Things happening in Oslo

URBAN INTERFACE

urban interface is both exhibition and artistic/curatorial research project exploring the interspaces between public and private urban space. In 2007 urban interface takes place in two European cities, Berlin and Oslo.The project deals with the changing notion of private and public space that occurs partly due to the everyday use of new technology. What can be observed is a two-fold phenomenon. On the one hand, there is apparently a growing desire to express oneself in public through media, on the other hand the public sphere shrinks increasingly and is more controlled and restricted than ever.Urban interface responses to this situation, in that the artworks convey the idea of public space as an accessible and contributive sphere. At the same time, they call attention to a more sensitive engagement with the private, physical and digital spheres.The works are developed for individual spaces by participating artists. In responding to sites and their inherent qualities, the artworks will become focal points of the shifting conceptions of private and public space.
Being sometimes immaterial, process-based and located at the difficult-to-define boundaries of private and public space, the artworks challenge all users – perceivers, organisers and the local authorities to formulate and discuss their individual understanding of those spaces. At the same time, the dispersed and temporary nature of the artworks challenges the formula of exhibitions in public space.This website is conceived as an archive and contributive forum which ideally could serve as a knowledge platform for other art projects dealing with or happening in public space. To that end, relevant processes between the involved parties such as artists, organisers, funders and the city administration will be published on this website. Hence this website can be understood as another interface between private and public, theory and practice.The thematic discourse was extended to presentations and panels accompanying the exhibition in Berlin.
In Oslo, urban interface includes a two-day international conference entitled ‘The Porous City: Art claiming the urban void’.urban interface is a project by Susanne Jaschko

Check out the website:

http://www.oslo.urban-interface.net

for more info

I am doing photographic documentation for the project and went along with Canadian artist Michelle Teran on Monday 17.09 to document Friluftskino: Outdoor Cinema. The screening was called Car Wash that night and happened at a seemingly abondoned carpark in the Tøyen-area. In the publishing material, titel and lenth of the screening, Teran refers to the cinematic format, but what she is actually projecting is footage recived by her from private surveillance cameras in the area. That night we witnessed what goes on in a car wash late at night, projected large on the facade of the car wash-building. Which was nothing but cars coming and going and yes.......being washed by the staff there. The tension was in the possibility that this projection MIGHT have shown completely different activities, especially after all that has been revealed of tax-cheating, money laundering and connections with drugs- and weapons distrubution by the pakistani taxi-business in Oslo lately. Because the projection was held at a kind of taxi central for pakistani taxi-drivers who of course also were using the car wash...............
I think Michelle is raising important questions about privacy, surveillance and monitoring in public places. By "stealing" this image and making it more public she is crossing an ethincal barrier, but also raising awareness of all theese privately run surveillance systems that are transmitting signals wirelessly free for all to pick up.............




Nina Toft