// NETRES__RESIDENCY_PROGRAMME

SOLVEJ HELWEG OVESEN
Period of residence: april/may 2009

Solvej Helweg Ovesen (1974), curator and writer.

____Die Welt als Bühne // The world as a stage

During her stay she was working on a theoretical publication. It is a publication concerning how performative situations have been designed 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)

Ovensens publication is a 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. She is also discussing the staging of performance and the world as a stage.

Her curatorial and theoretical research project is 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.