Reykjavík Arts Festival 2012 announces (I)ndependent People, a large-scale collaborative international visual arts project that will involve many of Reykjavík’s exhibition spaces, museums, galleries and public space during the festival season and throughout the summer. Focusing on contemporary visual art from the Nordic and Baltic countries, (I)ndependent People asks if and how collaboration can operate in continual negotiation between contesting ideas and desires, yet allowing unplanned and transformative action.
Whether they have been working together for a long time or been composed to undertake a temporary collaboration, all the artists participating in this project do so as part of a joint venture. Artists’ collectives, partnerships, workshops and exchanges permit an investigation of artistic subjectivity and authorship, allowing knowledge to be acquired so that it may be shared with others. Both thematically and performatively, the construction, intention and focus of this exhibition may be seen to parallel the notion of a ‘third space’ (Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge, 1994).

This allows seemingly incommensurable differences to be negotiated, rendering meaning ambivalent and warping the mirror of representation. In turn, cultural knowledge is revealed as a hybridised, open and expanding code. Such an intervention – made possible through exchange between a cluster of museums, galleries, artist-run spaces and institutions in Iceland and abroad – quite properly challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenising, unifying force. This further relies on participants relinquishing their subjectivity, or momentarily placing it in parenthesis; in this way, artists create the specific uncertainty that makes the third, other, hybrid identity possible. Through this process, a position is generated at which the in-between of collaboration can potentially become a site for social and cultural transformation – a locus around identities, at which becoming can resist the impetus toward homogeneity.

Often labelled as either ‘alternative’ or ‘independent’, several of the participating groups address questions concerning the structure of the mediated (art) world. By moving beyond ideas of national representation, concepts of public and private, author and audience, this context might provide a nuanced discourse about commonality. By describing a place between subjectivities, ideologies, interests and structures, the temporary, in-between space created in Reykjavík can become a proposition for unimagined ideas to be examined, planned and constructed. This position has been portrayed as a vessel without sharp contours – as ambiguous, vague and indefinable; however, these are the very qualities that often make contemporary art worthy of hope. Or, in the words of Elizabeth Grosz, “The space in between things is the space in which things are undone, the space to the side and around, which is the space of subversion and fraying, the edge of any identity’s limits. In short, it is the space of the bounding and undoing of the identities, which constitute it”. (Elisabeth Grosz, Architecture From Outside, MIT Press, 2001).

The extensive project brings together 29 artist-collectives with the collaboration of over 100 participants. (I)ndependent People is curated by Swedish curator and theorist Jonatan Habib Engqvist and made possible through exchange and collaborative undertakings between a cluster of museums, galleries, artist-run spaces and institutions. Venues include Reykjavík Art Museum, The National Gallery of Iceland, The Nordic House, Kling & Bang, The Living Art Museum, The Icelandic Sculpture Association and ASÍ Art Museum, together with public space in Reykjavík and off-site events. Saturday May 19 will be dedicated to openings of the exhibitions with receptions and events at the venues from morning to evening and Sunday May 20 will host an international seminar.

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Events:


17th of May
Origami workshop with The New Beauty Council, venue TBA.

18th of May
Passarine walk, can end at Harpa, The New Beauty Council, Thérèse Kristiansson & Mariana Alves and Katarina Bonnevier.

19th of May
All day and all evening, openings, see independentpeople.is
21:00 Raflost & Steina, Violin Power by video artist Steina performed as a part of Raflost. Other performers include the Arduino group and Hestbak, who perform works by S.L.Á.T.U.R.

20th of May
10:00 Press conference, The Awareness Muscle Team, Blue Lagoon.
13:00 International Seminar, Nordic House. See also page 35.
18.00 Living Art Museum, artist talk by Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson, performance by Three Planes of Silver (Melissa Dubbin, Aaron S. Davidson, Shawn Onsgard).

21st of May
12:00 Bliss (list of performers see page 59), National Theatre.
15:00–17:00 The Leyline Project, workshop, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.
20:00 Goodiepal & Icelandic Sound Poetry Choir, LÁ Museum.

23rd of May
14:00–16:00 Raflost, artist / group talk, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

24th of May
12:15 Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir & Hlynur Hallsson, with Ransu, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús. 17:00 Jonatan Habib Engqvist, curator’s talk, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.
17:00 Sheep Plug Club Films at The Demented Diamond of Kling & Bang’s Confected Video Archive, Reykjavík 63
Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

27th of May
14:00 Jonatan Habib Engqvist curator’s talk, The National Gallery of Iceland.
15:00 Ásdís Ólafsdóttir, curator’s talk, Horizonic, LÁ Museum, Hveragerði.

29th of May
20:00 Performance by Auxpan (Elvar Már Kjartansson), Living Art Museum.

31st of May
12:15 Hlynur Hallsson & Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir with Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen and Hjálmar Stefán Brynólfsson, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

1st of June
15:00–18:00 MESSA Symposium, Art Fairs: Gateway to the International Art Market, Nordic House.

2nd of June
17:00–18:00 MESSA Vision, open to the public, Nordic House.

5th of June
20:00 Performance by AMFJ (Aðalsteinn Jörundsson), Living Art Museum.

7th of June
12:15 Hlynur Hallsson & Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir with Þóranna Björnsdóttir, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.
17:00 Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir at The Demented Diamond of Kling & Bang’s Confected Video Archive. Sound performance by Áki Ásgeirsson & Guðlaugur K. Óttarsson, The Leyline Project, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

10th of June
15:00 Elin Strand Ruin + New Beauty Council & knitting / coffee meeting, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

12th of June
20:00 Performance by Stefán Finnbogi Pétursson, Living Art Museum.

14th of June
12:15 Hlynur Hallsson & Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir with Hlynur Helgason, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

16th of June
15:00 Artist talk, Dodda Maggý, Horizonic, LÁ Museum, Hveragerði.

19th of June
20:00 Performance by S.L.Á.T.U.R. (Composer Collective), Living Art Museum.

21st of June
17:00 Kolbeinn Hugi Höskuldsson at The Demented Diamond of Kling & Bang’s Confected Video Archive, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

26th of June
20:00 Performance, Trouble by Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir, Living Art Museum.

1st of July
15:00 Exhibition talk, Inga Jónsdóttir, Horizonic, LÁ Museum, Hveragerði.

3rd of July
20:00 Performance by Stilluppsteypa (Helgi Þórsson & Sigtryggur Berg
Sigmarsson), Living Art Museum.

5th of July
17:00 Ragnar Helgi Ólafsson at The Demented Diamond of Kling & Bang’s Confected Video Archive, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

19th of July
20:00 Evening walk, overview of the history of Artist Run Spaces, Reykjavík Art Museum in collaboration with the Living Art Museum.
17:00 Þórgunnur Oddsdóttir at The Demented Diamond of Kling & Bang’s Confected Video Archive, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

2nd of August
17:00 K&B projects at The Demented Diamond of Kling & Bang’s Confected Video Archive, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

9th of August
12:15 Hlynur Hallsson & Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir with Tinna Grétarsdóttir, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

16th of August
12:15 Hlynur Hallsson & Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir with Halldór Úlfarsson and Páll Ivan Pálsson, Reykjavik Art Museum – Hafnarhús.
17:00 Loji Höskuldsson at The Demented Diamond of Kling & Bang’s Confected Video Archive, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

23rd of August
12:15 Hlynur Hallsson & Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir with Endemi organizers, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.

25th of August
15:00 An open conversation to discuss the result of the research office, review the timeline and ask questions about the Archive of Artist Run Initiatives, and most importantly finding answers to some extent, National Gallery of Iceland.

30th of August
17:00 Secret gem revealed at The Demented Diamond of Kling & Bang’s Confected Video Archive, Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús.