NUART PLUS 2016 PROGRAM

This year’s Nuart Plus symposium will explore the topics of ‘Utopia and Rights to the City’ alongside ‘Dada, Art and Everyday Life’ on the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ and 100th anniversary of the founding of Dada.

Artists, curators, scholars, producers, media and industry experts will come together to present a series of keynote speeches, presentations and panel debates in the days leading up to the Nuart exhibition opening.

The curatorial theme of this year’s Nuart Festival covers two very special anniversaries that relate to Street Art practice in the broadest sense. More’s classic novel “Utopia” not only introduced the word and concept to the world, but was also the first to give form to an idea that has captured the human imagination throughout history: that by imagining a better world is possible, we are empowered to create it. The birth of Dada at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland, heralded the first movement that advocated for and attempted, much like Street Art, to “abolish the separation between art and daily life”. Something Nuart has been dedicated to realising since its inception in 2001.

(all events are free unless otherwise stated)

DAY 1 – THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 8

21·30 — Fight Club: Making History with ‘Post-Street Art’
Location: KÅKÅ, Valberget 3

This year’s Nuart Festival exhibition introduces, for the first time, the term ‘Post-Street Art’. This expression has been adopted to describe artworks, artists and events that are “informed by” and “aware of” the strategies, forms and themes explored by Street Art but which couldn’t rightly be regarded as ‘Street Art’ or ‘Street Artists’ per se. The term could also be used to describe a new breed of studio practice-based street artist, whose interest in and knowledge of the contemporary art world often far supplants that of an engagement with the street.


Is ‘Post-Street Art’ a useful term to describe these developments and should it be embraced by the culture? Or is it a messy attempt to package something that doesn’t need packaging and should be consigned to history on thismomentous evening? You the audience decide.

Team leaders Evan Pricco (Founder & Editor-in-chief, Juxtapoz) and Carlo McCormick (art critic, curator and writer) go ahead to head flanked by Jeff Gillette, Robert Montgomery and Pedro Soares Neves to argue the merits of this term in the latest installment of Nuart’s legendary Fight Club.

Referee: Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen (AssociateProfessor, Norwegian School of Economics)

DAY 2 – FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 9

12·00  – 15·30 — Seminar Day 1: UTOPIA (CREATE)
Location: Tou Scene, Kvitsøygata 25 

If you're an outsider; if you don¹t feel like you fit into this unjust world, one of the very few options you have is to try and create a new one.

Thomas More was the first to give a name and form to this idea; an idea that has captured the human imagination throughout history: that by imagining a better world is possible, we are empowered to create it. His playful vision, published in 1516, celebrates its 500th anniversary this year and sets the tone for Nuart Festival 2016.

Creating utopias requires a reimagining and remaking of everyday life and everyday spaces. For many, these everyday spaces are those of the city. Henri Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’ concept provokes us to consider how we might remake the city with the goal of creating, if not a utopia, at least more just and ideal societies. Nuart explores the pivotal role of the arts in creating the space where these dreams and visions can take root.
 

12·00 — Welcome and introduction
by Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen, leader of Nuart Plus

12·05 – 12·45 — Cities and Life as Works of Art
Keynote speech by David Pinder

“Let everyday life become a work of art!” So declared Henri Lefebvre in 1968, the same year that he published his book The Right to the City. This talk returns to his slogan and its rootedness in political struggles over urban space to reflect on more contemporary concerns about art, performance, utopia and the right to the city.

David Pinder is a Professor at Roskilde University, Department of People and Technology. Pinder’s interests lie in urban studies, geography, planning and critical theory, and his research explores how urban spaces are socially produced, imagined, performed and contested.

13·00 – 14·00 — Utopia, From the Artist's Perspective
Artist presentations by Hyuro and Kennardphillipps, followed by a short Q&A session with Carlo McCormick.

14·15 – 15·00 — Who Has, or Should Have, the ‘Right to the City’?
Emma Arnold, Pedro Soares Neves and Peter Bengtsen
Henri Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’ concept provokes us to consider how we might remake the city with the goal of creating more just and ideal societies.In this series of short presentations, each speaker has 15 minutes to shed light on the question of who has, or should have, ‘the right to the city’, from tagging to desire lines, advertising to public art and urban development programs.

15·00 – 15·30 — Nutopia panel debate
Discussion led by: David Pinder
Panel: Pedro Soares Neves, Peter Bengtsen, Emma Arnold
 

DAY 3 – SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 10

12·00 – 15·30 — Seminar: DADA (DESTROY)
Location: Tou Scene, Kvitsøygata 25

When destroying everything seems like the only option.

Street Art, like Dada before it, seeks to destroy the boundaries between art and everyday life. Old industrial buildings, city streets, the Internet and mass media are increasingly replacing museums and galleries as the ideal forums and exhibition venues for art. Day 2 explores how this destruction is re-shaping our experience of art and city life.

Dada gave us the groundwork for abstract art and sound poetry, is the starting point for performance art and free theatre, a prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of anti-art and is the movement that laid the foundation for Surrealism. It gave us collage, cut up, paste-ups, photomontage, assemblage, readymades and happenings.

It would be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s by, amongst others, the likes of the Lettrist’s and Debord’s Situationism. It would indirectly inform Malcolm McLaren’s idea of Punk which in turn would influence the development of hip hop culture in the Bronx (which had already decided the city was its canvas). It laid the foundation for culture jamming, ad busting and artivism. It was not a movement, but a mentality. A mentality shared by many of those participating in this year’s event.

It’s founder Hugo Ball perhaps expressed it best with the following sentiment: “For us, art is not an end in itself...but is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in”

12·00 — Welcome and Introduction
By Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen, Leader of Nuart Plus

12·05 – 12·45 — The Art of Negation: Defacement, Destruction and Erasure as an Act of Creation 
Presentation by Carlo McCormick

13·00 – 14·00 — Panel debate: The Borders of Street Art
As the global street art movement has come to define a generation of artists working in the street through murals, illegal works, public art and graffiti, the definition and boundaries of who is a "street artist" has grown to include artists who have yet to create work on the streets. Juxtapoz editor-in-chief Evan Pricco and artists Jeff Gillette and Henrik Uldalen will discuss how the peripheral artists working amongst street artists have now been including in the movement, and whether curators, gallerists and artists have extended the definitions of Street Art for popularity or financial goals.

14·15 – 15·00 — Decolonizing the Streets: Dada, Street Art and Heritage
Keynote speech by Christian Omodeo

Christian Omodeo is a Research Fellow at the Université Paris-Sorbonne and curator of 2016’s controversial exhibition ‘Banksy & Co.’ in Bologna, Italy. Omodeo addresses some of the fundamental clashes that arise from applying conservation principles to urban art as well as his approach to building better politics and instruments for understanding and analyzing the original aesthetics of graffiti & street art within an institutional setting.

15:00-15:30 Art and Everyday Life
Discussion led by Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen
Panel: Carlo McCormick, Evan Pricco, Christian Omodeo
 

12·00 – 17·00 — TRAFO workshop with Nipper (NO)
Location: Metropolis, Nytorget 1 (metropolis-stavanger.no)

Following the success of past workshops with artists Icy & Sot (2014) and Nafir (2105), Nuart and TRAFO team up again with the artist Nipper to deliver an in-depth practical workshop for 16-22 year olds. (Please email us to reserve a place).

19·00 — Nuart Exhibition Opening
Tou Scene, Kvitsøygata 25

In addition to presenting a diverse range of artistic expression within the public sphere, Nuart produces one of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions of the year in Tou Scene’s vast beer halls. Join us for the opening on Saturday 10 September, kl.19:00!
 

DAY 4 – SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 11

13·00 — Street Art Tour
Meeting point: Tou Scene, Kvitsøygata 25

The first of our weekly Street Art Tours where our Nuart guides discuss the works and the artists behind them as well as some insider and behind the scenes stories. (Approx. 75 minutes)

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