Opening: Gaps
A warm welcome to the Waiting Room’s third opening: Gaps
The exhibition will open on the 5th of September in The Living Art Museum from 17-19!
The Waiting Room: Gaps
The Performance Archive does not preserve the history of performance art in Iceland. Rather, it is a somewhat accidental collection of objects, photographs, videos, sound recordings, invitations, newspaper clippings and memories that point back to events that once took place. Some of these materials were deliberately donated for safekeeping in relation to particular performances, while others simply lingered in the offices or collection of the Living Art Museum before the Performance Archive came into existence, eventually finding their way into a box when it was established in 2008.
The performances represented in the archive were not selected by a committee according to a collecting policy. Instead, they accumulated more or less by chance, perhaps reflecting artists’ relationships with the Living Art Museum more than they reflect a history of performance art itself. Yet this unconventional archive can tell us things about art history that other collections cannot as it is the largest collection in Iceland dedicated to performance art.
The Waiting Room is part of an extensive three-year long preparations program for The Living Art Museum’s 50th anniversary in 2028. A program that includes, among other things, research and mediation of the museum's archives. In this first phase, Agnes Ársælsdóttir and Helena Sólveigar Aðalsteinsbur are conducting extensive research on the Performance Archive, along with a series of micro-exhibitions in Limbó intended to provide insight into the research's progress. Gaps is the third and final micro-exhibition in the series, after which Agnes and Helena will stage a major exhibition in the museum's main exhibition space.
Photo taken from Unnar Örn Auðarson´s box in the Performance Archive of the Living Art Museum.
A warm welcome to the Waiting Room’s third opening: Gaps
The exhibition will open on the 5th of September in The Living Art Museum from 17-19!
The Waiting Room: Gaps
The Performance Archive does not preserve the history of performance art in Iceland. Rather, it is a somewhat accidental collection of objects, photographs, videos, sound recordings, invitations, newspaper clippings and memories that point back to events that once took place. Some of these materials were deliberately donated for safekeeping in relation to particular performances, while others simply lingered in the offices or collection of the Living Art Museum before the Performance Archive came into existence, eventually finding their way into a box when it was established in 2008.
The performances represented in the archive were not selected by a committee according to a collecting policy. Instead, they accumulated more or less by chance, perhaps reflecting artists’ relationships with the Living Art Museum more than they reflect a history of performance art itself. Yet this unconventional archive can tell us things about art history that other collections cannot as it is the largest collection in Iceland dedicated to performance art.
The Waiting Room is part of an extensive three-year long preparations program for The Living Art Museum’s 50th anniversary in 2028. A program that includes, among other things, research and mediation of the museum's archives. In this first phase, Agnes Ársælsdóttir and Helena Sólveigar Aðalsteinsbur are conducting extensive research on the Performance Archive, along with a series of micro-exhibitions in Limbó intended to provide insight into the research's progress. Gaps is the third and final micro-exhibition in the series, after which Agnes and Helena will stage a major exhibition in the museum's main exhibition space.
Photo taken from Unnar Örn Auðarson´s box in the Performance Archive of the Living Art Museum.
