Lars Bang Larsen

"Networks is one of a series documenting major themes and ideas in contemporary art. The dawn of the electronic media age in the 1960s initiated a cultural shift from the modernist grid's determination of projection and representation to the fluid structures and circuits of the network, presenting art with new challenges and possibilities. Artists have used the 'space of flows' as a basis for creating utopian scenarios, absurd yet functional propositions or holistic planetary visions. Others have explored the economies of reciprocity and the ethics of generosity, in works that address changed conditions of co-dependence and new sites of social negotiation. The 'infra-power' of the network has been a departure point for self-organized counter-culture and the creation of new types of agency. And a 'poetics of connectivity' runs through a diverse range of work that addresses the social and material complexity of networks via physical structures and ambient installation, the mapping of the internet, or the development of robots and software that take on the functions of artist or curator."--Publisher's description.

Networks

Suzanne Treister

HEXEN2.0 is the sequel to HEXEN 2039 which imagined new technologies for psychological warfare through investigating links between the occult and the military in relation to histories of witchcraft, the US film industry, British Intelligence agencies, Soviet brainwashing, behavior control experiments of the US Army's MKULTRA program and more recent practices of its Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (PSYOP), in light of contemporary neuro-scientific research. HEXEN2.0 delves deeper into the histories of scientific research behind government programs of mass control, in tandem with counter-cultural and grass roots movements, and creates a space for the imagining of alternative future scenarios. HEXEN2.0 charts, within a framework of post-WWII US governmental and military imperatives, the coming together of diverse scientific and social sciences through the development of cybernetics, the history of the internet, the rise of Web 2.0 and mass intelligence gathering, and the implications for the future of new systems of societal manipulation towards a control society. Furthermore, HEXEN2.0 investigates the participants of the seminal Macy Conferences1 (1943-1956) - whose primary goal was to set the foundations for a general science of the workings of the human mind - alongside specific critics of technological society such as Theodore Kaczynski/Unabomber, current profiles of Anarcho-Primitivists and Post Leftists, and traces the precursory ideas of Thoreau, Heidegger, Adorno and others in relation to fantasies of utopic/dystopic futures from science-fiction literature and film. Through representing and re-examining these subjects and histories through the lens of occult belief systems and ideas of the supernatural HEXEN2.0 takes us to a hypnotic, mesmerizing space of early technological fantasy and theory to hallucinate feedback from the past from where one may imagine and construct possible alternative futures. The information in HEXEN2.0 is based on actual events, people and histories.

Hexen 2.0

Julia Voss

Raphael Gross

Dorothee Wierling

Alexia Pooth

Dorlis Blume

From 1955 onwards, the makers of each documenta sought to offer insights into current trends in art and to document the spirit of their particular time. This publication sets the history of documenta in the context of the political, cultural and socio-historical development of the Federal Republic of Germany in the second half of the twentieth century. It thereby illuminates a relationship of mutual dependence between art and history. Time and time again, this major international exhibition was a place where West Germany's perception of itself was negotiated. From the very beginning, progressive and regressive political currents were active there side to side--Page 4 of cover.

Politics and Art : Deutsches Historisches Museum, [Berlin, 18. 6. 2021-9. 1. 2022]

Documenta

Uta Grosenick

Burkhard Riemschneider

An illustrated survey (A-Z) of 137 international artists active during the 1980s and 90s.

Art Au Tournant de L'an 2000

Art at the turn of the millennium

Cristina Ricupero

Charlotte Brandt

Charles Massera

Conceived as a textbook with images rather than an exhibition catalogue, Fundamentalisms of the New Order reflects on the diversity of fundamentalisms, a phenomenon that is not confined to particular cultures or modes of thought; its intention is to explore the concept in its many forms and multiple origins. Why have we, in recent years, seen such a resurgence of fundamentalisms--religious, political, cultural, economic? What are the fundamentalisms at work in our own culture? What happened to the idea of the Welfare State--a "positive fundamentalism"? In an era of rapid change, what positive fundamental values can we identify with or even insist on? These were some of the questions posed by the exhibition and elaborated in the present catalogue. It contains a selection of essays and interviews with the artists in the show, as well as a documentation of the events and panel discussions held at the Charlottenborg Exhibition Hall in Copenhagen. Co-published with NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art Contributors Charlotte Brandt, B lent Diken and Carsten Bagge Lausten, Lars Bang Larsen, Jean-Charles Massera, Toni Negri, Cristina Ricupero, Judith Schwarzbart, Sabine Strasser

Fundamentalisms of the New Order

Jennifer Higgie

Glenn Sorensen

Essays by Jennifer Higgie and Lars Bang Larsen.

Caterina Riva

Isobel Harbison

Maria Loboda

Oh, Wilderness

Palle Nielsen

Bartomeu Marí

In 1968 Palle Nielsen approached the Moderna Museet in Stockholm with a proposal for turning the museum into an adventure playground. From 30 September to 20 October 1968 Modellen. En modell for ett kvalitativt samhalle (The Model - A Model for a Qualitative Society) was installed and children under eighteen were offered free access. The event attracted more than 35,000 visitors. Nielsen's insistence on using the gallery space for his mass utopian model was precocious, prefiguring institutional critique and activist uses of the white cube. This book presents a selection of the material donated to the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) by Palle Nielsen in 2009, and shown the same year as part of the exhibition Time as Matter. MACBA Collection. New Acquisitions. It includes an essay by Lars Bang Larsen, various texts by Palle Nielsen as well as the artist's documentary photos from The Model. The mere fact that they were swimming in the paint is a step towards a change in the structure of society. It is small. It is slow. But it is part of a movement made up of wishes and actions. (Palle Nielsen, `The social artists', 1969)

A Model for a Qualitative Society (1968)

The Model

Doris Blume

Every few years since 1955, the creators of documenta set themselves the task of providing an insight into current trends in art and of capturing the zeitgeist of recent art production. Despite its name, documenta's primary concerns are neither with the simple documentation of individual artists and their work nor with developments in art history, but instead with providing a historical space where art reflects and comments on social constellations and political or social change, or demands it through art interventions. documenta is not only a historical testimony and event, but also a show at which - through the medium of art-- self-interpretation becomes the catalyst for debate and historical change. For the first time, this book places the history of documenta in the context of the political, cultural and societal development of Germany during the second half of the twentieth century, illustrating how art and history can be explored in terms of a mutually dependent relationship.

Politics and Art

Marco Pasi

Simon Grant

The birth of abstract art is typically associated with Kandinsky and others in the early 20th century. Houghton's work, however, predates this momentous artistic breakthrough by half a century. In this respect, she anticipates the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), whose work is now appreciated for its significance in the early history of abstraction.Houghton was a prominent figure of the early spiritualist movement in Victorian England, which played a significant role in various spheres of 19th century culture and was later championed by such influential figures as Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Spiritualism emerged as the belief that contact with a spirit realm was possible and that such communication could bring one closer to God. Houghton, a trained artist as well as a medium, pioneered the use of drawing as a method of channeling and expressing communications with spirit entities. During the 1860s and 1870s, she produced a series of unprecedented abstract watercolors as part of her practice as a spirit medium. Houghton called these works 'spirit drawings'. Remarkably complex, layered watercolors and technically highly accomplished, their bold colors and fluid forms have a mesmerizing and deeply absorbing effect. Detailed inscriptions on the back of the works declare that her hand was guided by various spirits, including family members, several Renaissance artists, such as Titian and Correggio, and higher angelic beings. Although produced in a very different context, Houghton's abstract works have close connections to the ways in which 20th Century artists developed abstract languages of art to transcend the everyday realm of representation and consciousness.In 1871 Houghton rented a prestigious gallery space in Bond Street and presented 55 of her spirit drawings to a perplexed London audience. The critic from The Era newspaper pronounced it to be "the most astonishing exhibition in London at the present moment." The Daily News likened the works to "tangled threads of colored wool" and concluded that "they deserve to be seen as the most extraordinary and instructive example of artistic aberration."Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings will present more than 20 of these remarkable works. Unlike anything typically associated with Victorian culture, it will be a fascinating opportunity to consider their place within the history of art; both as products of their times and as precursors of radical 20th Century art.

Spirit Drawings

Georgiana Houghton

Tone Hansen

One of the few things we have in common in contemporary society is the future of our children. But it seems that even the "we" of childhood, of learning and free play, has turned into a common ground for instrumentalization and competition. Today, the pedagogical paradox--Kant's meditation on the paradox that the subject's predisposition for freedom must be learned--is increasingly lost in governmental obsession about the efficiency of education and schooling. From another perspective, artists are addressing questions of childhood, play, and pedagogy. What ideological and moral transformations is the school system currently undergoing? What do the psychiatric diagnoses and treatments mean that are increasingly applied to children and youth? What happened to the reform pedagogy of the twentieth century? What is the status of childhood in the era of the consuming child and the playing adult? These are some of the questions addressed by The Phantom of Liberty, which sets out to reestablish a social and aesthetic dialogue between visual art and psychology, philosophy, pedagogy, and critical journalism. The Phantom of Liberty: Contemporary Art and the Pedagogical Paradox is published following the exhibition "Learning for Life" curated by Tone Hansen and Ane Hjort Guttu, November 11, 2012-February 24, 2013, at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK). Copublished with Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Contributors Emanuel Almborg, Nils Christie, Carl Hegemann, Ane Hjort Guttu, Dave Hullfish Bailey, Adelita Husni-Bey, Carsten Rene Jørgensen, Lars Bang Larsen, Sharon Lockhart, Magnus Marsdal, Marit Paasche, Allan Sekula

Contemporary Art and the Pedagogical Paradox

The Phantom of Liberty

Maria Lind

Revisiting a project that concatenated art, research, and urban activism into a visionary hybrid framework. For three weeks in October 1968, Stockholm's Moderna Museet was transformed into a sprawling adventure playground that was free to access for all of the city's children. It concatenated art, research, and urban activism into a visionary hybrid framework. Half a century later, through a series of seminars, exhibitions, and new artworks, The New Model revisits this utopian intervention, reviving discussions of public participation, children's agency, and shifting ideals of collective being. Curated by Lars Bang Larsen and Maria Lind, these inquiries took place from 2011 to 2015 at and around Tensta konsthall, in one of Stockholm's late-modernist suburbs. Through essays, exhibition documentation, and dialogues with the participating artists—among them Palle Nielsen, Magnus Bärtås, Hito Steyerl, Ane Hjort Guttu, and Dave Hullfish Bailey—this volume charts the evolution of two artistic, curatorial, and institutional experiments. Contributions by Dave Hullfish Bailey, Magnus Bärtås, Jessica Gogan, Ane Hjort Guttu, Lars Bang Larsen, Gunilla Lundahl, Palle Nielsen, and Hito Steyerl, with an artistic intervention from Metahaven

An Inquiry

The New Model

Beatrix Ruf

Peter Land

Renate Wiehager

Knut Nievers

Edited by Renate Wiehager. Essays by Lars Bang Larsen, Kurt Nievers, Beatrix Ruf.

Søren Andreasen

Tramway (Arts center : Glasgow, Scotland)

Camilla Løw, Susan Philipsz, Alice Creischer & Andreas Siekman, Rasmus Knud & Søren Andreasen, Ad Reinhardt by Lars Bang Larsen, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige : Tramway, November 14 - December 21, 2003

The Echo Show

Lars Bang Larsen

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