The city today is a complex landscape of commercial and governmental interests that traverse both the physical and the digital. This is powered by an underlying network of infrastructure. While giving form to the surfaces we experience on a local level, the underbelly of our cities entangles us in a web of resources, energy, resources, power structures and impact far beyond our sight and reach. Within this condition of extractivist capitalism, art occupies a potentially powerful place beyond the functional.
The Infrastructure of the Artwork is a research project investigating the position of art within this condition as both hazard and opportunity. It is based on an understanding of the infrastructural as a naturally shared space between artwork and its context. Many of the same materials and strategies, logistics and communications systems are utilized in the artmaking process as in the manufacturing and organizing of other sections of society. However, to make an artwork which stands apart from society’s functions, the path through the infrastructural space must be laid in the act of walking it.
How do we build a city? How do we make an artwork?
I will examine the city and the artwork as parallel, interconnected entities. As the city is a multi-layered condition defying the idea of what constitutes a place, the artwork also plays multiple roles and tasks beyond its framework. It is experience, cultural capital, and commodity, or just another stage in the lifecycle of materials. But it is also a possibility for alternative solutions and critical activation.
In thinking through the infrastructural, I will investigate how the energy, power structures and resources that make the artwork possible, become inherent parts of its form. In response to the climate crisis, fuelled by commercial and governmental interests, and enabled by infrastructure, I will search for ways the artwork can harness its own infrastructural power to fight back. Utilizing the creative generativity of the ordinary in sculpture, video and collaborative processes, I aim to develop models for an expanded artwork which can activate its context through its production, exhibition and continued afterlife.
Marte Eknæs’ practice is largely context based, and she often works collaboratively and cross-disciplinary in sculpture, text, video and content based environments. Selected exhibitions and projects by Eknæs include Kunsthall Oslo; Between Bridges, London; Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo; What Pipeline; Detroit; Trondheim Kunstmuseum; Kunsthall Stavanger, Efremidis, Berlin and Skulpturenpark Köln, which is currently on view. She is the founder of the transdisciplinary web platform formsofflexibility.space (FOF)
Artistic Research Autumn Forum 2024
3rd presentation
Thinking through the infrastructural
The infrastructural is a naturally shared space between artwork and its context. Many of the same materials and strategies, logistical and communications systems are utilized in the artmaking process as in the manufacturing and organizing of other sections of society. However, to make an artwork which stands apart from society’s functions, the path through this infrastructural space must be laid in the act of walking it.
In thinking through the infrastructural, my aim is to find ways these situations, elements and processes that makes the artwork possible, can become inherent parts of its form. In utilizing the creative generativity of the ordinary, the artwork can activate its context beyond its moment of display.
In my presentation I will describe ways I explore this idea in two sculptural projects and through changes in the engagement with the art space. I will also discuss my ongoing video project, which tells the story of an artwork going through an identity crisis due to its entanglement with infrastructure, as it searches for its role in the fight against climate collapse.
Circulation Realm: How do we grow an exhibition?
The Infrastructure of the Artwork is an investigation into the relationship between artwork and the urban context, in which these two are examined as parallel, interconnected entities. Infrastructure is seen as a shared space, giving root to both the conditions of a city and the meaning of an artwork. From these depths, I aim to find an expanded understanding of the meaning of the artwork, encompassing its production, exhibition and continued afterlife.
In my presentation I will share experiences from Circulation Realm, the first exhibition completed within this research framework. It is a collaboration with artists Michael Amstad and Nicolau Vergueiro and took place at ROM for kunst og arkitektur, Oslo Jan-Feb 2023. It was accompanied by the following descriptive text:
The exhibition’s budget, use of resources, social conditions, politics and the climate crisis are directly affected by the same mechanisms that govern the rest of society. The works reveal how technical, material and social conditions have created each of their own form.
The premise provided a fertile ground for ideas, and throughout the process we adapted to changes and adjusted our plans for the works to develop in a healthy way. These works are not ends, but bodies that need continued nourishment. Circulation Realm can therefore be seen as one (of several) harvest(s), shaped by the affordances of the host institution. In light of this, I will discuss individual works and the exhibition documents. What are the aesthetic and ethical challenges of growing an exhibition? And what might these complex material – social relationships offer for the next harvest?