Press release
Antti Laitinen Snowman (2006)
Traveling Exhibition Of Moving Image By Over Thirty Nordic Artists Launches Throughout New York City
March 31 to April 6, 2013 Nordic Outbreak Symposium, April 6 at Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue www.nordicoutbreak.streamingmuseum.org www.streamingmuseum.org
(New York, N.Y.) – Streaming Museum is pleased to present Nordic Outbreak, an exhibition of over 30 moving image artworks by established and emerging contemporary Nordic artists curated for public space. Organized by curators Nina Colosi and Tanya Toft the exhibition program launches in New York City and will travel throughout the Nordic region and internationally. Nordic Outbreak will be viewed as large projections and on screens in public spaces, on its website, and at partnering arts, cultural and architectural centers. Nordic Outbreak opened on March 1st with a new version of Björk’s Mutual Core video by Andrew Thomas Huang, which is on view nightly through March 31st during Times Square’s “Midnight Moment”, a collaboration between Times Square Advertising Coalition and Times Square Arts.The exhibition of this work, simultaneously displayed across 15 of the largest screens in Times Square, is a prelude to a series of events and exhibitions that will take place March 31st to April 6th.
Nordic Outbreak reflects an open exhibition structure for the museum without walls and contemporary ways of engaging with cities through moving image. A symposium and exhibition at Scandinavia House with Nordic artists, theorists, and curators will take place on April 6. The symposium highlights contemporary dynamics in aesthetics and form in moving image from the Nordic art scene and the new modes and impact of exhibition in public space.
Among other events are screenings at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and the Manhattan Bridge Archway, a lecture on the history of Nordic moving image, and an evening event in the Sky Room at the New Museum.
Speaking about the focus of Nordic Outbreak, Danish curator Tanya Toft said, “the artworks touch upon contemporary issues that are confronting the underpinnings of society in the Nordic region – but which also reflect international realities and conditions in the digital age. The exhibition brings new light on the Nordic as a diverse aesthetic concept and reveals an amazing experimental energy.”
Over 30 contemporary Nordic artists are included in the exhibition: Eija-Liisa Ahtila, J Tobias Anderson, Björk, Ken Are Bongo, Jeannette Ehlers, Efterklang, Jette Ellgaard, Jessica Faiss, Marit Følstad, Søren Thilo Funder, Sigurdur Gudjonsson, Styrmir Örn Gudmundsson, Eva-Mari Haikala, Iselin Linstad Hauge, Kaia Hugin, Hanne Ivars, Mogens Jacobsen, Vibeke Jensen, Jesper Just, Hannu Karjalainen, Antti Laitinen, Dan Lestander, Una Lorenzen, Pernille With Madsen, Dodda Maggy, Eva Olsson, QNQ/AUJIK, Miia Rinne, Egill Saebjornsson, Magnus Sigurdarson, Birgitte Sigmundstad and Superflex.
Nordic Outbreak is produced in collaboration with Nordic curators Daniela Arriado, Birta Gudjonsdottir, Kati Kivinen, and Jacob Lillemose.
About Streaming Museum
Streaming Museum produces and presents contemporary-themed exhibitions of international multi-media arts, innovative ideas and related programs to a global audience via mobile devices, a network of big screens worldwide, and at cultural and public centers. The museum was founded by Nina Colosi and since its launch on January 29, 2008 exhibitions have been viewed on big screens in over 55 cities on 7 continents. Programs are generated in collaboration with a variety of cultural and educational organizations, prominent and emerging visual and performing artists, curators, and visionaries across fields.
Collaborators and sponsors Nordic Outbreak is presented in collaboration with Scandinavia House, MOCAtv for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, Times Square Advertising Coalition in Partnership with Times Square Arts, Dumbo Improvement District, NYC Department of Transportation, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Reykjavik Art Museum, Danish Architecture Center, Screen City Festival, Katuaq the Cultural Centre of Greenland, Big Screen Plaza, Babes at the Museum, PNEK, AV-Arkki, James Cohan Gallery, NY, Marian Goodman Gallery, NY.
Nordic Outbreak is supported by Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point, Consulate General of Sweden, Royal Norwegian Consulate General, Consulate General of Finland, Consulate General of Denmark, Consulate General of Iceland, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Production Network for Electronic Art Norway, Icelandic Art Center, The Danish Arts Foundation.
Curatorial Statement Nordic Outbreak is an exhibition project that looks at contemporary dynamics in moving images in the Nordic art scene. It unfolds on screens and with projections in public and semi-public spaces, accompanied by a series of public discussions. The program brings new light on the Nordic as a diverse aesthetic and existential concept in the digital age.
Nordic Outbreak is an experimental exhibition project that takes a starting point in ‘the digital’ as a condition for our communication landscape and as a premise of the moving image. In a digital logic, artworks are ‘files’ – flexible to travel and unfold in different formats. This point of departure pushes the notion of originality and materiality of the artwork, and the limits and rules of the exhibition.
Today, the modes of production and means of presentation, distribution and circulation of digital art works are continuously adapting to the digital era in an intensified state of psychic nomadism. Initiatives like the online video archive, digital exhibitions, and video sharing services shape an open landscape of increasing accessibility, visibility and exchange. In this landscape, artistic production and presentation can reflect on itself while at the same time producing itself, in a fluid condition where borderlines between art and media resolve one another. The exhibition program explores (rather than proposes) what ‘the Nordic’ has come to mean as an aesthetic concept – one that mirrors an existential condition in the Nordic region today. Nordic Outbreak investigates the Nordic context as a multiplicity.
The artworks included in the program are produced in the years leading up to and right after the 2010s, years in which the “space of flows” has infused the art world and rewritten the rules and tools of artistic production and presentation. Nordic Outbreak brings together moving images by more than 30 artists, coming from or working within a Nordic artistic context, ranging from well to lesser known.
The selection is presented in its entirety at the opening in New York, with Scandinavia House at its unifying point and with some works shown at installations across the urban landscape of New York City, in different formats. After this, the works will travel to public space installations across the Nordic region, in re-compositions, each of which will center around a new site-contextual theme. These themes reflect a moment in the aftermath of discussions and issues that have been critical to the Nordic contexts in the past decade – such as gender equality, decline of the welfare state, nationalism vs. globalism, rural nostalgia, immigration politics, man/nature relationship, post-crisis transition and existentialism.
The project draws its title from the openness of the world’s infrastructures, in the light of an outbreak – from conventional aesthetics expectations to ‘the Nordic’ concept; from traditional structures of exhibition making and presentation formats; and from fixed meanings of works that now travel across cultures and local contexts.
After a prelude across 20 screens in Times Square through March, the exhibition will launch in NYC March 31 – April 6 2013 with installations at Scandinavia House and in high visibility public spaces, with an all-day symposium and various events. Between August and December 2013, the exhibition will travel to all of the Nordic countries in collaboration with partner institutions and festivals. Artworks will also travel through Streaming Museum’s international network of screens in 2014.
The exhibition will be followed by a publication with essays, artist interviews and documentation of artworks, and of each local exhibition.
Nordic Outbreak is presented by Streaming Museum, curated and produced by Tanya Toft and Nina Colosi, in collaboration with four guest curators: Daniela Arriado, Birta Gudjonsdottir, Kati Kivinen and Jacob Lillemose.
About Streaming Museum Streaming Museum produces and presents contemporary-themed exhibitions of international multi-media arts, innovative ideas and related programs to a global audience via mobile devices, a network of big screens worldwide, and at partnering cultural centers. Image and sound act as “contemporary hieroglyphs’ that transcend boundaries of language and culture in our visually oriented, globally interconnected world. New York City-based Streaming Museum was founded in 2008 by Nina Colosi. Programs are generated in collaboration with a variety of cultural and educational organizations, prominent and emerging visual and performing artists, curators, and visionaries across fields.
Publication The Nordic Outbreak exhibition will be followed by a publication in summer 2014.
Thank you
Xavier Aaronson, Social Media David Bates, Jr., Streaming Museum Co-producer and Videographer davidjr.com Dylan Fister and Louis Doulas, web development Kate Greenberg, Publicist Victor Peterson, Curatorial Assistant and Sponsorship Christina Fleuron, Exhibition Designer cargocollective.com/christinafleuron Meredith Morgan, Project Manager Sarah Nochenson, Show Runner Babes at the Museum
