Hosting Space

Hosting Space explores how processes of hosting, such as access, support, and gathering, operate within the context of an art institution. It invites readers to reconsider how these activities are embedded in the spaces we inhabit and how they shape spatial practices.

The publication reflects on an exhibition and event program curated by Maike Statz at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, in 2023, bringing together visual documentation, new writing, and interviews with Staci Bu Shea, Océane Vé-Réveillac, and César Reyes Nájera. Through these contributions, the book considers how art institutions and spatial practitioners might operate differently by prioritizing accessibility, interdependence, difference, maintenance, and spaces for spontaneous gathering.

Designed by Francesca Lucchitta and edited by Mathijs van Geest, Hosting Space is both an invitation and an active archive, engaging with ongoing discussions on socially engaged practices, institutional critique, and exhibition-making as a method of research.

Maike Statz (born 1992) is an Australian interior architect, artist and writer living in Oslo and Amsterdam. In her work she explores the relationship between bodies, emotion, behaviour, identity and space. Informed by feminist and queer practices, Maike Statz investigates spatial inequalities and seeks alternative tools and methods for space-making.