Doctoral department of Vilnius Academy of Arts invites to a public lecture by art historian and curator Lars Bang Larsen “Take Me to Another World: Charlotte Johannesson and the Externality of Media”
May 7, 2024, 16.00
VAA 102 auditorium (Malūnų str. 3, Vilnius)
The lecture will be moderated by Dr Lina Michelkevičė.
My lecture will take its point of departure in my ongoing research on the work of self-taught artist Charlotte Johannesson (b. 1943, Malmö).
Originally trained as a textile worker, Johannesson decided to produce woven images on the boundary of art in the late 1960s. Later she exchanged the loom for the computer and started the first digital arts studio in the Nordic region, thereby anticipating a 21st century artistic interest in the weaving/programming nexus.
Through its dialogue with various aesthetics of dissent – including 1960s’ counterculture and 1970s’ urban guerrillas – Johannesson’s home-grown production challenged late modern sensibilities in visual art with its singular mix of escape and confrontation, craft and technology, placing itself in a different relation to visual culture than did neo-avant-garde art.
Situating Johannesson’s singular work in the wider field of twentieth century textile art involves a consideration of the ambiguity of weaving as a medium that was often denigrated as a gendered and domestic, but at the same time had a transcultural presence and took part in negotiations of symbolic power and nation building on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
In alignment with a (re)new(ed) interest in feminist art histories, these years we witness a surge in curatorial and art historical interest in twentieth century weaving. But how can a contemporary reception ensure the ambiguities that textile art once had?
Dr. Lars Bang Larsen (b. 1972) is an art historian, curator, and writer. He is Head of Art and Research at Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC). He has (co-)curated exhibitions such as Incerteza Viva, São Paulo Biennale (2016), Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings, Courtauld Institute, London (2016), and Mud Muses. A Rant about Technology, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2019). Exhibitions (co-)curated by him in Lithuania include travelling exhibition project Populism (2005, CAC), t:h:e: r:e:a:l: after psychedelia (2015, CAC) and Partially Swamped Institution by Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (2023, NDG). His books include Palle Nielsen. The Model. A Model for a Qualitative Society (MACBA, 2010), Networks (MIT / Whitechapel Gallery, 2015) and Arte y norma (Cruce, 2016). His PhD in art history dealt with the transculturation of art and psychedelia in a neo-avantgarde context.
Lars Bang Larsen’s visit is funded under the Erasmus+ programme.
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Credits: Charlotte Johannesson, - GO! (digital drawing, c. 1981)
