It is difficult to bungle a good idea – Conceptual art and Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings

Drawing environments. On the ‘technology’ of Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings.

Sabeth Buchmann is an art historian and critic. She is professor for modern and postmodern art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Chair of the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies. She writes contributions for books, magazines and catalogues regularly and is a member of the Advisory board of the Berlin based magazine Texte zur Kunst. She is the author of Denken gegen das Denken. Produktion – Technologie – Subjektivität bei Sol LeWitt, Hélio Oiticica und Yvonne Rainer 2007 and Co-editor with Alexander Alberro of Art After Conceptual Art 2006. Free entrance to the lecture. Language: English.

*Sentences on Conceptual Art, Sol LeWitt exhibition catalogue, The Nordic Watercolour Museum 2002.

Sol LeWitt always felt that he was best represented through his work and never liked the idea of being filmed or photographed. Follow the artist in a rare exception when we show a filmed conversation between Sol LeWitt and curator Gary Garrels. The evening starts at 6pm with a presentation of the exhibition Seven Wall Drawings by curator Elisabeth Millqvist accompanied by special guests who all have experience of LeWitt works. The film screening starts at 7pm. Free admission to the event. Welcome!

What is unique for the Chinese contemporary art scene? What makes it different from the West? The relationship individual / collective – it is possible to “read” that in the art? The personnel resources that exist in connection with the creation of art in China – it is a strength or a weakness? Can art be free in a non-democracy?

Lars Nittve, Executive Director of M+, Hong Kong.

Jérôme Sans, international curator and Director of Creation and Chief Editor of the magazine L’Officiel Art.

Uli Sigg, significant collector of contemporary Chinese art.

Karen Smith, writer, critic and curator based in Beijing.

Moderator: David Neuman, founding director of Magasin 3, Stockholm.

Venue: Moderna Museet, The Auditorium, Skeppsholmen, 6 pm. Free entrance. No pre-registration required. In English

In 1989, when the people in Berlin celebrated the fall of the wall and the dissolution of many authoritarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, the people in China mourned hundreds of dead after the massacre on Tian’anmen Square. The two events cannot be fully understood without the artworks that were created after and before the events. But the artists did not only document the effects of the political and social change, many of them also played or occupied key roles in the creation of the new orders and societies, in particular those that can be characterised as dissident.

As part of the exhibition with works by Ai Weiwei, who is today China’s most outspoken dissident artist, the legendary gallerist Folker Skulima, the playwright and actor Ivana Sajko and the actor Samuel Finzi will examine the roles of artists, bloggers, political activists and politicians in times of social change. They will be joined by independent curator Berit Schuck in a conversation that revolves around contemporary concepts of art and activism in an effort to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between authoritarian regimes and the arts: What are the effects of conflicts on body and mind, but also on art itself?

Samuel Finzi, Bulgarian/German theatre and film actor.

Ivana Sajko, born 1975 in Zagreb (Croatia), is a writer, director and performer.

Folker Skulima, legendary Berlin gallerist and writer.

Moderator: Berit Schuck, dramaturge and independent curator based in Berlin.

Venue: Goethe-Institut, Bryggargatan 12 A, 6 pm. In English.

Few artists have packed such an extraordinary range of both clear and covert references to art movements and other artists or to particular locations and intermittently specific objects into the sequencing of their works. Focusing on the “marine core” of Cosima von Bonin’s art this lecture will examine how metaphorical meanings are found, produced and relayed in the work of the artist.

John C. Welchman is Professor of art history in the Visual Arts department at the University of California, San Diego and co-director of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. His books include Modernism Relocated: Towards a Cultural Studies of Visual Modernity (Allen & Unwin, 1995), Invisible Colours: A Visual History of Titles (Yale, 1997) and Art After Appropriation: Essays on Art in the 1990s (Routledge, 2001); he is co-author of the Dada and Surrealist Word Image (MIT Press, 1987) and of Mike Kelley in the Phaidon Contemporary Artists series (1999); and editor of Rethinking Borders (Minnesota UP/Routledge, 1996). XX to XXI: Essays on European Art will be published by Akal, Madrid in Spanish, in 2012. Welchman is founder and chair of the Southern California Consortium of Art Schools and editor of its publication series for JRP|Ringier: Recent Pasts: Art in Southern California from the 90s to Now (2005); Institutional Critique and After (2006); The Aesthetics of Risk (2008); Black Sphinx: On the Comedic in Modern Art (2010); and, forthcoming, Public Culture in the Visual Sphere. He editor of the collected writings of Mike Kelley: Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism, was published with MIT Press in 2003;, Minor Histories, also, with MIT, arrived Spring 2004; and the third Mike Kelley: Interviews, Conversations, and Chit-Chat, 1988-2004 with JRP|Ringier, Zurich in 2005. His most recent book is On the Beyond: A Conversation between Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw and John C Welchman, ed. John. Welchman, [Kunst und Architektur im Gespraech/Art and Architecture in Discussion] (Vienna and New York: SpringerWienNewYork, 2011).

Ai Weiwei has devoted his life and art to the issues of freedom of speech, democracy and human rights in China. What significance do these issues have in China today, both historically and for the future? Although free speech is limited, the boundaries are extended by internet access, micro-blogs and lively internet debates between citizens about the Chinese leaders. Are these forces that Chinese authorities will struggle to contain? How should we in the West relate to a country that denies human rights while also providing a large part of our manufacturing industry? The panel will also discuss the relationship between the dissidents in China and those that live abroad.

Panel:

Börje Ljunggren, Swedish diplomat and expert on Asia, the former ambassador in China.

Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, New York, teaching and research on Chinese politics and human rights.

Malin Oud, sinologist with a focus on human rights and sustainable development

Moderator: Dominic Ziegler, London-based Asia editor of The Economist and the journal’s former China correspondent.

Read more on the exhibition’s webpage

The first part of the evening program is a discussion on social media’s role in the democratization of China. There the use of micro blog Weibo, Chinese equivalent of Twitter, is much more prevalent than in Sweden. What does that mean for a greater freedom of speech? What does the development in China look in comparison with, for example, the jasmine revolution in the Arab world?

The Swedish government currently supports net activists in repressive regimes with huge sums of money. In the second part of the evening the implications and how Sweden can act to support Chinese netizens and freedom of speech development are discussed.

Panel:

Michael Anti (Zhao Jing), Chinese journalist, blogger and net acitivist currently at Harvard University.

Marina Svensson, Sinologist and China expert at Lund University with focus on human rights, justice and the Chinese media.

Christian Christensen, Professor at the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Uppsala University.

Moderator: Ulrika K. Engström, Swedish PEN and Enact consulting firm, where she works with sustainable strategies for business development with focus on China and human rights.

Venue: Panoramascenen, vån 5, Kulturhuset, Sergels Torg, 7 pm. Hotade ord in collaboration with Swedish PEN. In English. Free admission.

Read more on the exhibition’s webpage

Museum Director David Neuman gives a tour of the exhibition Museum Magasin 3 – Presentations from the collection: Cosima von Bonin, Per Kirkeby and Tal R with special guests; Karolina Holmlund, artist, Sigrid Sandstrom, artist and professor of fine arts/painting and the artist John Scott. Language: Swedish. The tour is included in the admission fee.

A conversation between Chief Curator and Deputy Director Richard Julin and choreographer Björn Säfsten and dancers Anja Arnquist, Sophie Augot, Allison Ahl, Linda Blomqvist and Madeleine Lindh.

In his lecture Investigations of a Dog. Kafka as artist and mystic Hans Blomqvist speaks about Kafka’s life and work and how it has been interpreted over time. Blomqvist also gives insight into Kafka’s original way of crafting his stories and his particular esthetic, in which mystical ideas take center stage.

Hans Blomqvist is a translator and author based in Gothenburg. Together with Erik Ågren he has translated Franz Kafka to Swedish for many years. Hans Blomqvist has written Den oerhörda värld jag har i mitt huvud (The Tremendous World I Have in My Head) in 2006, a book about Kafka’s literary technique and esthetic based on his own explorations about his writing and the compilation of essays Gemenskapen har sina demoner och ensamheten sina (Community has Demons and So Does Loneliness) published 2009.