Forthcoming Exhibition-Updated!!

Here is the link of CAM posted on YouTube.

CAM
Visningsrommet USF
22. mai – 21. Juni 2009
Åpning: fredag 22. mai // 1900
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Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. […] The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The title CAM refers to the practice of illegally copying movies by filming the screen in movie theatres. The exhibition actively refers to this practice by including a series of cammed contemporary art exhibitions currently showing in galleries and museums in more than ten countries on three continents.

CAM proposes a critical view on digital piracy in contemporary popular culture and raises questions about authenticity, exclusivity and representation.

Paraphrasing, copying and quoting are well established and acknowledged strategies in contemporary art through modernism and post-modernism. With contributions on the logic of representation like Walter Benjamin’s Art in the age of mechanical reproduction and his term “aura”, the significance of the singularity work of art is removed from its status as an original. In mechanical reproduction, like photography, there is no original or copy, and the experience of art is freed from the bourgeois structures of power and brought under the control of the masses. This democratization of reproduction has had an imperative effect on the arts in the way that copying and referring has become less a way of learning the practical aspect of art, but has merged into a diverse set of strategies directed towards producing new types of knowledge about art itself and about systems of knowledge like philosophy, science and politics.

Presenting cammed exhibitions from three continents, CAM points to the challenges concerning globalized dissemination of cultural products by shifting the power balance between market-oriented curatorial and artistic practices and the art consumer.

With the introduction of digital reproduction and dissemination of contemporary popular culture, the democratization of reproduction is revitalized. Digital technology potentially disseminates cultural production across boundaries, both cultural and physical, enabling new groups and individuals to partake in a global economy of knowledge, culture and finance. In a political sense, popular culture hence seemingly dethrones contemporary artistic practices as the main cultural signifier. This again points to one of contemporary arts main challenges which is to reach a public that is not already on familiar terms with art and its diverse practices.

The exhibition is curated by Arne Skaug Olsen together with Erlend Hammer, Jan Christensen, Synnøve G Wetten, Andre Gali, James Webb and Lerato Bereng, Jooyoung Lee, Jimmi Limit, Wang Baoju, Joris Lindhout, Jan Freuchen, Runa Johannessen and Dan Levenson.

CAM is supported by Arts Council Norway, The Municipality of Bergen, and Hordaland County.

Arne Skaug Olsen
Gallery Director // Fagansvarlig
www.gallery-usf.no
+47 920 68 453