Actors, Agents and Attendants I: Programme

With a focus on healthcare as a prime site of global market-driven transformation in governmental policies, this symposium brings together philosophers, artists, curators and politicians to question the role of art and its assumed ameliorative function.

This symposium is the first in the SKOR series of symposia Actors, Agents and Attendants. It is accompanied by a film programme, a series of art projects and two invited expert meetings.
 

Friday October, 29 2010

What are we doing there? Politics and Philosophies of Publicness

noon
Doors Felix Meritis open

1 PM
Welcome and Introduction by Andrea Phillips (Chair of the day)
Phillips will outline the questions that motivated the symposium and briefly describe the political state of play in which contemporary (public) art performs.

Andrea Phillips is director of research programmes, department of art, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK) and co-curator of this symposium

1:45 – 2:45 PM
Mark Fisher

Fisher will contextualize our discussion of care, civility and its public aestheticisation within a contemporary political-philosophical field. Drawing on his recent book, Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?, Fisher will draw attention to the relationship between artistic forms of consensus and other forms of popular culture.

Mark Fisher is a writer, theorist and philosopher (UK)

2:45 – 3:30 PM
Considering the current political Dutch situation the speaker will focus on the socio-economical effects of the upcoming governmental cuts, upon society and the changing role that active citizenship will have in the near future.
(Speaker to be confirmed)

3:30 PM
Coffee break

3:45 – 4:30 PM
Alfredo Jaar

Jaar is an artist, architect and filmmaker known internationally for his provocative public, usually temporary or ephemeral interventions that raise awareness of social and cultural global inequalities, border disputes and humanitarian offences. He will talk about his work in the context of the topics of care and civility, focusing on recent public projects as examples of the ways in which artistic intervention might draw attention to socio-political concerns.

Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect and filmmaker (USA)

4:30 – 5 PM
Anton Vidokle

Vidokle will present his recent initiative Time/Bank, in which he proposes an online platform for the exchange of immaterial labour in our currency-driven economy. Previously the co-initiator of Unitednationsplaza and co-founder of eflux, Vidokle’s work questions conceptions of care enabled by digital technology and unfolds different possibilities in configuring new spaces and formats for contemporary art to function through speculative capitalism to produce an arena critical of neo-liberal politics.

Anton Vidokle is an artist (Berlin/New York)

Alfredo Jaar and Anton Vidokle will have a conversation after their presentations moderated by Andrea Phillips.

5:15 – 6 PM
Edi Rama and Fulya Erdemci

The discussion between Rama, artist and current Mayor of Tirana, and Erdemci, Director of SKOR, will focus on political artistic interventions in the public domain, explicitly through Rama’s own controversial policies in Albania. The conversation will also speculate upon the formation of, and potential for, civic partnerships in art and public policy against the backdrop of the current political situation.

Edi Rama is Mayor of Tirana, Albania and chairman of the Socialist Party of Albania
Fulya Erdemci is director of SKOR, Foundation for Art and Public Space (NL)

6 PM
Dinner break – Film screening of new work by Pilvi Takala

7 – 7:45 PM
Chto delat/ What is to be done?

Dmitry Vilensky, member of the artist collective Chto delat, will draw attention to the history of cultural houses in the Soviet Union and Chto delat’s recent artistic actualization of the “Activist Club”. The presentation will question the gains from a state organized care and education system outside of a formal school and university-based educational structure while looking at alternative models of support which create new social and political spaces within art institutions. How can we keep searching for the forms and places where art can attain its emancipatory role in society?

Chto delat/What is to be done? is an artist collective (Russia)

7:45 – 8:30 PM
Discussion: Matthew Taylor / Steven de Waal / Gavin Wade
Moderated by Ann Demeester

Drawing similarities between recent political shifts in concepts of state-run civility in Dutch and British situations, this panel will highlight the relationship between government and care as well as the manifestations of care in art and policy in fostering general forms of sociality. Contrasting with governmental policy discussions, Gavin Wade offers a radical rethinking of what curatorial practice might be in terms of support in social and aesthetic terms.

Matthew Taylor is Chief Executive of the RSA and former Chief Advisor on political strategy to the British Prime Minister (UK)
Steven de Waal is founder and chairman of Public SPACE Foundation (NL)
Gavin Wade is an artist and curator (UK)
Ann Demeester is director of De Appel art centre (NL)

8:30 PM
Summary by Margreet Fogteloo

Margreet Fogteloo is editor of De Groene Amsterdammer (NL)

Saturday October 30, 2010

Who Cares? Case studies of art, curating and healthcare

9:30 AM
Doors Felix Meritis open

10 AM
Welcome

10:15 – 11:15 AM
Beatriz Colomina: Healthcare environment in an expanded form

Beatriz Colomina will base her presentation on research for her forthcoming book X-ray Architecture: Illness as Metaphor. In this project she questions the inclination of modern architecture to associate building with the medicalised body and present architecture as a health inducing instrument. She then unfolds the mechanisms behind the increasingly controlled relationship between our everyday interaction and these spatial environments.

Beatriz Colomina is an architectural historian and theorist at Princeton University (USA)

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM
Discussion: Hedy d’Acona / Matthijs Bouw / Beatriz Colomina
Moderated by Arjen Oosterman

This discussion will connect architectural forms to the notions of care, expanding on Colomina’s thesis and connecting it to the effects of current political changes to neo-liberal social development and their effect on architecture and urban planning in the Dutch context.

Hedy d’Ancona is a politician and sociologist (NL)
Matthijs Bouw is an architect (NL)
Arjen Oosterman is an architectural critic (NL)

12:15 PM
Lunch Break

1:30 – 2:15 PM
AA Bronson

Artist and activist Bronson will give a personal but critical presentation about the effects of specific American governmental policy starting in the eighties with the AIDS activist work he carried out with General Idea. Bronson will also give a poignant commentary and reflection on the current politicised American health care debate connecting it to the way in which civility is cultivated in American society.

AA Bronson is an artist and publisher (USA)

2:15 -3:00 PM
BikvanderPol

Artists BikvanderPol will present a new work acting as a commentary on the narratives of the symposium. As active participants in the two expert meetings held prior to the symposium, BikvanderPol will also create a link between these discussions and those that took place within meetings.

BikvanderPol are artists (NL)

3:00 PM
Coffee Break

3:30 – 4:30 PM
Discussion: Nils van Beek / Mari Linnman / Sally Tallant
Moderated by Mika Hannula

The speakers will discuss their curatorial practice and experience of working within healthcare institutions and the public domain in relation to the concepts of social and civic care and the changing structures of public care within the current political climate. The discussion will also question the ability of art to possess a critical dimension while pointing out new and more challenging new ways of curating and commissioning during these times in which art and curating are under increasing risks of being comprised under specific political agendas.

Nils van Beek is curator at SKOR (NL)
Mari Linnman is an independent curator at les Nouveaux Commanditaires (France)
Sally Tallant is Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery (UK)

Mika Hannula is director of the Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts, curator and critic (Finland)

4:30 – 5:15 PM
Intervention by Ultra-red

Ultra-red are artists and activists (UK)

5:15 PM
Summary by Willem Geerlings

Willem Geerlings is the Chair of the Board of Medical Centrum Haaglanden (NL)

Actors, Agents and Attendants is a series of symposia initiated by SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain