Its alive!!

Hey, I am happy to see that there are people out there, now I dont feel so insular any more! :)

I will continue to write in lousy English by your request, until my editor tells me to go back to lousy Norwegian. (and to answer the question—I am part Norwegian)

So, where were we?

Let me just start by telling that the press centre’s service has degraded since last year, now there are only four computers that all the journalists are fighting for here. I am really rushed when writing this, and guess that is also a reason for even more lousy English… Oh well.

Yesterday was both boring and interesting and glamorous. It started out with the regular breakfast gossip session about last night with Adorable Allen and a gallon of coffee was consummated by each of us.

I cruised some art and then it was time for Art Lobby where Marc Spiegler had a talk. He had really bad luck, Jerry Saltz—”God himself” as an art critic once called him—had to cancel the talk and go back to the States, and the second runner up to sit in for Saltz also had a last minute engagement and could not make it for the talk. Spiegler talked about the topic raised in his piece published in Art Newspaper originally and then spread all over the world by bloggers and also published here at Kunstkritikk in Norwegian, about the diminishing role of the art critic. A lot of people showed up that was interested in the topic, and also to hear what Mr Saltz was going to say. Now, fortunately Spiegler had had his four hours of sleep and was in a brilliant mode, and gave a 25 minute (extremely dense) introduction to the topic and quoted Saltz (who he interviewed in spare moments on our Torino trip). After his introduction questions from the audience were raised and the talk continued for like 50 minutes more. Marc did a brilliant job! Image from talk here!

After this I did a more thorough examination of Liste art fair. The galleries here are the young and emerging, and so are their artists, therefore the quality of the work diverging a lot. And this is also why it is easier to spot good stuff, because one immediately sort out the bad. I saw some really interesting things actually. I met Bassam Magdy, an Egyptian artist, and we sat down in the shade for a sec together. I thought about perhaps taking the boat shuttle to the VOLTA fair, and tried to find the place to go to fetch it, but instead I discovered the artist Karl Larsson shouting from the water: “come and join me and Lina (Selander) for a beer and a swim!”. I sat down with them in the sun for 20 min before heading to hotel for a make over.

Some glitterspray later (not) I was ready for the BULGARI dinner and the first Art Conversations. Allen calls it Vulgari, and yeah, I agree. This is only for the bold and vulgar ;). Last time, in Miami, I was invited for the conversations too, and the impressions from it are worthy a column of its own, and maybe I will get back to this again later. I was really critical of it, but I still talk about it so it was indeed interesting. Anyway. Champagne and champagne and I felt really alone in the welcome drink-thing. I was very fortunate when lovely Charles Guarino from Artforum spotted me and saved me from looking too silly, as all I could do was too mope and stare at the women’s (and men’s) outfits, and at the same time nervously drinking the moet&chandon too fast. He told me that the “Scene and Heard”-section at the artforum site has really boosted the visitor rate. I think he said the figures from 2000 persons a week to 65000 visitors a week. Amazing!

In time for the concert (no talking conversations this time) with the band of Martin Creed (the artist you know…) I met Marc with gorgeous wife Erica, and also Camilla, press conctact for Art Basel for the Nordic region. Concert was very… conceptual. Lyrics could be the alphabet or the figures from 1 to 100. And the crowd listening consisted of mostly rich collectors in their 60ies. You can surely see the bizarre in the situation, right? Dinner. And we could not wait to leave the place… We escaped in a car to “Das Schiff” (spelling?), a boat where Francesca von Habsburg had dinner/party for Candice Breitz who had installed a huge bob marley-piece at the boat. It was a bit stiff. A bit later we escaped this party too, we went to the Kunsthalle again, but this night was not so good as the previous. We all waited for some good moments to come (“people are now coming from the boat, just wait a bit more” etc) so it was already 4 o’clock in the morning when I got home again.

Somehow the body has adjusted to this life now. I am not tired. I wake up after only four hours of sleep every night, refreshed and ready to go. Strange. Alright—off to more adventures now! Will try to find some gossip for you that is not too x-rated…