Who are your people? What is your community? Is it the people you work with? The people you live near? Is it the people you dance, game or cook with? Or is it the people you sit together with sweating over grant deadlines? What about the endless niche forums, subreddits, hashtags and facebook groups for interests and concerns such as eating hot chillis, pictures of people standing, train watching, peeling paint, abandoned houses, old photos of Oslo, Eurovision, knitting, mending etc etc etc? Not to mention those that meet in real life to engage in those interests. We likely belong to a number of communities based on parameters such as location, identity, education, work and interests, some by default, others by necessity. Some have been formed, fought and cried over by those who came before us. Does adversity and hardship form the strongest senses of community?
The topic of this Agenda-seminar was shaped by the students at the Art and Craft department, and formed through discussions of craft and activism, of doing and creating with and for others. The idea that we can “craft” a community indicates both an aesthetic element as well as pointing towards care, consideration and skill. Our concern is not so much about identifying communities, as seeing what the concept of community can do, how we establish it, participate in it and work with it. It is also a matter of honouring those who came before you and a way of recognizing how and why we have the communities and platforms we have today.
Our line-up of speakers at this Agenda-seminar is a testament to all these concerns, and the result of a student-led approach to programming and executing a seminar.
Language: English (except the talk by Yngvild Fagerheim, which will be in Norwegian).
Program
09:30-10:00 Coffe and registration
10:00-10:15 Welcome and introdcution by Hanna Hattrem
10:15-11:00 Yngvild Fagerheim (in Norwegian)
11:00-11:45 Kvae og Bark
11:45-12:45 Lunch: Pizzabuffet for everyone.
12:45-13:30 Lara Okafor
13:30-14:15 Sille Storihle
14:15-15:00 Q&A led by Iliana Papadimitriou
Contributors
NORSK:
Sidan etablering av sin første verkstad i Trondheim i 1967, har Yngvild Fagerheim latt fagpolitisk tenking gå hand i hand med utforsking av leira som kunstnerisk uttryksmiddel. Ho var sentral då norske kunsthandverkarar organiserte seg i Kunstneraksjonen -74 og då dei skipa fagforeninga Norske Kunsthåndverkere. Hennar arbeid på dette området har alltid vore basert på eigne kunstnarlege erfaringar og gav henne Norske Kunsthåndverkeres Ærespris i 1999.
Etter no femti års kontinuerleg praksis som keramikar er arbeida hennar å finne i alle relevante museum i Noreg, samt i Nationalmuseet i Stockholm, Everson Museum of Art i New York og private samlingar i inn- og utland. Hennar utstillingspraksis har vore omfattande.
Sidan 80-talet har Fagerheim konsentrert mykje av fagkunnskapen sin om store kunstoppdrag i offentlege rom, så som Universitetet i Tromsø, Trøndelag Teater og Hamar Rådhus. Ho sat i styret då Utsmykkingsfondet for nye statsbygg vart etablert i 1976 og arbeider framleis i same felt i Innlandet fylke. Fagerheim har vore sensor for hovedfag i keramikk ved kunsthøgskulane i Oslo og Bergen og medlem av innstillingskomitear til professorat ved same institusjonar.
ENGLISH:
Since establishing her first workshop in Trondheim in 1967, Yngvild Fagerheim has combined advocacy with the exploration of clay as an artistic medium.
She played a central role when Norwegian craft artists organized the Kunstneraksjonen '74 (Artists' Action of 1974) and founded the association Norske Kunsthåndverkere (NK). Her work in this area, always rooted in her own artistic practice, earned her NK’s Honorary Award in 1999.
After fifty years of continuous practice as a ceramic artist, her works can be found in all major museums in Norway, as well as in the National Museum in Stockholm, the Everson Museum of Art in New York, and private collections all over the world. Her exhibition record is extensive.
Since the 1980s, Fagerheim has focused much of her expertise on large public art commissions, such as at the University of Tromsø, Trøndelag Theatre, and Hamar Town Hall. She served on the board when the Art Fund for Public Buildings (Utsmykkingsfondet for nye statsbygg) was established in 1976 and continues to work in the same field in Innlandet county. Fagerheim has been an external examiner for master’s degrees in ceramics at the art academies in Oslo and Bergen and a member of committees appointing professorships at the same institutions.
Kvae & Bark is an artist duo consisting of Karoline Sætre and Øyvind Novak Jenssen, who work and reside in Trysil. The duo explores their surroundings through foraging and processing of natures produce, goods and materials. Their projects take the form of sensuous installations with a wide range of materials, as well as performative gestures including taste, smell, sound and site-specific narratives.
Karoline Sætre (b. 1992) and Øyvind Novak Jenssen (b. 1988) are both educated artist while Øyvind also has a background from various professional kitchens and chef competitions. Their work as a duo revolves around food and foraging, and their sculptural works often take the form of more or less practical structures for their performative meals. Recent projects include ‘Den mjuke skogen er kun til låns/The soft forest is ours on loan’ at UKS (NO, 2023), and ‘Langsom dvale mot nye stråler av liv/Slow Hibernation Towards New Rays of Life’ at Havremagasinet (SE, 2024).
Lara Okafor (they/them) is a writer, software developer, and curator. They are currently Fotogalleriet’s Curatorial Fellow ‘24-‘25. Lara is interested in Black Studies, prison abolition, speculative fiction, queerness, technology, and how those topics overlap. Lara has a BSc and MSc in Computer Science. They have written a thesis about digital security for queer people of colour, a short story (‘Sevenfold’) in the Norwegian sci-fi anthology ‘A Line Through Gravity’, and pieces published in Fett, Billedkunst, TrAP, and Samora Forum. They have also moderated conversations, and held workshops and talks at places such as Office for Contemporary Art (OCA), MUNCH Museum, and Kunstnernes hus.
Sille Storihle is an artist, filmmaker and educator based in Oslo, working primarily with moving images and printed matter. Their artistic practice encompasses a body of work in dialogue with queer archives and pasts, exploring relationships between power and performativity. From 2012 to 2020, Storihle ran the queer-feminist platform FRANK together with Liv Bugge. The platform originated as a salon, which developed into a wide range of projects in different locations with various co-curators. Their current research and work focuses on live action role-playing games (LARP) as an artistic methodology in the production of moving images. They were a fellow at Atelier Kunstnerforbundet (2020–23) and is launching the film Open Call in November 2024, a commission for the 400th anniversary of the city of Oslo in 2024.
Yngvild Fagerheim, Al Quds, foto: Tobias Nordvik
