"Networked Art" Participants

ABSTRACT
In the 1960‘s artists in Iceland became better connected to artists on the European continent than they had ever been before. This was mainly due to Dieter Roth, who had moved to Reykjavik in the late 1950’s. He had kept his contacts in Switzerland and expanded his networking practices to Iceland. One of Roth‘s local collaborator was Magnús Pálsson (b. 1929), who is a highly respected figure in Icelandic art circles. He became head of a new experimental department in the School of Arts and Crafts in 1975, where he made intermedia a part of the school’s curriculum. As part of Roth’s international network he invited artists from Europe to teach at the school. One of them was Roth’s friend, Robert Filliou, who had elaborated his ideas on networks in the book Teaching and Learning as Performing arts. They corresponded to Magnús Pálsson’s approach to creative collaboration he was already familiar with from his early professional experience as stage designer. The lecture will focus on the Roth-Filliou-Palsson connections and how their visions and networking practices became an integrant part of the local art scene.

BIO
CV: Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir is an independent writer and researcher at The Reykjavik Academy. She’s holds a Ph.D. in Aesthetics and Art Theory from the University of Paris 1 Sorbonne-Pantheon. She has been a teacher at the Iceland Academy of Arts since 2002, where she now gives course in Contemporary Art Theory and at the University of Iceland. She’s also worked an art critic, lecturer and recently as curator. She coordinated Pikslaverk festival of electronic arts (2010-2011) and was a member of a curatorial team of /Perspectives: on the convergences of art and philosophy/ at the Reykjavik Art Museum (2011). Last September she opened an exhibition on /Icelandic video art from 1975 to 1990/ at the Reykjavik Art Museum, based on her doctoral research. Margrét is a co-founder of Lorna, Association for Electronics Arts and Lorna Lab, a cross-disciplinary platform of art, science and technology.