[artinfo] Museums on Fire

[e-flux]

"Museums on Fire"
A symposium taking place within a scenography, punctuated by artists' actions
April 20-21, 2017

Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Nedre gate 7
0551 Oslo
Norway

<https://oca.no/>oca.no
<https://www.facebook.com/oca.norway/>
OCA is pleased to present "Museums on Fire," a 
symposium in Oslo and subsequently in Kárá”johka* 
(Northern Sami for Karasjok) that will take place 
against a scenography specially commissioned to 
artist Anders Sunna, with a number of actions and 
interventions by artists Raven Chacon, Carola 
Grahn, Geir Tore Holm and Duane Linklater.

"Museums on Fire" considers the entanglement of 
art institutions within the colonial and 
modernist ideologies that created them, and asks 
artists, curators, academics of indigenous and 
non-indigenous descent to consider the spaces and 
processes through which indigenous artistic 
practices, past and present, should be addressed 
today. What would a non-colonial museum look, 
feel and sound like? Is it enough to widen the 
modernist art historical canon through the 
politics of inclusion? And is the museum per se 
an obsolete model for indigenous practices? 
Should novel constellations of thought and 
practice be sought to affirm and mediate the 
indigenous discourses of the future?

With the significant "indigenisation" of the 
international art world-as indigenous voices are 
increasingly sought after for biennials, 
residencies, exhibitions and art fairs-art 
institutions are facing the challenge of engaging 
meaningfully with indigenous thinking. While the 
problematic issues of modern institutions were 
denounced early on by the likes of artist Kazimir 
Maleviã (his 1919 text On the Museum celebrated 
the empowering force of burning museums) today 
this questioning is most profoundly felt to come 
from current indigenous artistic practices.

Confirmed speakers in the symposium are 
Clementine Deliss, Carola Grahn, Geir Tore Holm, 
Anna Hudson, Eva Dagny Johansen, Duane Linklater, 
Catalina Lozano, Gerald McMaster and Anne May 
Olli. Artists' interventions by Raven Chacon, 
Carola Grahn, with screenings of works by Geir 
Tore Holm and Duane Linklater. "Museums on Fire" 
is curated by Katya García-Antón, with Antonio 
Cataldo.

For more information, please contact OCA's 
Communication Manager 
<mailto:tara.hassel at oca.no>Tara Hassel.


About "Thinking at the Edge of the World. Perspectives from the North"

The event forms part of 
"<https://online.superoffice.com/cust12003/CS/scripts/customer.fcgi?action=ejLink&key=30:7:14:506b4d1ba685f43d5e0137409650913a7107f03d&sai=11417>Thinking 
at the Edge of the World. Perspectives from the 
North," a broad cross-disciplinary project 
exploring the cultural history of Northern 
Norway, curated by the Office for Contemporary 
Art Norway (OCA). Structured through a series of 
regional and international dialogues and 
partnerships, the project is unfolding in various 
forms and locations across Norway and beyond, 
including research, artists' residencies, 
exhibitions, text commissions and a number of 
activities implemented through an OCA pilot 
office in Tromsø as well as its premises in Oslo.