PTAB 2019/20 culminated in a mini-festival. Organised by PTAB with guidance from PRAKSIS’s team, the nine members chose the topic and title CHANGE. It was important to the members that this festival was exciting, and thought-provoking but also open to everyone. PTAB members developed art works, workshops, and performances that  introduced topics they cared about and felt needed more discussion in society. Each contribution shared the intention to change mindsets and generate new experiences for their audience. The festival was an inspiring outcome that demonstrates the rich thinking and learning that grew throughout the year!

PTAB members:

Idil Mahamed Hassan (17 years)
Xueqin Elina Pang (18 years)
Julie Sand (17 years)
Zeinab Al-khatib (19 years)
Kornelia Eline Skogseth (20 years)
Hannah Røsholt Siger (16 years)
Wattana Meethong  (18 years)
Maroa el Youssef (20 years) 
Kawsica Rashasingham (17 years)

Over five evenings running up to the festival, PTAB members worked at PRAKSIS together with team members, Marit and Nicholas.

It was a lot of fun and a learning process working alongside each other to complete our projects, plan workshops and performances, and to install the festival. 

Our last session as PTAB group 2019/20. We had lots of planning to do for the Change festival program. Wattana led the design of the festival poster, in conversation with members of PTAB and PRAKSIS’s team.

With materials supported by a grant from Fri Fond, everyone began work on their projects in preparation for the exhibition. We kept ourselves well-fuelled with pizza throughout the session!

In September we will host an event during Oslo Art Weekend. With nine organisers involved it can be though to decide what to do. We started by spending a weekend workshopping what’s important to us and what we find exciting with PRAKSIS’s director, Nicholas. By the end we agree to work on an interactive arts festival addressing the subject of change from different perspectives. It’s a big task, but it’s going to be exciting!

We also visited England-born artist Sayed Sattar Hasan’s exhibition ‘Hasansans Kjelke’ at Interkulturelt Museum. In the show Sayed works with cultural symbols from Pakistan and Norway, and is inspired by polar ‘hero’ Fridjof Nansen. Meeting him at the exhibition led to a talk about cultural differences in art and personal life, and the importance of being able to belong to more than one culture, environment or home, without having to choose between them, but to embrace all as a part of you.

We began mapping our content for the upcoming Change Festival in more detail. We had many rich discussions during this session.

Some of the things we talked about include: Y-blokka, cultural monuments, cultural heritage, mental health, generational change, racism, body fixation, reuse/recycling, new mindsets and about how to belong to different cultures. We left with lots of food for thought!

This month we met together virtually. We started off thinking about our experiences of digital art. With in-person experiences halted due to Covid, how do physical objects and exhibitions change through the process of digitisation? We shared our experiences of digital art and culture we’d participated in and thought about what had been successful and unsuccessful.

With Oslo culture night approaching in September we had some planning to do. We re-visited our initial ideas from February to figure out an emerging theme for our event. One example being, how can PTAB find ways to challenge the social norms of the art world? We then considered ways that our ideas could take material form. 

With the next round of admissions for PTAB 20/21 coming up we looked back on our own experiences of this process and considered how to approach it this time round. 

The session ended with a prompt for a practical task: The pandemic has prevented daily conversations and interactions. Without our normal modes of communication what creative ways can still generate conversation from a distance? Our practical task was to express ourselves to one other group member through a visual letter. We brainstormed ideas before wrapping up for the day.

Corona-shutdown hit and we had to change our plans to meet in person. Instead thinking how to connect online, and to have an exchange with Index Teen Advisory Board in Stockholm. The week before both groups made personal videos to provide some insight into our situations during the crisis. We spoke about things like: What it means to be a part of TAB. How we are affected by the pandemic. What we think is important to be aware of at a time like this? These videos were exchanged, giving some insight into the differences between the Oslo experience of lockdown (where schools and other institutions are closed), and in Stockholm (where the regulations where looser).

We met up with Index Teen Advisory Board via video call to participate in a co-writing session hosted by the Stockholm based artist collective Coyote. Both groups fantasised about what might happen at museums while they are closed. Together we wrote a coming of age thriller, with a mix of Swedish and Norwegian language, carrying the title POETIC JUSTICE ON THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART.  The session ended with an interesting discussion about nordic language, online communication and experiences during Corona.

We met choreographer and former PRAKSIS resident Edwin Cabascango to participate in his Texture and Movement dance workshop at Kunsthøyskolen i Oslo (KHIO). The workshop expressed emotions through the dance and generated trust between the participants. It was a wonderful experience, definitely worth trying. 

Back at PRAKSIS we got visitors from Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation and PUBLICS, a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space and reading room in Helsinki, to exchange knowledge around our Teen Advisory Boards. We started planing our visit to Helsinki along with our Index Teen Advisory board. 

Artist-filmmaker, Hamid Waheed spoke about his work and led a writing based workshop around characterisation. Discussions and exercises related to freedom in artistic expression, as well as the difficult ethical landscapes filmmakers and artists face when dealing with cruelty and appropriated imagery.

Hamid showed his film Etterkrigstid (After War) that premiered at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo in 2019.

We gathered to celebrate six months of the PTAB program and the upcoming holiday. Each PTAB member shared either  their art work or something they were inspired by with  the rest of the group.

For example:  Zeinab showed us a dream catcher she’d made at school, Wattana showed his Instagram account with graphic drawings, Hannah and Elina used YouTube to share with us the work of TwoSet Violin and the drawings of TheOdd1sOut. We shared pizza too!

Our visit to IKM included meeting artists Shwan Dler Qaradaki at his exhibition The Golden Wish to talk about his work and some of ours too.

We also spent time reflecting on subject including racism, xenophbia and bia in everyday life at Thierry Geoffroy’s exhibition Typisk Dem (Typical Them).

Speaking with Nairobi based PRAKSIS resident Syowia Kyambi about her work, performance art, and a broad range of other topics including education, personal and cultural histories, as well as cultural awareness of past and present power structures.

We started the day at Fotogalleriet, feeding back on our experience there and seeing the show Maria and the Devil, before speaking about it with the artist herself. We met with their Head of Education, Annika Hastrøm to learn more about the institution and her role. Then we braved the rain back to PRAKSIS HQ to discuss the needs of children and youth within the Norway’s cultural field.

Our thoughts on this were then formulated this into a report that went to the Department of Culture, to be included in the parliamentary report Kids and Teens Voices which is due to be published in Autumn 2020.

The first PTAB session! We started with introductions to each other, and then PRAKSIS. This was followed by a talk with curator and PRAKSIS resident Olivia Berkowicz (PL/SE) about her job and interests. Then arts writer, educator and PRAKSIS co-founder Rachel Withers (GB) had great tips on how to write about art.

We rounded up the day by visiting Oslo Kunstforening to see the show and give feedback on our experience of the institution and the exhibition The Strongest Girl in the World by Rona Yeftman (IL).

Images: Marit Silsand, Alva Måsén, Yosra Ali and PRAKSIS