Fully confidential, one-to-one conversations, teetering four meters above the gallery floor, at UKS. Six participants signed up for conversations once a week for a full year. The conversations were not documented.

Lars Cuzner’s project “Recurring Individual Conversations” at UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund) in Oslo in 2010 was a year-long performative installation that explored the boundaries of intimacy, trust, and artistic engagement. The project consisted of Cuzner offering confidential, one-on-one conversations with participants while positioned four meters above the gallery floor.

Clearly within the context of relational aesthetics and participatory art practices, it served a unique spatial and temporal environment for interpersonal exchange, Cuzner challenged traditional notions of artistic production and exhibition.

Six participants committed to weekly conversations over the course of a year. The elevated position of the artist during these interactions introduced an element of physical precarity, potentially serving as a metaphor for the vulnerability inherent in intimate dialogue. The project emphasized the importance of trust in artistic encounters, with Cuzner guaranteeing full confidentiality to participants. By extending the project over a full year, Cuzner explored the potential for long-term artistic engagement and the development of relationships over time.

The box ended up staying there for 4 years cuz it was too fucking expensive to take down. It became a part of every show at UKS. I saw some documentation though, from some shows, that had photoshopped out the box.

Since everyone who participated in the project signed a confidentiality agreement (a contract which of course was destroyed after signing), it was difficult for critics to attain any real content information about the going-ons in the box. Art critic, Kjetil Røed, did however write a 60 page essay, “Lars Cuzner’s Conversational Ghosts”, which can only be described as bitter character assassination of me. Luckily no one seems willing to publish this piece of slanderous garbage.

The piece was quietly commenced April 16, 2010 during the Oslo Speculations seminar at UKS, and ended April 16, 2011 without ceremony.

Four years later, finally, an artist demanded the removal of the box for his show in February 2014. Here is a text and first documentation without the box “Plutselig utslett” by Line Ulekleiv.

Participants in project:

Per Platou, Client, Artist and curator. Co-ordinator for PNEK
Victoria Stewart, Client, Psychologist
Serina Erfjord, Client, Artist
Suzana Martins, Client, Program co-ordinator for 0047
Magnus Oledal, Client, Artist
Anna Ring, Client, Artist