BOA in Public Space Program placed four commissions in the streets and squares of central Oslo over the course of 2019. It was run by BOA — Billedkunstnerne i Oslo og Akershus — funded by the City of Oslo, and formed part of the municipal Program for Bilfritt byliv, the initiative to give the car-free centre something to be.
Each work was made for a specific set of sites and had to survive them: outdoors, unattended, through a Norwegian autumn and winter, among people who had not set out to look at art. What they share is that the encounter is unannounced. A drum corps walks past; a black pod sits on the tram tracks; a house frame stands in the snow with nothing inside it; painted figures occupy a flight of steps.
Each installed work carried a small brass plaque with the artist's name, the title and the year — the only label, and the only thing marking it as art rather than as street furniture.
The program continued into 2020 with Abduction, an outdoor video exhibition at Kontraskjæret.
Det Elektriske Korps
Øyvind Mellbye and Einar Goksøyr Åsen · May–June 2019 · Operaen, Rådhusgata, Karl Johans gate
Wearable drum machines, carried and played through the city. The corps assembled and moved on — the opera roof, a pedestrian crossing, a market — so the work reached people who happened to be there rather than people who had come to see it.
Photo: Adrian Bugge (17 May), Kristine Halmrast (2 June)
Morten Jensen Vågen
ALIEN8, 2019 · October 2019 · Oslo S
A sculpture that settles into the middle of the street as if it had always been there — and made of materials that could stand outdoors, unguarded, for the length of the run. It opens.
Photo: Morten Jensen Vågen
Kim Hankyul
Home: on the verge of nervous breakdown, 2019 · November 2019 · Youngstorget, Rådhuset, Stortinget, Regjeringskvartalet
A sound installation with an object installation, roughly 6 × 6 × 8 metres: the black skeleton of a house, staircase and roof truss with nothing enclosed. The sound played only in the sites it was assigned.
Photo: Kim Hankyul
Signe Becker
For tilværelsen, 2019 · December 2019 · between Vippetangen and Kontraskjæret
Painted figures set out on the steps of a building in the winter city, some draped, some holding others up. Visitors met them at street level, without a threshold to cross.
Photo: Signe Becker
