[artinfo] Oslo Pilot

[e-flux]

Agency for Cultural Affairs, City of Oslo

Oslo Pilot lays foundations for future art-in-public space biennial

<http://www.oslopilot.no>www.oslopilot.no
In response to an initiative by the City of Oslo 
Agency for Cultural Affairs (Norway), curators 
Eva González-Sancho and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk 
are laying the groundwork for a future art 
biennial in the form of Oslo Pilot, a two-year, 
experimental, research-based project to 
investigate the role of art in and for the public 
realm. This active working process will count on 
the collaboration of different professionals in 
the field of art and other disciplines to define 
the ideal format and characteristics of a 
periodic, art-in-public-space event in the city 
of Oslo.

The project is underpinned by a reflection on 
time. How to intervene in unprotected public 
spaces that are subject to constant change? How 
to operate in precarious spaces by embracing 
uncertainty rather than opposing it? How to make 
art within the shifting context of the city and 
the public domain that explores and challenges 
ideas of permanence and the ephemeral? 

Oslo Pilot will focus on four lines of research: 
Reactivation, Disappearance, Periodicity and 
Public.

Working within these four axes implies a 
far-reaching reflection on the temporal relations 
between contemporary art and public space. This 
process must grapple with the modification of 
meanings and actions in the public sphere, the 
readjustment and re-appropriation of concepts, 
signs and representations in spaces subject to 
constant mutation. It must address the 
instability of the meaning(s) of a work of art 
when its context is one of constant change, when 
its evolution may well be headed towards partial 
or complete disappearance, or towards new and 
different readings. Oslo Pilot will encourage 
tangible examples of work that addresses the 
periodicity of art in public space, whereby the 
work itself engages with this condition. 

How should we contemplate the mutations of a 
concept over different editions of a biennial, 
triennial or quinquennial? How to tackle the 
reactivation of meanings, signifiers and signs in 
public space?  How to reach an exclusive 
definition of the term public, given that public 
can refer to audiences, to a space of debate, to 
communities, to singular properties or the 
commons. Terminology and language themselves are 
subject to temporality. 

Working closely with artists, art institutions 
and specialists from other disciplines, Oslo 
Pilot will comprise a project space which will 
house an archive and host a programme of talks, 
workshops and exhibitions. It will also produce 
symposiums, encounters and seminars in 
collaboration with other institutions. The 
project will also publish its own magazine and a 
new editorial line that focuses on the poetical 
text, as well as overseeing the production of 
artworks in public spaces and in the public 
domain.

Oslo Pilot is a project initiated and funded by 
The Agency for Cultural Affairs in the City of 
Oslo.

Curators: Eva González-Sancho and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk

Contacts:
General enquiries: <mailto:kontakt at oslopilot.no>kontakt at oslopilot.no 
Media enquiries:
Norway: Kjersti Tubaas, Agency for Cultural Affairs:
T +0047 924 42 884 / 
<mailto:kjersti.tubaas at kul.oslo.kommune.no>kjersti.tubaas at kul.oslo.kommune.no 
International: Maria Marques, Brunswick Arts:
T +49 15209005122 / 
<mailto:mmarques at brunswickgroup.com>mmarques at brunswickgroup.com