Highlights 2013 – Milena Hoegsberg

By Milena Hoegsberg

Milena Hoegsberg is a curator and writer, currently Acting Chief Curator at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK), Norway.

My picks, in loose alphabetic order with many gaps:

A is for all left out& for anticipation. As 2013 comes to a close, I am all too aware of all that I did not manage to experience (notably for example the Carnegie International, which, from a distance, would seem to deserve it’s good reviews). But I am also excited about what is underway in the field including the Whitney Biennial and Manifesta in St. Petersburg, Russia, as well as exhibitions slated for 2015: the Black Mountain College exhibition at ICA Boston, and solo exhibitions of works by the Charles and Ray Eames at The Barbican, London and Barbara Kasten at ICA Philadelphia.

The Bauhaus festival that kicked off the exhibition ‘Human-Space-Machine. Stage Experiments at the Bauhaus’ at the Bauhaus school in Dessau at the beginning of December was a great season finale. In the spirit of the Bauhaus school, the two day festival allowed for an organic flow between the auditorium (lectures), stage (performances) and mensa (communal dinners) and various modes of participation. Highlights included Pia Ronnicke’s processing Marianne Brandt in a scripted reading in the intimate setting of the newly restored student apartment in which Brandt lived when at the school, an onstage performance, organized by Hannah Hurtzig and the Mobile Academy, Berlin. Three academics in conversation also performed an intriguing analysis in German of clip from David lynch’s early film The Amputee (1974), in which a female amputee in an arm chair sits and writes, oblivious to the male nurse who is tending to her stitches as blood and pus begin to leak. And last but not least, Phil Collins’s perfectly orchestrated basement party, which involved a festive DJ set, and lots of long white wigs and glitter make-up to go around, which, after days of back-to-back lectures, compelled everyone to hit the dance floor.

Drones– the symbol of the age of pervasive surveillance, information sharing and the new judicial and ethical territory we find ourselves in. Not least the artistic practices exploring this topic, notably Trevor Paglen’s lectures and writing.

‘global aCtIVISm’ at ZKM in Karlsruhe, which runs until March 2014. I have not yet seen the exhibition, but plan to attend the seminar devoted to cross disciplinary exchange of ideas on the role of the citizen in performative democracy January 24-25, 2014. As uneasy as art is sits in relation to activism, it seems a really important topic to continue probing.

‘Hold stenhårdt fast på greia di. Norwegian art and feminism 1968-89’, curated by Norwegian artists Eline Mugaas and Elise Storsveen (also responsible for one of Oslo’s better art zines, ALBUM) at Kunsthall Oslo. The exhibition unearthed some historical Norwegian works, many overlooked or forgotten, and which I’d never seen. The clever Norwegian title translates something like “hold tightly on to your stuff”!

The Jack Goldstein retrospective ‘x 10,000’ at the Jewish museum, for making visible much more than just the most iconic works.

Labour on show at Tate Britain: in the piece Women and Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry 1973-75 by artists Margaret Harrison, Kay Hunt, Mary Kelly, and an exhibition devoted to Sylvia Pankhurst (part of the ‘Spotlight’ series; on show until March 2014), which includes a research work by artists Hester Reeve and Olivia Plender.

Ryan McNamara’s performance MEƎM: A STORYBALLETABOUTTHEINTERNET at a small theater in New York’s East Village (for which he won Performa’s Malcom McLaren award). Audience members were picked up in their chairs and shuttled from room to room by way of colorful carts, orchestrating angled views of various dance vignettes of different tempo and style, performed by dancers in American Apparel-like outfits. A solid Performa production and not without humor.

Rediscovering or re-appreciating older work through the lens of the present: Barbara Hammer’s films; the video Martha Rosler reads Vogue from 1982 (seen on a holiday visit to MACBA, Barcelona); Hilma of Klimt at Moderna Museet; the experimental photography and colorful stage designs of prolific Bauhaus artist Xanti Shawinsky which, due to a legal battle, have not been on view for over two decades. In the safe hands of a newly founded estate, the avant garde artist’s imaginative work is has just begun to pop up in various international exhibitions.

Single work standouts: the video piece by Sharon Hayes that premiered at the Venice Biennale in which she interviews adolescents at an all womens’ college about their sexuality. Despite the fact that the work’s placement in the exhibition didn’t lend itself to focused viewing, I was compelled to watch it in its entirety as it aptly connects the formation of sexual and political identities. Camille Henrot’s incredible testament to the touch screen information world (Grosse Fatigue, which also premiered at Venice) also deserves all the credit it has been given, as does the unique Artist Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian, Washington (SARF) which made it possible. David Panos and Anja Kirchner’s sharp video installation Ultimate Substance (shown at Berliner Kunstverein).

Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden. Maria Lind’s curatorial energy never ceases to amaze and this project, initiated in 2013, is one I hope to follow closely in 2014. (http://www.tenstakonsthall.se/mobiles/?en#tensta-museum-reports-from-new-sweden)

Visual and popular culture distractions that seemed insistent in surfacing when I was trying to recall the past year: selfies (notably of Danish prime minister Helle Thorning, Barack Obama and Tony Blair, and the unnecessary and sexist commentary that they gave rise to online) and the newcomer ‘belifies’; twerking; art world instagramming; JZ at Pace (and not least Jerry Saltz review of it) and, more recently, the undo attention given to Kanya West’s video for Bound 2 (see Jerry Saltz again), and the overdue blog entries devoted to why a sexual predator like photographer Terry Richardson still gets hired to do major fashion jobs.

New year’s wishful thinking: more time to see more and for research and thoughtful production for myself and my colleagues in 2014!

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