Thursday, March 29, 2012

Merete practices vocabulary in a new way

I have written before about the Nes artist residency program in this small Icelandic town of Skagaströnd.  The variety of people who attend, in terms of geographic origin and media, is really amazing.  Today, I met a Norwegian artist, Merete Røstad, who specializes in the creation of art in public places.  She describes this as "process-based practice utilizing public space as a common place, where art practice is able to create an open dialogue in collaboration with its citizens."

She has been commissioned by the Norwegian government to prepare work commemorating the forthcoming (2014) two hundredth anniversary of the Norwegian constitution.  Her concept is to produce a "Vocabulary of Thought."  Assisted by a linguist, she will take words that tend to be associated with the constitution and illustrate each one with an artistic presentation.  Because she believes in public art, the book will be available to all on the web.

Here's one of the pages from her research.  She already taught me a new word, galimatias.  The etymology is given as France in the 1600's.  I think, though, that might be an error, instead being derived from recent Congressional debate in the US.


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