Another Grammar for Oslo
Information
The Brazilian artists Mônica Nador and Bruno Oliveira's project for osloBIENNALEN Another Grammar for Oslo aims to explore Oslo's many, often hidden and invisible, stories. The artists aim to transmit and collect stories from people from various backgrounds, making them able to explore and pass on their experiences and life stories through drawing, stencil prints and debates. The project's many activities from 2019 to 2021 form one big story; a story unlike any other.
ONGOING PROJECTS: Online Drawing Workshop – August and September.
About fifty workshops have been held in various locations in Oslo, since the project's inception in 2019.
In August and September 2020, the artists hold digital drawing courses where the artists participate directly from Brazil online. Here, participants will draw together at online meetings, get the opportunity for guidance from the artists one-on-one and gain access to an online forum where drawings and resources are shared. After the drawing course, there will be opportunities to transfer drawings to a pattern at our printing workshop in Myntgata.
Click here to see the course project page.
ESSAY
With few exceptions, all of the projects in osloBIENNALEN is accompanied by a separate essay, and Another Grammar for Oslo has an essay written by artistic concept developer, researcher, writer and dramaturg, and PhD researcher Deise Faria Nunes. Nunes writes on Mônica Nador and Bruno Oliveira’s work on community building in relation to the concepts of diapraxis, performance and play.
The term "diapraxis" is descriptive of Another grammar for Oslo. The term can be explained as a process where people from different ethnic, religious or geographical backgrounds come together around collective work and mutual engagement. In her essay, Nunes writes the following:
«Play can be considered as a social meeting place in which the rules are set by the players or insiders according to a given tradition. Social conventions such as status, gender and cultural identities are reaffirmed, challenged, tested, changed or reorganized. It is not likely to have a goal in itself; doing the activity is the goal. It may or may not lead to concrete results. In the case of Another Grammar for Oslo, there is an established idea of creating outputs in the form of artworks, although, according to Nador, it is always the participants’ engagement that sets the agenda.»
Click here to read the essay in full. Click on the video below to hear an excerpt from the essay read by singer, composer and actor Mariama Ndure.
Bruno Oliveira on the Y-Block
In the summer of 2020, Bruno Oliveira has been particularly concerned with an issue that has engaged many in Oslo, Norway and internationally; the demolition of the Y-block. As a reminder of what may soon be gone, Oliveira has produced a series of patterns with motifs taken from the works of art on the walls of the Y-block. Oliveira was interviewed by osloBIENNALEN on these issues, but also talked about how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affects the way we experience and relate to public spaces.
Click here to read the interview with Bruno Olivera.
Podcast
Perhaps you are curious to know how people experience attending Monica and Bruno's workshops?
In the art project's podcast, you can hear several of last year's participants tell the story behind their stencil prints.
In the first, of several episodes, you can hear Benedikte Rønsen present «Coffee Kettle». The pattern she made during one of the first courses osloBIENNALEN held in 2019, is inspired by the coffee pot at her boyfriend's cabin and the memories of drinking morning coffee together.