Unheard Avant-gardes in Scandinavia: Agencies / Histories / Designactions

20. und 21. November 2017 Interface Culture Seminar- / Projekt Raum, Domgasse 1, 4.OG; A+B

Interface Cultures lädt zum Workshop von Morten Søndergaard.

Historically, experimental and political (in the sense that they address the framing of interpretation and change) ‘creative’ practices (be it art, design, architecture… etc) have had a tendency to disappear and become unheard of within a very short time span of their production. It could be claimed that the histories of these practices are not about what was produced, but what was forgotten.  

This series of lectures will focus on the unheard avant-gardes in Scandinavia in the 60s and 70s that were, and still are, largely unheard of outside a very small circle of experts in their native countries. They are Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish and Danish experimental and political practices.

The lectures will address the issues of how to ‘bring back’ such practices, or maybe: how to bring them ‘onto’ an international scene largely dominated by anglosaxon entanglements.

Further: how to work with them as agencies from untold histories; and how to approach this curatorially through a series of ‘designactions’, creating a politics of unheard things in the process. 

Montag, 20.11.2017, 10.00 - 13.15 Uhr ‘General intro to sound art / design / histories’
Montag, 20.11.2017, 14.00 - 17.00 Uhr ‘Case: POEX65’
Dienstag 21.11.2017, 14.00 - 17.00 Uhr ‘Redesigning the way we listen.

Case: Curating Unheard Avant-gardes for the Sound Art Exhibition at ZKM in 2012’

Morten Søndergaard
is a curator, art critic, theoretician, and associate professor of interactive media art at the School of Communication, Art and Technology at University of Aalborg (based in Copenhagen).

He is the international co-coordinator of the Erasmus Master in Media Arts Cultures and on the faculty of the Media Art Histories Master at Blue Danube University in Krems.

As head of research of the research-infrastructure project Unheard Avant-gardes in Scandinavia (since 2010), he curated a section of the Sound Art – Sound as Medium of Art at ZKM; and founded the International Sound Art Curating Conference Series (http://ISACS.soundartcurating.org), both in 2012.

Formerly, he was the Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde (1998–2008) (Constituted Director 2003 and 2006-07), and the senior curator at Re-new Digital Arts Festival in Copenhagen (2010–2013);

chair of Design Cases at Nordichi (2012) and exhibition chair at NIME conference 2017.

Member of the curator-board at DIAS artspace in Copenhagen (since 2012); contributing editor of Leonardo Electronic Almanac (2011–2014).

He has published and edited widely on the topics of media art, sound art, and the electronic archiving experience.

He has curated and co-curated numerous international exhibitions since 1994.

In 2017, he co-curated the exhibition ‘Roads less taken…’ at Ars Electronica with students from Art & Technology BA and Media Arts Cultures Erasmus Master and was general chair of Resonant Worlds Symposium at ZKM together with Peter Weibel