//// RESIDENCY
SOLVEJ HELWEG OVESEN
Period of residence: april/may 2009
// about
Solvej Helweg Ovesen (1974) is trained as a curator at De Appel, ICP, International Curatorial Program, Amsterdam, 2003-04 and studied communication, art history and cultural studies at Roskilde University Center, Copenhagen Univeristy and Humboldt University of Berlin.
Solvej Helweg Ovesen is currently curating the exhibition Die Welt als Bühne, NBK, Berlin, 2009- 2010, is member of the editorial board of SUM, Copenhagen and was a recipient of Net.Res stipend in Berlin.
She was artistic director of the first Quadrennial for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, 2006-2009, U-TURN Quadrennial for Contemporary Art 2008. She in advance co-curated the Werkleitz Biennial, Happy Believers, in Halle 2006. She worked as curator at Kunsthalle Fridericianum 2004-2006 and curated the show Undo redo, 2006. Here she in collaboration with René Block and Marina Abramovic also programmed and organized the conference How to perform? 2006. Previous to that she worked in Holland as curatorial assistant on the exhibition Cordially Invited, 7 episodes on (ex)changing Europe, 2004, at BAK, basis voor actuele konst in Utrecht. As she studied curating at De Appel, Amsterdam, she co-curated the exhibition Quicksand, 2004 at De Appel. In 2000-2003 she was based in Berlin and worked amongst others as curator at the independent artist space, Sparwasser HQ, in Berlin.www.nbk.org
www.sum.kunstakademiet.dk
www.uturn-copenhagen.dk
// projects
____Moments in Museums
During her stay she was working on a theoretical publication called Moments in Museums (working title). It is a publication concerning how performative situations have been designed in museums as part of representing contemporary art works and comparing this to the presentation of contemporary art (performances) on stage. As Dorothea von Hantelmann formulated it: "We lack a specific history and knowledge of how situations have been designed or lack design in museums; of how we can go about shifts in temporality. To focus on the performative dimension of an artwork evokes the question of how event and historicity are connected in a museum." (2003)
Moments in Museums is in response to this question examining who in the end is on stage and when it is? If we assume that the theatrical is a drive behind the production of culture, we live in a culture where people stage themselves and their lives: politicians, art groups, designers, corporate firms—as a competition of realities. Everywhere—in urban life, at home—there are different settings, scenes that insinuate rules of interaction as well as a certain lifestyle. These theatrical and performative tendencies of contemporary culture, it is necessary to exhibit or discursively contest in the visual arts and other kinds of performances in order to objectify them. Moments in Museums discuss the staging of performance and the world as a stage.
Moments in Museums is a curatorial and theoretical research project that will be published in collaboration with NBK as part of the publication series Diskurs initiated by Marius Babias.
____Art vis-á-vis: Meeting as Medium
As part of the residency she engaged also in a dialogue with Lise Nelleman on topics like the institutional model of a space like Sparwasser HQ, the artistic media presented there as well as a selection of artist positions that Sparwasser HQ introduced to the public.
Apart from that she will produce a text on topics met in her essay Art vis-á-vis: Meeting as Medium (catalogue text for Sparwasser HQ's participation in the exhibition Situations, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sidney 2005) for an upcoming publication by Sparwasser HQ.
