Under the headline KOSA 2021 we herewith present an interdisciplinary visual art program that will investigate ways in which nature, agency and life itself are being transformed through the lens of contemporary art. The program takes place in Oslo’s protected Maridalen landscape and includes a park (Nordmarka), an armoury (Krutthuset) and a diorama pavilion (Jane). Situated in the forest that surrounds the city’s main water reservoir, they form a new space/site dedicated to art.

Informed by its protected location, landmark history and life sustaining waterways, KOSA’s program takes the form of six exhibitions, four studio workshops, and six conversations. The exhibitions and conversations are free and open to everyone.

By cultivating a deliberate presence in a protected landscape, KOSA expands the notion of 'protection' by viewing human presence and place as a single ecology. In the coming year we will continue to forward culture as an actor evolving nature through the works on the grounds surrounding Krutthuset. These works will among others, include the study and documenting of nearby ponds and waterways (Helene Sommer) and water filtering sculptures incidentally placed within their vicinity (Matthew Quinten Midskau).

Since 2003 Krutthuset has gradually transformed from an abandoned armoury into an independent platform for art and research, guided by an ongoing focus on the changes that happen after we say that humanity is nature. Following an already established practice, in addition to studio work, workshops and topical conversations, KOSA will curate and hold one major yearly exhibition in Krutthuset.

Jane is the newest part of KOSA - an artist run collective site for art and research. The Jane pavilion is an urban thought, a storefront diorama transposed into the forest and open to view day and night. The aim of Jane is to create a longstanding art and research platform where young and established, national and international artists, scientists and scholars, together investigate questions of humanity with a focus on the relations between the visual arts and our contemporary world of crisis. Jane was built to exist as everything else in the forest does, as nature. She and the works she exhibits are a move away from conceiving humanity as either occupying, or reconciling with nature. Jane rather invites artists to elaborate their thinking on the existing and immediate materiality of experience and collaboration – gesturing toward culture as integral and inseparable from the natural world, evolving thinking about their role in it and in the making of life itself.

The 2021 program is realised by KOSA in collaboration with invited artists, curators and scholars. Each exhibition will be followed by a gathering and a vital conversation between an invited guest, the artist and the audience. With differences and similarities, across medium and form, each of the KOSA 2021 projects in its own way delves into the relationality and confluence of process and thingness.