Participants in The Art of Organising

The participants in "The Art of Organising" come for the most part from northern Europe; their common denominator is that they have all worked in different forms of artistic collaborative projects, such as Konstakuten, Navinki Festival, Association for Temporary Art, Swe.de, Katastro.fi, Irational.org and Soc.–all attempts to question traditional organisations and find new ways to express themselves through new organisations.

Laura Turkki (b 1975, Finland), Lassi Tasajärvi (b 1974, Finland), Janne Kontkanen (b 1974, Finland) and Juha Huuskonen (b 1974, Finland) are three of the members of the Finnish art and design collective Katastro.fi (www.katastro.fi), which has been noted for their web-based projects as well as live events in Helsinki. Katastro.fi was founded in 1998 as a forum for new creation, and its nucleus consists of many designers and programmers who work in the commercial new media branch durig the daytime. They also coordinate the open organisation katastro.fi network.

Jon Brunberg (b 1964, Sweden) works primarily with video, and has taken an active part in the formation of CRAC, a media workshop for artists in Stockholm. He is also a member of SOC(www.soc.nu), where Annika Drougge (b 1963, Sweden) and Johan Malmström (b 1963, Sweden) are also members. SOC Stockholm was founded in 1999 and is a collective, with seven artists. SOC’s ambition is to be a space for artistic and social experiments, and a forum for questions around societal issues. SOC is also an exhibition space.

Udo Noll (b 1966, Germany) works on the border between art and technology, usually together with others. Such as in the project Otherlands (aporee.org/equator/), a collaborative interface on the Internet. Humbot (www.humbot.org) is another experimental interface, taking the explorer and mapmaker Alexander von Humboldt's book "Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (1799 - 1804) as its topos. His latest work is Parole (parole.aporee.org/about.html), which he built together with Gruppo a12, a collective of Italian architects. Parole is an online system which organises information about architecture and art in an associative manner.

Bongi Jarne MacDermott (b 1972, Sweden), and Paula Stenström (b 1972, Sweden), are active in the newly started cultural society Lumor, which is responsible among other things for the show "I’m in a room in Sweden," at Teater Scenario (1999), as well as the play "Svälj" ("Swallow") at Glashuset, Stockholm (2000). Bongi and Paula are founding members of the Stockholm Surveillance Camera Players (scp.smufsa.nu).

Anna Kindgren (b 1957, Sweden) and Carina Gunnars (b 1956, Sweden) were two of the twelve members of the artist’s group Swe.de, Swedish Department at Y 1 (www.swede.riksutstallningar.se/) Swe.de was active 1997-2000 when they arranged exhibitions and activities at Galleri Y 1, where they managed to attract both celebrities of the art world as well as young Swedish artists.

ACT (Association for Contemporary Art) is an association for the dissemination of contemporary art in Minsk, which was started in 1998 and which today has 48 members. Denis Romanovski, (b 1970, Belarus) is one of the active artists, together with among others Viktor Petrov (b 1957, Belarus). ACT is important for spreading information about art from Belarus as well as giving space for international art in Minsk, with projects such as the Navinki Performance Festival (navinki2000.x-i.net), International Media Festival Transit01, and NAMM, Net Art Meetings in Minsk (namm.smufsa.nu).

Irational.org (www.irational.org) uses the Internet as its main platform, but they also have exhibitions in more traditional locales. Irational.org was founded in 1997 and is well known in Internet circles. Right now, the group has five members: Minerva Cuevas, (b 1975, Mexico); Daniel Garcia Andujar (b 1966, Spain); Rachel Baker (b 1969, England); Heath Bunting (b 1965, England); and Marcus.

Bjørn Bjarre (b 1966, Norway) is an artist (www.bjarre.org) who has also worked as a curator for several projects at F-15 in Moss(www.gallerif15.no/jwiitmtisdsa), as well as being a journalist and editor for UKS-Forum for Contemporary Art. UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund, the Society for Young Artists) (www.uks.no) was founded in 1921, and is an institution in Norway. Historically, it has worked for the rights of artists in Norway, and lately, it has fought for the recognition of new artistic expressions.

Ottilia Holmström (b 1970, Sweden), took while studying at Konstfack the initiative for the collaborative/network project "a5-nordic art cooperation" (www.a5.nu), a international exchange project between art students. Now she maintains Konstakuten (www.konstakuten.com), an arena for young art where larger exhibitions are complemented by smaller projects and discussions. Konstakuten is an artist-driven gallery which was started in 1995 by Per Hüttner, Arni Gudmundsson, Tomas Elovsson, and Lasse Hammarström. Over the years, they have completed several exhibitions; one of the largest was The Bible of Networking (1998). They have also worked to create a broad international network for artists and artistic organisations, and in 1999, they organised the "First European Seminar for Artist Run Spaces," FESARS. In the Art of Organising, Ottilia collaborates with the artist Love Nordberg (b 1975, Sweden).

Åsa Andersson (b 1967, Sweden) and Karin Hansson (b 1967, Sweden) started The Association for Temporary Art (www.art.a.se), a virtual meeting place for contemporary art, in 1995. The first [a:t] project was an art exhibition on the net in 1996. The project involved 20 Swedish and Danish artists, and just as many companies and institutions in the field of information technology. Their latest exhibition on the site was Bäst Före (Best before), an art exhibition about the information age. Aside from the artistic production, a:t also supplies a technical platform, Smufsa (www.smufsa.nu), which is an experimental server for contemporary art.