2019
Text, postcards, postcard displays, renovation of public accessible toilets
Site specific work for Myntgata 2, Oslo
for osloBIENNALEN First Edition
The osloBIENNALEN FIRST EDITION 2019-2024 was to be a “new format for a biennial in public space: a five-year evolving programme that unfolds over time across the city, inviting active participation with a public programme of workshops, readings, concerts, symposia, and performances.” The piece for this context, Other Artists, consists of two components: a renovation of public restrooms and a printed text made available adjacent to them.
Using the production funds provided for a commissioned artwork, the aging and chilly restrooms of the building that housed the biennial’s headquarters and 60 artist studios subsidized by the City of Oslo were renovated. The restrooms are single-occupant rooms, distinctively situated off of each landing of the building’s central staircase. The piece accounts for these common yet private spaces, important within any work environment. The other component of the piece, a short text printed as take-away postcards installed on each floor, traces a “circumstantial genealogy” that anticipates the material, emotional, political, and idiosyncratic alignments that occur between artists.
When the biennial opened in Spring 2019, two of the nine restrooms were renovated, the remainder to be completed over six months, fitting into the biennial’s ethos of a process-oriented exhibition of works in public space that unfold over five years. By the autumn of 2020, the biennial was cancelled due to mismanagement.
Other Artists, text on postcard.
link / pdf
Texts
Shaddock, Josh. ”Take the Stairs.”link / pdf