Ane Hjort Guttu is next year’s Festival Artist at Bergen Kunsthall. For the exhibition Guttu is producing a film which is to be shot in Bergen, with the Bergen Academy of Art and Design as a central location. The film is about an art student who mounts an ongoing performative action in which she plays the role of a beggar on the street in Bergen, partly inspired by conceptual artists like Lee Lozano.
As an introduction to the film shooting, Guttu, in collaboration with the Bergen Academy of Art and Design and Bergen Kunsthall, arranges a seminar to discuss the issues touched on in the new film, but also those in Guttu’s artistic work in general. This could be described as the schism between art and politics on the one hand, and art as politics on the other. In this case Guttu’s work dwells on the former, the direct, relational, interventionist and actionist work done by artists which relates to «current affairs». Can artists work with politics in an effective way, or is politically oriented work best done outside the field of art? What does ‘effective’ mean in this context, and must political art be effective? Why do some artists choose to leave the art scene altogether, the better to pursue their artistic and political interests? How can artists and art students challenge and work with the boundaries between art and life? In what ways is ‘the art world’ politically significant in Europe today?