Let’s make a Museum

Agenda Art and Craft
Friday 26.01.24

The Museum of Longing and Failure MOLAF Approximation No 47 2016

In this Agenda we will look closer on what a museum is. With Liv Brissach, Andrew Taggart og Chloe Lewis, Ellef Prestsæter and Anders Bettum.

The Agenda Arts and Crafts seminar series is organized by the Oslo Academy of the Arts in collaboration with Kunstnernes Hus.

About the event

Now what is a museum? Is it that old – or new – monster of a building, holding the treasures of the world for you to see? Is it time frozen, and time regained? Is it a way of writing history? And in that manner deciding who is the author of said history?

When we have asked these questions, the next to follow must be what then should be in the museum? Should there be only ancient artifacts? Or should there be a piece of the contemporary? But how can we make a space that showcases history, and at the same time mirrors our contemporary?

And finally who can and should curate or build that museum, and not at least who can and should be able visit them? Can a museum be made out of feelings? From one persons interest? Can it represent more than what it contains, and can they be living, breathing spaces that shift and turns to mirror our understanding not only of our time, but times past, and times yet to come?

in Let’s make a Museum we will attempt to approach some of these questions, to understand how we can utilize the shape and form of the museum to represent and be more than a building made up of artifacts—although such a collection could also be interest and expand our understanding depending on how and by what means those artifacts came into the museum. We will in this Agenda be presented with artist initiated collections, artists that use the museum as a creative and living act, how to create a museum a new, and how to create spaces within museums that are inclusive, participatory, and collaborative.

Program

09:30-10:00 Coffee and Mingle

10:00-10:05 Introduction by Marius Moldvær

10:05-10:50 Liv Brissach - Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in Bodø

11:00-11:45 Chloe Lewis and Andrew Taggart on the Museum of Longing and Failure (MOLAF)

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00-13:45 Ellef Prestsæter, Guttormsgaards Archive

14:00-14:45 Anders Bettum: Three Modes of Participation - Collaborative Exhibition Projects at the Intercultural Museum in Oslo

14:45-15:15 QandA

Contributors

Liv Brissach

Liv Brissach (they/them, b 1991 in Norway) is Curator at the Northern Norwegian Art Museum / Davvi Norgga Dáiddamusea. They previously worked as Curator of Contemporary Art at MUNCH in Oslo, Norway, and as Project Officer at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Brissach was co-curator of the MUNCH Triennale – The Machine is Us (2022) and assistant curator for The Sámi Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. They trained as an art historian at University College London and at the University of Oslo, and their texts can be found in publications by Artes Mundi, MUNCH, OCA and Fotogalleriet.

Andrew Taggart og Chloe Lewis

Andrew Taggart (b. 1976, Canada) and Chloe Lewis (b. 1979, USA) are visual artists based in Bergen, Norway. They have collaborated since 2006, exploring the intersections of sculptural, literary, and functional forms through the creation of objects and artists' books.

In 2010, they established the Museum of Longing and Failure (MOLAF), an experimental platform that seeks to dismantle the distinctions between author, artwork, and institution. At the core of the MOLAF is an elaborated collaboration; its form takes shape through a sustained conversation with artists of different backgrounds and generations, whose contributed sculptures form the basis of exhibitions, interventions, publications, and the production of objects by the MOLAF itself. To date, the MOLAF has commissioned and presented artworks by over ninety artists through twenty-three iterations of the project, which have appeared both in Norway and abroad.

Within the frameworks of Lewis & Taggart and MOLAF, Andrew and Chloe's work has been presented at venues such as Fonderie Darling, Montreal; Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam; Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo; Entrée, Bergen; Jugendstilsenter, Ålesund; ISCP, New York; The Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, and many others. They currently teach Sculpture at UIB's Faculty of Art, Music, and Design (KMD).

Ellef Prestsæter

Ellef Prestsæter is an art historian and curator. He is a founding member of the Institute for Computational Vandalism and artistic director of the Guttormsgaard Archive. Recent exhibition projects include Open Creation and Its Enemies: Asger Jorn in Situation at IVAM – Valencia Institute of Modern Art and Áillohaš & Niillas A. Somby: Greetings from Lappland at the Guttormsgaard Archive, both 2023.

Anders Bettum

Anders Bettum works as Senior Curator at an arena of Oslo Museum known as the Intercultural Museum, located in one of the most diverse neighborhoods of downtown Oslo (Norway). He is the research coordinator of Oslo Museum and directs the National Museum Network of Minorities and Diversity. Bettum holds a PhD in Comparative Religion from the University of Oslo and has broad interests in the field of humanities, including ancient Egyptian funerary customs, post-colonial studies, migration history, participatory methodology, and future studies. In addition to his position at the museum, Bettum holds a part-time position as Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, where he teaches museology and cultural history.