Nina Beier and Marie Lund, The Witness, event, ICA, 5 May-2 Nov 2008
A cumulative lists of all artists and projects involved in Nought to Sixty.
Nought to Sixty presents sixty projects by emerging artists based in Britain and Ireland over six months from 5 May to 2 November 2008.
Most of the artists in Nought to Sixty are under thirty-five, few of them have had significant commercial exposure, and in most cases this is their first opportunity to mount a solo project in a major public space.
The season is not intended to announce any new generation or style, but to build up a multifaceted portrait of the emerging art scene in the two countries, and to provide a space for exchange.
The Nought to Sixty programme consists of:
Events happen at the ICA every Monday night:
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Nought to Sixty is supported by:
Other partners:
Beier and Lund present a trilogy of works that interrogate the social fabric and institutional culture of the ICA.
Nina Beier + Marie Lund are in the Theatre on Monday 14 July.
Nina Beier (born Aarhus, Denmark, 1976, lives in London) and Marie Lund (born Hundested, Denmark, 1975, lives in London) have been working as a duo since 2003. With staged events as well as videos, photographs and sculptures, Beier and Lund tinker with social hierarchies and group dynamics. They often start by issuing a simple set of instructions that participants – both collaborators and audience members – are free to interpret.
In the recent intervention All the People at Tate Modern (2007), Beier and Lund strategically positioned members of Tate staff around the building and asked them to start applauding at a set time. A few posters stuck on the museum's walls also invited visitors to clap. Video documentation of the event shows this clapping, which starts shyly but soon turns into a roaring wave of applause. Mass participation quickly becomes the norm in such a situation, but Beier and Lund's interest lies in when such behavior becomes 'abnormal'. Not only did All the People at Tate Modern disturb the religiously silent atmosphere expected in an art gallery, but it also blurred the usual boundaries between the public and museum professionals – all temporarily united in the shared experience of an extraordinary standing ovation.
For The Division (2007), a work staged at Tate Britain, Beier and Lund announced that 50 beautiful people had been invited to the event. Without any further information, visitors were left to eye each other up and divine who those fabulous guests might be. Like many of the artists' situations, The Division was as much a physical intervention in a group – the audience – as it was the creation of an imaginative space where anyone was a potential participant. However, the work's title also implies that beauty is a divisive force, stigmatising those who may not be deemed conventionally attractive.
The underlying awkwardness of social interactions is a recurring feature in Beier and Lund's production, and the interventions they have staged for Nought to Sixty extend these concerns. The first of these works, The Artist (2008), was announced in the May issue of the Nought to Sixty magazine. A black-bordered caption simply stated that a previous ICA exhibitor, who has since stopped their professional art practice, would be invited to the Nought to Sixty launch. During the opening night, Beier and Lund were frequently approached by people suggesting possible candidates for this mysterious figure. For The Witness (2008), meanwhile, a gallery attendant at the ICA has agreed to grow his beard and hair for the six-month period of Nought to Sixty – personifying the duration of the project as a whole. The final part of the trilogy is An Encore, for which a music act that recently performed at the ICA, has been invited to return to the scene and repeat every gesture of the original evening. As a group, the trilogy underlines the importance of context and – by exploring the hierarchical position of participants – Beier and Lund highlight the institution's own contradictory position as both a risk-taking art laboratory and a supposedly authoritative, 'culture-making' organization.
Coline Milliard
Nought to Sixty in Pictures: Jack Shirt, Nina Beier and Marie Lund.
Why an institution of contemporary art(s) like this, and not any other?
Artist-led organisations that support networks of emerging art in England outside London.
Photos of the projects, artists and audiences taking part in Nought to Sixty.
Nought to Sixty includes a series of monthly discussions that address the networks that form and contribute to an emerging scene.