EAR to the [Archive] Ground – Reactivating the Unheard Avant-gardes. Case: POEX65.

[img]http://www.furtherfield.org/sites/furtherfield.org/files/imagecache/content_width_598px/poex65-main.jpg[/img]

Morten Søndergaard's article explores the field of the ‘unheard avant-gardes’ (if it indeed is one field) and, drawing from the examples of ‘POEX65’ – a cross-disciplinary and POetry EXperimental event that took place during 10 hectic days in Copenhagen, December 1965 (and later to become completely unheard (of)), asks the central question: How do we define the modalities and methodologies needed to reactivate the unheard avant-gardes like POEX65?

"My claim is that there are huge lacunas in the construction of the ‘grand’ archives, as well as in the construction of our ‘collective’ knowledge, and it would be tempting - if we consider the other end of the argument that Mark Wiser makes, which indicates that we may never bridge or fill all of them (the idea would be absurd) - to claim that none of it matters. The ‘homemade’ logic being that there is not anything interesting to find, anyway – and if there were, ‘they’ (the professional and scientific networks) would certainly know about it."

The Journey Begins…

http://www.furtherfield.org/features/articles/ear-archive-ground-%E2%80%93-reactivating-unheard-avant-gardes-case-poex65

About Søndergaard.

Since 1994: Internationally operating Media Art Curator & Art Critic; Currently invited visiting curator at ZKM. Curator of Exhibitions in US, Finland, Sweden, Russia, France, Germany, Austria and Denmark – (selected) worked with Damien Hirst (curator assistant), Sophie Calle (curator assistant), Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, and Stelarc. Member of the Curator Board of PORT 2010 Festival of Contemporary Art in Aalborg; Senior Curator at re-new - digital Arts Festival in Copenhagen (www.re-new.org); (2007-10) member of the research group “Augmented Reality and Contemporary Art” at McGill University, Canada; (2004-10) Chairman of the advisory committee, Kulturnet Danmark (Culture Net Denmark), Copenhagen; (2004-06) Member of the Curator Board at Splintermind, Stockholm, Sweden.

Publications (selected): Get Real: Art + Real time + Theory + History + Practice (New York: George Braziller Publishers, 2005), (with Peter Weibel) MAGNET – The Visual Systems of Thorbjørn Lausten (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2008), and (with Mogens Jacobsen) RE_ACTION – The Digital Archive Experience (Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, 2009). Upcoming publication (in Danish): Space Punctures – Show-Bix and the Media Conscious Practice of Per Højholt (spring 2011).