Given the remarkable engagement that the community of Oslo and visitors to the city have shown the museum over the previous two months and the significant visibility in both local and international press, the extension provides two additional months for audiences to visit. Crucially, this also provides the museum’s education team with additional time over the autumn term to welcome school groups. Astrup Fearnley Museet has received many requests from schools to visit the museum and engage with the Astrup Fearnley Collection, but as the exhibition opened at the end of the last school term, there has been limited time to do so. This extension in part responds to these enquiries. 

Before Tomorrow Live, a new live program of sound, gesture, and moving image, has been planned for autumn 2023 as an extension of the exhibition. Originally scheduled to take place directly following the closure of Before Tomorrow, it has been reimagined within and alongside the exhibition. 

Before Tomorrow Live reacts to positions in the Astrup Fearnley Collection, as well as the abstract and material confluences that gather works together in Before Tomorrow. By inviting artists working with impermanent and durational practices into the museum, the intention is not only to expand the types of medias that the museum engages with, but to foster alternative institutional frameworks and test new modes of programming.  

Audiences who visit the museum over the course of Before Tomorrow Live, will have the opportunity to encounter performances, listen to sound sculptures, and observe moving image works. A series of conversations with leading thinkers and practitioners form an additional layer to Before Tomorrow Live, in which specific practices, forms, and institutional structures will be reflected upon. The program builds upon recent projects at Astrup Fearnley Museet, such as the presentation of Paul Maheke’s The Origin of Death and Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahmes performance earlier this year. 

Before Tomorrow Live begins with Allora & Calzadilla’s installation Clamor (2006), part of the Astrup Fearnley Collection, which will be activated by six live musicians on Saturday, 16 September and Sunday, 17 September. Planned conversations with artists and a panel discussion on institutional models with several museum leaders are currently being organized, offering further opportunities to reflect on specific aspects of the exhibition and the future trajectory of the institution during its thirtieth year. We will be collaborating with several of our peer organizations working in other disciplines. These collaborations signal an important strand of Before Tomorrow Live and the museum’s ethos, which is to engage with other institutions in order to learn from and contribute towards one another.

Full program will be launched in September. 

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