Power to the People! is a two-day event in Oslo, Norway that will explore the links between street art and activism on the 50th anniversary of May ’68 student riots in Paris.
The event will take place at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo and will count with an international roster of artists, academics, researchers and curators that will discuss how street art is challenging centuries of tradition by once again making art a part of everyday life.
To illustrate this point, leading international street artists Carrie Reichardt (UK) and Julien de Casabianca (FR) will be producing a series of artworks along the Akerselva river as well as sharing the reasons why they choose to circumnavigate traditional routes into the art world in a day of artist talks on Saturday 26th May.
The program, which includes artist presentations, panel debates, film screenings and more on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th May, brings to a close the first phase of a joint project between Nuart Festival – the world’s leading street art festival – and Oslo Kommune which has seen the Akerselva become the stage for interventions by six international artists over the past year.
Carrie Reichardt is a self-titled ‘craftivist’ whose work often blurs the boundaries between craft and activism. She has had a career spanning many media, including film, performance and sculpture but is best-known as a ceramicist and mosaicist, working internationally on large-scale public murals.
Her recent work includes Voodoo Zulu Liberation Taxi, displayed at Coventry Transport Museum, raising awareness about the inhumane treatment of prisoners held in solitary confinement and death rows. Her other prominent public art projects include Dada the Trojan Horse at Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum; Disobedient Objects for the V&A, and Mary Bamber – a Revolutionary Woman for the Museum of Liverpool.
Julien de Casabianca is a visual artist, filmmaker and founder of the Outings Project – a global participatory art project that embellishes the streets with portraits taken from classical paintings.
What began as a prank upon seeing Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s portrait of Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière at the Louvre (“I wanted to help her get out, like Prince Charming trying to rescue the girl in the museum castle” says de Casabianca) has evolved into a full-time mission to merge the perceptions of canonical and street art, while punctuating neglected spaces with images of beauty.
As per his usual practice, de Casabianca will be reproducing images from the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo and re-introducing them along the Akerselva river to highlight the strategies employed by street artists in the democratization of art, and questioning the received authority of our cultural institutions.
Reichardt and de Casabianca join Isaac Cordal (ES), Hama Woods (NO), Jussi TwoSeven (FI) and Martin Whatson (NO) as the artists invited so far to produce both temporary and long-term artworks along the length of the river.
Martyn Reed, Nuart Festival:
“Street Art, like the Situationists and Dada before it, seeks to remove 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. 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 later be embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s by, amongst others, the likes of the Lettrist’s and Situationists. 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 event.”
The Nuart RAD International Art Conference takes place from Friday 25th – Saturday 26th May at Kunstnernes Hus, Wergelandsveien 17, 0167 Oslo. The event is open to the public and free to attend.
For more information and to reserve tickets please visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nuart-rad-international-street-art-conference-tickets-45640365562
About Nuart Festival
Nuart produces both temporary and long-term public artworks as well as facilitates dialogue and action between a global network of artists, academics, journalists and policy makers surrounding street art practice. Our core goal is to help redefine how we experience both contemporary and public art practice: to bring art out of museums, galleries and public institutions onto the city streets and to use emerging technologies to activate a sense of public agency in the shaping of our cities.
Our work is based on the principle that art should be part of people’s everyday lives and guided by our belief in the capacity for the arts to positively change, enhance and inform the way we think about and interact with each other and the city.
Nuart Plus is the name given to our activities outside of physical art production, with the aim to explore and present issues surrounding contemporary Street Art practice in all its guises, through both entertaining and educational projects and programs. Nuart Plus events feature contributions from some of the worlds’ leading street artists alongside academics, authors, researchers, curators, producers, writers and other cultural-sector professionals who are dedicated to exploring issues surrounding new forms of art and activity in public space.
www.nuartfestival.no
About Nuart RAD
Nuart RAD is a pilot project forming part of Oslo Municipality’s five-year action plan for street art, which promotes graffiti and street art as part of contemporary art in public spaces.
The project sees the area adjacent to the Akerselva river – which stretches for 8.2km through the centre of the city – become a venue for a new public art program that seeks to make art a part of everyday life. The Akerselva – historically viewed as something of a socio-economic and racial dividing line between east and west – becomes a stage for new kinds of stories and art forms to emerge.
The project aims to celebrate the diversity of the four neighborhoods through which the river flows – Nordre Aker, Sagene, Grünerløkka and Gamle Oslo – and to encourage new ways of engaging with each other and our surroundings through the creation of a multi-disciplinary ‘art trail’.
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
