"we should think of Dada in terms of the precise and deliberate negation of art. Dada sought to destroy art. Why? It is my contention that for Dada, art was itself negative: Dada conceived of art as absence, exclusion, and division. This is not in the sense that art was somehow in a state of decay or socially compromised. Rather, for Dada, art was its processes of negation, processes which were not contingent but constitutive and essential to art"
(Mark Hutchinson, 2015)
Hutchinson, M. (2015). "Dada Contra Art History." Dada/Surrealism 20(1).
"Goksøyr & Martens is a performance project established in 1997 by Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens. They both finished their education at the National Academy of Fine Art in Oslo in the spring of 2001. Together they have produced performances for galleries, museums and theatre stages in and outside Norway. Amongst those Goksøyr & Martens has worked with are refugees from Kosovo–Albania, a film crew, 17 couples, pupils from the Barratt Dues Music Institute, street musicians, a Swedish television game–show host, Youths from Holmlia youth center, actors from the National Theate and activists from different political youth organizations.
The artistic project of Goksøyr & Martens can be placed into a new avant–garde practise where investigation on language, identity and the contemporary is central. This practice also represents an exchange between the political field and the art field. The result is aesthetics where artistic activism and political activism goes together hand in hand, and where the art object, the art institutions and the role of the artist is constantly discussed."
(Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens)
[Photo: Thomas Brun]