of small speakers with sensors are installed inside the wall and “talk” to the passersby. Public secrets and commands can be heard from the physical barrier when someone touches or passes it. The sounds are interactive and play when triggered. They vary from seductive whispers to authoritarian demands.

Perspective

The background for the project is how the current increase in population and information flows is matched by confinements, prohibitions, surveillance and loss of civil liberties. We witness a proliferation of walls, borders and fences. Israel and the US have revived the ancient practice of making physical borders, while the European Union (and soon Norway as well) participate in new surveillance programs tracking our every movement and communication. Surveillance equipment becomes smaller, faster and more precise – digital, invisible and immaterial while conservative power systems show a love for visible, monumental and impenetrable manifestations like the Israel security wall. There are various forms of psychological warfare going on in public space: security systems and checkpoints, virtual frontiers and specialized zones are introduced. Simultaneously there is a steady expansion of the use of borders on all levels and a corresponding expansion of the definition of individual transgression. I explore and confront the ways in which we resist the attempts to regulate individuals and confront the methodology of controlling the populace through suspicion and fear. I want to engage the public in thinking about how to turn the current climate of fear and suspicion into an active and discursive public space.

Biography

Vibeke Jensen is a Norwegian visual artist. She uses video, close-up photography and digital media to deal with subjects such as the pleasures and fears of watching and being watched. In her installations she transforms the exhibition space and constructs situations that challenge viewers to explore different positions of peeping, voyeurism and surveillance. She poses questions of who is looking at whom, and invites the audience to actively observe themselves and others.

We got confirmed today that the Art Council Norway (Norsk Kulturrad) will support urban interface oslo substantially. If you look at their website you’ll see that they really favoured the project in comparison to the other applicants. No need to say that we like the Norsk Kulturrad!