>  January 2017
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Transforming affect into political effectiveness

19/01/2017 / 06:00 p.m.
Glenbow Museum, 9 Avenue Southeast, Calgary, AB
Lecture

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The Illingworth Kerr Gallery (IKG) as part of ACAD invites you to attend a public art and social practice talk by internationally acclaimed artist Tania Bruguera at the Glenbow Theatre on Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 6 p.m. The event is free and the theatre has a limited capacity, so guests are asked to arrive early to secure a seat. This presentation is kindly supported by the Glenbow Museum.

Tania Bruguera is one of the best known contemporary artists of her generation. Born 1968 in Cuba, Bruguera has long operated at the intersection of art and life, exploring the role that the artist and art can play in today’s society and in the realm of politics.

For over 25 years Bruguera has created socially-engaged performances and installations that examine the nature of political power structures and their effect on the lives of society’s most vulnerable individuals and groups. Her research focuses on ways in which art can be applied to the everyday political life; on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness. Her long-term projects are intensive interventions on the institutional structure of collective memory, education and politics. Her works often expose the social effects of political forces and present global issues of power, migration, censorship and repression through participatory works that turn “viewers” into “citizens.” By creating proposals and aesthetic models for others to use and adapt, she defines herself as an initiator rather than an author, and often collaborates with multiple institutions as well as many individuals so that the full realization of her artwork occurs when others adopt and perpetuate it. Awarded an Honoris Causa by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, selected one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, shortlisted for the #Index100 Freedom of Expression Award, a Herb Alpert Award winner, a Radcliffe and Yale World Fellow, and the first artist-in-residence in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

The public talk is part of the Public Art and Social Practice workshop series aimed at the professional development of local artists, and is jointly offered by the Illingworth Kerr Gallery and The City of Calgary Public Art Program.

Citizens and Borders: Migration and Displacement

22/01/2017 / 03:45 p.m.
Cox and Kings Char Bagh, Jaipur, India
Panel conversation

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Jaipur Literature Festival 2017

‘Citizens and Borders’ is a series of discrete projects across The Museum of Modern Art in New York, related to works in the collection offering a critical perspective on histories of migration and displacement. This panel will discuss specific art and exhibition making strategies that provocatively engage questions of territory, identity, community, and citizenship across a range of contexts and geographies.

Reena Saini Kallat, Tania Bruguera and Tiffany Chung in conversation with Sean Anderson

Transforming affect into political effectiveness

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Roski Talks: Tania Bruguera

Tania Bruguera, Resident Artist and Scholar

For over 25 years Bruguera has created socially-engaged performances and installations that examine the nature of political power structures and their effect on the lives of society’s most vulnerable individuals and groups. Her research focus on ways in which art can be applied to the everyday political life; on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness. Her long-term projects  are intensive interventions on the institutional structure of collective memory, education and politics. Her works often expose the social effects of political forces and present global issues of power, migration, censorship and repression through participatory works that turn “viewers” into “citizens.”

By creating proposals and aesthetic models for others to use and adapt, she defines herself as an initiator rather than an author, and often collaborates with multiple institutions as well as many individuals so that the full realization of her artwork occurs when others adopt and perpetuate it.

Awarded an Honoris Causa by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, selected one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, shortlisted for the #Index100 Freedom of Expression Award, a Herb Alpert Award winner, a Radcliffe and Yale World Fellow, and the first artist-in-residence in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

She participated in the Documenta 11 exhibition and also established the Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art) program at Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Her work has been shown in the 2015 Venice Biennale, at Tate Modern, London, Guggenheim and MoMA, New York, among others.

Bruguera has recently opened the Hannah Arendt International Institute for Artivism, in Havana – a school, exhibition space and think tank for activist artists and Cubans.

Born 1968 in Havana, Cuba. She lives and works in Havana, New York and Cambridge.

>  February 2017
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Tania Libre

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Tania Libre

a film by
Lynn Hershman Leeson

USA / Germany 2017

English, Spanish

Documentary form
73 min · Colour

Dr Frank Ochberg is a New York-based psychiatrist and trauma specialist. His specialism is post-traumatic stress disorder and the Stockholm Syndrome. Cuban artist Tania Bruguera consults him after spending eight months in a Cuban prison. A dissident, she was accused of treason for a performance she was developing that was critical of the government. During her conversations with her therapist she analyses the revolutionary potential of art and how the censor intervened even before she was able to perform the piece in question. The short-term, spontaneous and transitory nature of performance art represents a means to criticise the Cuban government. Just six months after her release an undaunted Bruguera was already inviting artists from all over the world to Cuba. Lynn Hershman Leeson’s previous documentaries Strange Culture and Women Art Revolution – A Secret History, both of which screened in thePanorama, closely scrutinised the concept of political and critical art forms. In her new work, she has chosen to collaborate once more with Tilda Swinton who narrates Bruguera’s ‘Manifesto on Artists’ Rights’.

WITH

Tania Bruguera
Frank Ochberg
Tilda Swinton (Narrator)

CREW

Director: Lynn Hershman Leeson

Director of Photography: Hiro Narita, Shane King

Editor: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Shane King

Music: Ibeyi

Sound: Dan Olmsted

Production Manager: Celia Kitchell

Producer: Lynn Hershman Leeson

Co-Producers: Celia Kitchell, Alexandra Phelps, Michael Henrichs

The Critical Matter of Performance

16.02.2017 – 18.02.2017 / 11:00 a.m. – 06:00 p.m.
New Museum Theatre235 Bowery New York, NY 10002, US
Colloquium and think tank

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The Critical Matter of Performance

In the spirit of current calls for a general strike against the current administration on February 17, we conceive of this event as a day of critical and necessary reflection and planning. We offer this as a generative platform for thinkers and artists who have been involved in or aligned with activism, and hope it is a crucial contribution to “no business as usual.”’

We will hold space in the New Museum’s lobby from 1:30–2:30 p.m., where museum visitors will be invited to take the mic and share their own responses to the call of a general strike.

The New Museum, in partnership with the NYU Center for the Humanities and the Sense of Performance Project at Yale University, presents the inaugural New Museum Colloquium from February 16 to 18, 2017. Entitled “The Critical Matter of Performance,” this three-day think tank will convene historians and theorists of performance, dance, and visual art, as well as choreographers, theater artists, visual artists, and performers to explore the relationship of criticism to live art through multiple registers—across time, space, bodies, politics, and institutions. Organized by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Tavia Nyong’o, Johanna Burton, and the New Museum’s Department of Education and Public Engagement, the colloquium will feature presentations and discussions with keynote presenters including Rizvana Bradley, Tania Bruguera, Malik Gaines, Jack Halberstam, Jenn Joy, Thomas J. Lax, Simone Leigh, and Wu Tsang, with special guest speaker Robert Longo.

The format of the colloquium brings together keynote presenters with a focus group of ten to fifteen emerging scholars and critically engaged performing artists (chosen through an application process administered by the organizers and in consultation with the presenters). Public sessions complement a number of closed-door discussions. The public sessions include a “long table” conversation with audience and participants, moderated by the organizers; a series of “duets” in which two presenters are asked to consider the same topic from their different professional or disciplinary perspectives and to respond to each other in dialogue with the audience; and an off-site reading with participants from the colloquium.

In a time of political extremes and unthinkable circumstances, it is more imperative than ever to question the relationship between bodies, actions, critical thought, and institutions. Throughout the colloquium, participants will consider criticism—in its various forms, formats, and temporalities—as a contingent material of performance culture. To both record and disseminate critical responses born from the colloquium, written reflections from keynote presenters and focus group participants will be collected as material for a related publication. 

SCHEDULE OF PUBLIC SESSIONS 

Thursday February 16

Screening & Long Table


7 PM: Screenings by Tania Bruguera, Malik Gaines, Simone Leigh, and Wu Tsang
7:45 PM: Long Table (led by Johanna Burton, Julia Bryan-Wilson, and Tavia Nyong’o)

Friday February 17

PART 1

11–11:30 AM: Arrival and Welcome 
11:30 AM–1:30 PM: Duets, Part 1
“Haptics” with Rizvana Bradley and Simone Leigh 
“Political Gestures” with Tania Bruguera and Jack Halberstam

1:30–2:30 PM: Break

PART 2


2:30–3 PM: “The Unthinkable,” a mid-program review and conversation (led by Johanna Burton, Julia Bryan-Wilson, and Tavia Nyong’o, with special guest speaker Robert Longo)
3-5 PM: Duets, Part 2
“Choreographies” with Jenn Joy and Wu Tsang
“Archives and History” with Malik Gaines and Thomas J. Lax
5–5:30 PM: Wrap-Up/ Discussion Session

Saturday February 18

7 PM: “Adult Contemporary”: Off-site readings by participants (La Mama La Galleria, 47 Great Jones St.)

About New Museum Colloquiums

New Museum Colloquiums are an outgrowth of the New Museum Seminars program that ran from 2013–2016 and provided a weekly platform for post-graduate level inquiry in a peer-led, seminar-style setting. The new think tank format seeks to produce a space that can support a similar level of inquiry in a more immersive and concentrated period of time, with public and private sessions operating in close dialogue.

The Critical Matter of Performance – A Reading Event

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ADULT CONTEMPORARY

Adult Contemporary is an experimental non/fiction salon series featuring readings, lectures, performances and interviews with and by established and emerging writers. We ask participants to “read” in whatever way they see fit, to use the platform to experiment in form, to give us words, movements, sounds or textures. 

The project is organized by Katherine Brewer Ball & Svetlana Kitto.

Participants: Julia Bryan-Wilson, Tania Bruguera, Charity Coleman & Will Rawls

What Makes an American?: The Culture of Citizenship

19.02.2017/ 01:00 p.m. – 08:00 p.m.
Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory,
643 Park Avenue, New York,
NY 10065, US

Panel discussion

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Interrogations of Form: Culture in a Changing America

In Collaboration with The Aspen Institute Arts Program
Sunday, February 19, 1:00pm–8:00pm

Artists, activists, academics, and community leaders gather for a day-long series of conversations, performances, and open studios that explore the role of art, creativity, and imagination in addressing or challenging the social and political issues bound up in what it means to be an American today.

Visitors can attend the full Symposium or individual sessions, and are free to visit the Artist Salons throughout the day. Salon tours with the artists commence at the times indicated below. Session one sets the stage for discussion, focusing on culture’s impact on an ever-evolving society, and session two focuses on the future of a variety of art forms including music, film, spoken word, and comedy. The day concludes with a special session of Person Place Thing which features surprising viewpoints from an intergenerational perspective.

Participants and schedule subject to change. Availability is limited, but tickets may also be available at the door. Tickets can be purchased for individual sessions or for the entire day at a discounted rate.

Session 1

1:00pm–2:00pm: What Makes an American?: The Culture of Citizenship

Nisha Agarwal (Commissioner, Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs), Tania Bruguera (artist, Armory Artist-in-Residence), Sarah Lewis (author, curator and Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture and African American Studies, Harvard University), and Jose Antonio Vargas (activist and journalist) join moderator Eric Liu (Founder, Citizen University) in a debate over the role of culture and the nature of citizenship in a changing America. Tom Finkelpearl, Commissioner, Department of Cultural Affairs, New York City, responds.

1:00pm–4:00pm: Artist Salons

Artist Salon featuring works by Carrie Mae Weems and guest artists; Nyame O. Brown, Jennifer Hsu, Kambui Olijuimi, and Lava Thomas
Salon tour with guest artists at 2:15pmArtist Salon featuring artworks by Elizabeth Colomba
Curated by Deborah Willis and Kalia Brooks
Salon tour with Deborah Willis and Kalia Brooks at 2:45pmArtist Salon featuring works on film by Paola Mendoza

2:00pm–2:45pm: Staying Visible: The Power of Storytelling

Introductory performance by Yosimar ReyesCristela Alonzo (creator, Cristela, ABC network), Christopher Myers (illustrator, author, and artist), and Erika Wurth (Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee writer and Professor of Creative Writing, Western Illinois University) join moderator Elizabeth Hutchinson (Associate Professor of Feminist and Cultural Theory, Barnard College) in a discussion about the essential role of the arts in preserving forgotten stories, collective memories, and fragile histories.

3:00pm–3:45pm: The Movement in Movement

Jookin’ innovator Lil Buck and flex pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray discuss and showcase their dance styles and how they are working for social progress through movement. Hosted by former Principal Dancer of the New York City Ballet and Director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program, Vail Dance Festival, and DEMO at the Kennedy Center, Damian Woetzel.

Session 2 

4:00pm–4:45pm: Sounding Off

Jason Moran (jazz pianist, composer, curator), Toshi Reagon (singer, musician, composer), Davóne Tines (opera singer), and Camille Zamora (co-founder, Sing for Hope) join Ric Leichtung (Webster Hall Talent Buyer and Adhoc founder) to discuss how music can lead, accompany, and inspire America now.

The session opens with a dedication of a Sing for Hope Piano, designed by French artist Lady JDay, for the Lenox Hill Neighborhood Women’s Shelter, located on the Armory’s fourth floor. Special performance by Jason Moran and Davóne Tines.

4:00pm–7:00pm: Artist Salons

Artist Salon featuring works by Carrie Mae Weems and guest artists; Nyame O. Brown, Jennifer Hsu, Kambui Olijuimi, and Lava Thomas
Salon tour with guest artists at 5:15pmArtist Salon featuring artworks by Elizabeth Colomba
Curated by Deborah Willis and Kalia Brooks
Salon tour with Deborah Willis and Kalia Brooks at 5:45pmArtist Salon featuring works on film by Paola Mendoza

5:00pm–5:45pm: Where in the World is America?

Award-winning filmmaker Mira Nair (Queen of KatweAmeliaThe NamesakeMonsoon WeddingMississippi Masala) and Warrington Hudlin (President of the Black Filmmaker Foundation) discuss the future of American cinema and America’s current place in the world.

6:00pm–6:45pm: Open Mic with Yosimar Reyes, Negin Farsad, and special guests

Yosimar Reyes hosts an open-mic session featuring spoken-word poetry that challenges myths about identity in America. Reyes is joined at the mic by youth poets Karlyn Boens, Madeleine LeCesne, Ashley Gong, and N’kosi Nkululeko. Negin Farsad (comedian, actress, writer, and filmmaker) concludes the session with her pioneering brand of social justice comedy.

Session 3

7:00pm–8:00pm: Person Place Thing

Person Place Thing is an interview show based on the idea that people are particularly engaging when they speak not directly about themselves but about something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that are important to them to reveal surprising stories from great talkers. Ta-Nehisi Coates (journalist and author) and Sonia Sanchez (scholar, poet, playwright, and activist) debate these topics with host Randy Cohen (formerly “The Ethicist”); members of The Ebony Hillbillies are musical guests.

AiR and group critique sessions

20.02.2017 – 23.02.2017 /
Mt. Royal School of Art
1300, W Mount Royal Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21217,
United States

AiR and group critique sessions

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AiR and group critique sessions

Mount Royal School of Art is a multi-disciplinary program that allows students to work in ways most appropriate to their individual research–focusing their exploration within a specific medium or crossing into a wide array of disciplines and media as they engage in intensive studio practice.

The Francis Effect

25.02.2017 – 31.03.2017 /
London Underground
Various Metro Stations, Lodon, UK

Installation of digital screens across the London Underground

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#LondonIsOpen

Art on the Underground has commissioned ten artists to make an artwork for sites across the Tube network in response to the recent EU referendum. The #LondonIsOpen campaign aims to send a message across London of openness, internationalism, diversity and commonality as part of a wider #LondonIsOpen campaign, led by the Mayor of London.

The ten artists are Tania Bruguera, Sol Calero, Alexandre da Cunha, Jeremy Deller, Hew Locke and Indra Khanna, David Shrigley, Mark Titchner, Gillian Wearing and Bedwyr Williams.

The campaign was launched in June 2016 with David Shrigley’s ‘London: Everyone Welcome’ alongside work from Tania Bruguera, Gillian Wearing and Mark Titchner. The artworks were rolled out across the Tube network on large scale poster sites and digital displays, incorporating the themes of openness and diversity.

This was followed by ‘Art for Everyone’, a one off event in which five artists created limited edition posters that were handed out for free to Tube passengers across the network, giving all travellers in London the opportunity to pick up their very own artwork from the likes of Sol Calero, Alexandre da Cunha, Jeremy Deller, David Shrigley and Mark Titchner.

In early 2017 artworks from Jeremy Deller, Gillian Wearing and Tania Bruguera continue to appear along the network spreading the message that London Is Open.

Displacement

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Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flânerie

Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flânerie features work by more than 50 international artists who have taken to the street to play detective, make fantastic maps, scavenge and shop for new materials, launch guerrilla campaigns, and make provocative spectacles of themselves to speak to issues as diverse as commodity fetishism, gentrification, gender politics, globalization, racism, and homelessness. The exhibition is on view February 25 through May 22, 2017, and features works, new performances, and historical pieces by Marina Abramović, Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Constant, David Hammons, and Zhang Huan, among many others.

While much of the exhibition will be presented in the Barnes Foundation’s Roberts Gallery, Person of the Crowd will also reach into the city of Philadelphia. A series of performances—by artists including Sanford Biggers, Tania Bruguera, Ayana Evans, Zachary Fabri, and Wilmer Wilson IV—will take place on the streets of Philadelphia, and billboard and street poster projects will activate the city throughout the exhibition run.

The Barnes has also commissioned New York-based artist Man Bartlett to create a project site and digital artwork exploring themes related to the exhibition and the concept of “cyberflânerie.” Bartlett will act as a flâneur by documenting the street performances taking place throughout the run of the exhibition and inviting the general public to step into the position of the flâneur and share their perceptions of everyday urban life via social media using the hashtag #personofthecrowd. He will also work with teens in the Philadelphia region to develop videos documenting their own experiences as flâneurs inspired by their engagement in the public spaces of the city.

Bartlett will weave together this rich digital content—his documentation of the performances, the public’s social media posts as interpreted by a custom-built machine learning application, and Philadelphia students’ videos—to create the final piece which will live on a project site and will be projected inside the Barnes Foundation’s Annenberg Court.

View Bartlett’s evolving piece and exhibition information at personofthecrowd.org.


ARTISTS
Marina Abramović – Vito Acconci – Franz Ackermann – Francis Alÿs – Eleanor Antin – Arman – Man Bartlett – Sanford Biggers – Slater Bradley – Stanley Brouwn – Tania Bruguera – Ingrid Calame – Sophie Calle – Papo Colo – Constant – Guy Debord – Allan Espiritu – Ayana Evans – Daphne Fitzpatrick – Zachary Fabri – Guerrilla Girls – Kendell Geers – Adler Guerrier – David Hammons – Keith Haring – Hi Moshekwa Langa – Lynn Hershman Leeson – Virgil Marti – Lee Mingwei – Annette Messager – Ivan Cardoso / Hélio Oiticica – Jefferson Pinder – Adrian Piper – William Pope.L – Robert Rauschenberg – Martha Rosler – Christy Rupp – Ed Ruscha – Carolee Schneemann – Dread Scott – Jean Shin – Mierle Laderman Ukeles – Gillian Wearing – Wilmer Wilson IV – Brett Day Windham – David Wojnarowicz. 

Exhibiting Social Practice in Museums

27.02.2017 – 01.03.2017 / 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
ICI Curatorial Hub401 Broadway, Suite 1620
New York, US

Curatorial Research Convening

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Curatorial Research Convening: Exhibiting Social Practice in Museums

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) are organizing a museum retrospective of the work of Suzanne Lacy, scheduled to open in San Francisco in April 2019. ICI has partnered with the two Bay Area institutions to organize a research convening with 16 national and international curators, theorists, and artists who will discuss curatorial questions related to collecting and presenting socially engaged art. Some of the questions include: 

In what ways can a history of collective actions be exhibited? What does it mean to ‘look back’ at these projects, that were the work of so many, and to find ways to experience today what this work has meant? How should those participants be involved now? How can an art that has been so diffuse and ephemeral be presented to museum visitors many years later? When is it meaningful to reactivate past projects? How can the political contexts that animated those past projects be related to political contexts today? How should an exhibition of an artist such as Suzanne Lacy be reinvented as it moves to different venues, different contexts?

Core Participants:

Nancy Adajania (cultural theorist & curator, Mumbai)
Tania Bruguera (artist)
Julia Bryan-Wilson (Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, UC Berkeley)
María del Carmen Carrión (Director of Public Programs & Research, ICI)
Anne Ellegood (Senior Curator, Hammer Museum at UCLA)
Rudolf Frieling (Curator of Media Arts, SFMOMA)
Larissa Harris (Curator, Queens Museum of Art)
Jeanne van Heeswijk (artist)
Pablo Helguera (artist and Director of Adult and Academic Programs of the Education Department, MoMA)
Trude Schjelderup Iversen (Senior Curator, KORO / Public Art Norway)
Suzanne Lacy (artist)
Fionn Meade (curator & writer, Minneapolis)
Glenn Phillips (Curator, Getty Research Institute)
Renaud Proch (Executive Director, ICI)
Stephanie Rosenthal (Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery)
Lucía Sanromán (Director of Visual Arts, YBCA)
Amanda Sroka (Assistant Curator of Contempoary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Dominic Willsdon (Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education & Public Practice, SFMOMA)
Catherine Wood (Senior Curator, International Art, Tate)

This convening is made possible by a curatorial research fellowship grant to SFMOMA from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Tania Libre

27.02.2017 / 07:00 p.m.
The Museum of Modern Art
Theatre 2
11 W 53rd St, New York,
NY 10019, US

Screening and Discussion

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An Evening with Lynn Hershman Leeson and Tania Bruguera

MoMA presents the New York premiere of artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s documentary Tania Libre, about the aftermath of artist and activist Tania Bruguera’s recent incarceration in Cuba. Through footage of Bruguera’s sessions with psychiatrist Dr. Frank Ochberg, who first defined Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the film provides an intimate and politically incisive look at the impact of censorship on the artist’s life and art. Hershman Leeson’s work often addresses the relationship between identity construction and technology, as well as questions of surveillance, civil rights, and censorship. The screening is followed by a discussion between Hershman Leeson, Bruguera, and Stuart Comer, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art.

>  March 2017
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Collecting and Exhibiting performance and performance-based work

02.03.2017 – 03.03.2017 / 02:00 p.m. – 05:00 p.m.
The Museum of Modern Art
11 W 53rd St, New York,
NY 10019, US

Study Session

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Museum Research Consortium Study Sessions

The MRC Study Sessions are incubators for new ideas and approaches to key holdings in the Museum’s collection. The sessions are a collaborative endeavor, intended to provide greater access to objects in the collection for a community of art historians, while also developing strong ties across the Consortium. Study session participants include MoMA curators and conservators, the current class of MRC Fellows, faculty members and graduate students from each of the five university partners, and invited guest scholars. The 2017 Study Sessions will consider MoMA’s history of collecting and exhibiting performance and performance-based work. Previous sessions focused on work by Jean Dubuffet (2014), on Picasso’s sculpture (2015), and on work by African-American artists (2016).

About the Museum Research Consortium

The Museum Research Consortium (MRC) is a partnership between The Museum of Modern Art and five regional graduate art history programs—Columbia University; The Graduate Center, City University of New York; the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Princeton University; and Yale University—funded through a major grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The MRC provides a framework for the Museum’s participation in the training and education of the next generation of art historians and curators.

The Museum Research Consortium hosts one MRC Fellow from each participating program annually to work with an experienced curator on scholarly curatorial projects at the Museum. The MRC also organizes biannual Study Sessions around key holdings in MoMA’s collection. These sessions generate new approaches to and ideas about works in the collection by providing greater access to these objects for a community of art historians, while also developing strong ties across the Consortium community.

Transforma tus ideas en acciones cívicas / Transform your ideas into civic actions

02.03.2017 – 21.05.2017 / 10:00 a.m. – 06:00 p.m.
Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London, W2 3XA, UK

Exhibition

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Speak: Tania Bruguera, Douglas Gordon, Laure Prouvost and Cally Spooner

Speak, at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, brings together four artists – Tania Bruguera, Douglas Gordon, Laure Prouvost, Cally Spooner – and coincides with the Serpentine Gallery’s survey of the late British conceptual artist John Latham. 

The artists in Speak each extend and update Latham’s radical world view with their own sense of urgency. The Sackler has become a transformed space with an installation of video, light, sound and sculpture in the Powder Rooms, and, in the gallery, a bid for Cuban presidency and a composition of drawings, sound and a single live body. Each artist explores language as a medium for action, exchange and disruption. Together, they reveal how Latham’s ideas continue to resonate: from taking an unconventional approach to the reception and transference of knowledge to prioritising the role of the artist in society as an agent for change.

Tania Bruguera directly addresses political and humanitarian issues in her native Cuba through performance and long-term social engagement projects. Her interventions parallel the ambitions of the Artist Placement Group (APG), co-founded by John Latham, which positioned the artist inside industry with the potential to effect change. For this exhibition, Bruguera has made a video that builds on her recent announcement to run for presidency in Cuba.

Douglas Gordon was first introduced to John Latham in his years as a student at Glasgow School of Art (1984–8), and Latham remained an influential figure on Gordon’s work. He has responded to the architecture of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery by creating a new site-specific text installation incorporating Latham’s text works, drawing out their shared interest in the relationship between language and time, alongside a new video work which revisits and fragments a conversation between Gordon, Latham and the Serpentine’s Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist from 1999. Gordon also presents two games: The Latham (Variations) redefining the Game of Freda and Ping Pong where objects collide in space and time.

Laure Prouvost takes an intuitive and bodily approach to knowledge, drawing on the everyday and domestic as events merging life and art, and exploiting the slippages of translation and language to confuse fact with fiction. Her experience working as John Latham’s assistant in the early 2000s has provided a rich and playful resource for her work. For this exhibition, she has created a multi-sensory immersive environment that combines synchronised lights and a sound narrative with sculptural objects and video.

Cally Spooner’s diverse practice includes film, audio, hired bodies, drawing, writing, and live events. She presents a constellation of sound, drawing, data and a live body. Her wall drawing wraps around the gallery, bringing together different streams of data – metabolic, professional and economic – extracted from the artist and her environment. Warm Up is a proposal for continuous restlessness and rehearsal – a warm-up for our position as individuals facing an uncertain political future. Warm Up appears daily, unannounced between 12-5pm. Carried by: Alice MacKenzie, Nefeli Skarmea, Alice Tatge, Rosalie Wahlfrid and Margarita Zafrilla Olayo. Spooner has written new texts Early Research Methods 9 – 10 for the exhibition catalogue, John Latham: A World View.

Speak takes its title from a 1962 film by John Latham, in which the artist experiments with pulsating sound and image. A series of screenings, performances, study evenings and symposia at venues across London has been programmed alongside the exhibitions Speak and A World View: John Latham.

Notes for the Future of mima

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How we got to this?

After ten years of action and activity, we welcome friends past and present to reflect on and discuss the history of mima and the Middlesbrough Collection and share thoughts on the future role of museums.

Join us for talks, tours and exhibition openings. Participants include artists Tania Bruguera and Stephen Willats, journalist Tom Crewe, curator Kieran Long and figures from our past and present.

The plan for the day is as follows:

11.30am – 12.00noon: Welcomes by current Director Alistair Hudson and founding Director Godfrey Worsdale

12.00pm – 1.00pm: The Current Landscape

Panel discussion about the UK and Middlesbrough’s current cultural landscape. Contributors: Middlesbrough’s Mayor Dave Budd; Tom Crewe, writer and editor at London Review of Books; Shahda Khan MBE, community builder and Community Cohesion Lead, Middlesbrough Council; Jill Morgan, Dean of School of Design, Culture & the Arts, Teesside University.

1.00pm – 2.00pm: Join us for a free communal lunch provided by Community Interest Company The Other Perspective (donations welcome)

2.00pm – 3.00pm: The Middlesbrough Collection

Quick-fire introductions from those who have been involved in building and shaping the Middlesbrough Collection. Each speaker will reflect on one key work.

Contributors include: former Senior Curator at mima, James Beighton; previously Curator at Middlesbrough Art Gallery, Alison Lloyd; former mima Education Manager Marie Neeson; and inaugural Curator at mima, Judith Winter.

3.00pm – 3.30pm: Refreshments and time to view exhibitions

3.30pm – 4.30pm: Notes for the Future

Speakers and artists discuss the future roles of artists and museums.

Artist and activist Tania Bruguera and Kieran Long, Senior Curator of contemporary architecture, design and digital at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

4.30pm – 5.30pm: Walking tour with artist Stephen Willats

Visit the off-site sections of the exhibition Human Right, a new commission by Willats that revisits a work made in Middlesbrough in 1997.

5.30pm – 7.00pm: Exhibition openings

Past Director Kate Brindley and current Pro Vice Chancellor of Teesside University will share reflections.

Estadística (Statistics)

05.03.2017 – 21.05.2017 / 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
1001 Bissonnet, Houston,
Texas 77005, US

Exhibition

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Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950 

Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950 looks at how Cuba’s revolutionary aspirations for social utopia—and subsequent disillusionment—shaped 65 years of Cuban art. The exhibition brings together more than 100 of the most important works of painting, graphic design, photography, video, installation, and performance created by more than 50 Cuban artists and designers.

Anchored by key moments of 20th- and 21st-century Cuban history, Adiós Utopia is the most comprehensive and significant presentation of modern and contemporary Cuban art shown in the United States since 1944, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented Modern Cuban Painters. 

Although many artists have emigrated from Cuba to live and work abroad, Adiós Utopia focuses on the untold narrative of those artists who remained in Cuba or whose careers took off after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. Through a selection of pivotal artworks—created in each of six decades since 1950—the exhibition explores Cuba’s artistic production through the lens of utopia, both its construction and its deconstruction. Adiós Utopia introduces U.S. audiences to key events in Cuban history and explores how this history affected individual artists, shaped the character of art produced on the island, and conditioned the reception of Cuban art both in Cuba and abroad.

The exhibition is initiated by collector Ella Fontanals-Cisneros through her foundations and organized by a team of independent Havana-based curators.

Introduction to Arte Útil

09.03.2017 / 02:00 p.m. – 05:00 p.m.
Tobin Community Center
1481 Tremont St,
Roxbury Crossing, MA 02120, US

Workshop

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Introduction to Arte Útil at Boston AiR

“Arts and culture form the building blocks that make our city thrive. They encourage us to engage with each other and connect to the larger community,” said Mayor Walsh. “Boston AIR brings this creative practice into the work of our city departments.  I am excited to announce the new Boston Artists in Residence and look forward to the positive impact they will have on BCYF.”

Recognizing and supporting artists’ essential contribution in creating and maintaining a thriving, healthy and innovative city is a stated goal in the Boston Creates plan launched earlier this summer. Boston AIR is one initiative as part of the plan that will integrate creative thinking into the work of municipal departments and planning efforts.

Through Boston AIR, artists are supported as agents of reflection, collaboration, and activism, whether through process-oriented practice, direct community engagement, and/or as leaders of system-wide change projects at BCYF and other City agencies. The ten selected artists are invited to study and expand their own civic and social practice, alongside a parallel cohort from ten BCYF community centers and other City employees who will explore methods to incorporate artistic social practice into government and community work. Both the artist and City cohorts will share examples of their work, attend master workshops and lectures by guest artists, and have opportunities to exchange ideas and co-design proposals.

Can aesthetics disarm oppression?

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Tania Bruguera: Can aesthetics disarm oppression?

Tania Bruguera defines herself as an initiator rather than an author. She often collaborates with multiple institutions and many individuals in such a way that the full realization of her artwork occurs when others adopt and perpetuate the models and proposals she creates.

This presentation will show some of Bruguera’s work strategies and discuss some of her key concepts—like Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art), Arte Útil (Art as a tool), Political-timing specific, and Aest-ethics—in the context of current political events.

Joingin Bruguera as Respondents

Paloma Duong is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is currently writing a book on postsocialist imaginaries, new media, and participatory forms of culture in contemporary Cuba.

Laura Serejo Genes is an artist and Masters of Science candidate in Art, Culture and Technology at MIT. Working through performance and sculpture, her recent projects tackle the question of how to make art “on campus” and how the university environment can be a place to re-activate forms of citizenship that are not as accessible or attainable on a larger scale.

About the ACT Monday Night Lecture Series

ACT’s Monday night lecture series draws together artists, scholars, and other cultural practitioners from different disciplines to discuss artistic methodologies and forms of inquiry at the intersection of art, architecture, science, and technology/

ACT’s Spring 2017 series is conceived by Gediminas Urbonas, ACT Director, and coordinated with Lucas Freeman, ACT Writer in Residence, and Laura Knott, ACT Consulting Curator.

This series is made possible with the generous support of The Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT).

Est-ética: Aesthetics in Political Art

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Visting Artist Lecture: Tania Bruguera

Artist and social activist Tania Bruguera will deliver a Visiting Artist Lecture hosted by the Department of Visual Art. Through her work, Bruguera spotlights repressive governments and societal systems, most recently touching on the Cuban Revolution and immigrant rights. Her work has been praised, but also reprimanded by governments. As early as 2014, Bruguera was arrested by the Cuban government for attempting to organize a performance that invited people to express their visions for Cuba in Havana’s Revolution Square. 

The Visual Art Department presents students with many opportunities to meet professional artists and expand the breadth of their learning across disciplines. Our Visiting Artist program brings nationally- and internationally-acclaimed artists to campus to give lectures and critiques.  This program allows students to have direct interaction with a wide variety of artists in the form of lectures, workshops, critiques, and the occasional Artist-in-Residence.

In addition to printed flyers that are posted prominently throughout the building, students learn about lectures via calendar link on our website, through announcements made in class as well as through the Department’s listserve and Facebook postings. The abbreviated list of Visiting Artists for the coming academic year is listed below. All talks are free and open to the public.

Terzo tempo / Overtime

26.03.2017 / 12:00 p.m. – 07:30 p.m.
MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo
Via Guido Reni 4A
00196 Roma, Italy

Panel Discussion

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European Alternatives. Terzo tempo / Overtime

A day of debate and reflection on Europe with artists, academics and activists at MAXXI.

Within the ambit of The Independent – the MAXXI research project opening doors to independent initiatives – the transnational organization European Alternatives is organizing Terzo tempo / Overtime, a dual project composed of a day of debate and action around the idea of Europe and a map illustrated by the artist Marco Raparelli and dedicated to 10 years of social movements in Europe.

Some of the most interesting voices in politics and art will be discussing central issues such as democracy, equality and culture:

Ken Loach, Ulrike Guerot, Marcelo Exposito, Tania Bruguera, Niccolò Milanese, Maria Hlavajova, Hou Hanru, Cesare Pietroiusti, Jonas Staal, Barbara Spinelli.

The day will also be punctuated by the performative actions of Kinkaleri and Stalker with No Working.

The debate will be followed at 7:30 PM by the presentation and screening in the MAXXI Auditorium of the film Io, Daniel Blake, 2016, by Ken Loach, Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival, in partnership with DiEM Voice. Ken Loach will be participating together with Berardo Carboni and Danae Stratou.

PROGRAMME

H 12.00

AuditoriumArte – Auditorium Parco della Musica

Xeneide. Il Dono dell’Altro – Eur(h)ope, Let’s Dance All together!

An action from Auditorium Parco della Musica to the MAXXI piazza by Stalker and No Working

H 15.00

Sala Guido Reni – MAXXI

Welcome and introduction

H 15.30

Ken Loach director

Ulrike Guerot Professor of European Policy and the Study of Democracy at the Danube University Krems and board member of European Alternatives,

Tania Bruguera artist

Marcelo Exposito artist and vice-president of the Spanish Parliament

Niccolò Milanese Director of European Alternatives

H 16.45

Perfomance Kinkaleri, All!

H 17.15

Maria Hlavajova Museo BAK Director, Utrecht

Hou Hanru MAXXI artistic director

Cesare Pietroiusti artist

Jonas Staal artist

Barbara Spinelli Member of the European Parliament in the GUE / NGL Group

H 19.15

Perfomance Kinkaleri, Trrrrr

Feeling Good is Not Enough: Create a Political Moment

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Courage To Be College Seminar Dinner & Lecture Series, with Tania Bruguera

To resist is not enough. Filling the streets with bodies can look like a battleground that has created the feeling of an election. Use chants as if they were drums in order to spread the waves of commitment and slogans in order to highlight all the things that are wrong. But the streets are not enough. Be an active individual: it shows them you are not afraid. Learn the language of power, use the verbs they are scared of, publicly unveil their worst nightmare – act for them, not for us. Behave on a one-to-one scale with those you consider responsible. Laugh intelligently but never laugh before you begin. Laugh after your goal is achieved after your opposition is tricked, conflicted and incoherent because you took their power away with a simple human gesture. Don’t laugh about what they do, laugh about what you were able to do to them. What we know is not enough. Be persistent without tiring others. Use forms and actions that are legible for the resistance but new to the repressors. The time you have is the time they are using to figure out how to respond. Feeling good is not enough: create a political moment.

Tania Bruguera was born in 1968 in Havana, Cuba. Bruguera, a politically motivated performance artist, explores the relationship between art, activism, and social change in works that examine the social effects of political and economic power. By creating proposals and aesthetic models for others to use and adapt, she defines herself as an initiator rather than an author, and often collaborates with multiple institutions as well as many individuals so that the full realization of her artwork occurs when others adopt and perpetuate it. She expands the definition and range of performance art, sometimes performing solo but more often staging participatory events and interactions that build on her own observations, experiences, and interpretations of the politics of repression and control. Bruguera has explored both the promise and failings of the Cuban Revolution in performances that provoke viewers to consider the political realities masked by government propaganda and mass-media interpretation. Advancing the concept of arte útil (literally, useful art; art as a benefit and a tool), she proposes solutions to sociopolitical problems through the implementation of art, and has developed long-term projects that include a community center and a political party for immigrants, and a school for behavior art. (art21.org)

Art, what for?

29.03.2017 / 05:00 p.m. – 07:00 p.m.
CCS Bard
33 Garden Rd,
Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504, US

Talk

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THE VISITOR TALKS – YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?

Dearest Visitor,

We are delighted you will be part of our Visitor Talks program ‘You talkin’ to me?’ As part of this semester’s talks, we would like you to think about discursive practice and the agency of the addressee, and to reflect upon whom we speak to when we are working, speaking or exhibiting. In accounting for essential inclusion of the other, the viewer, the public, these Visitor Talks extend the importance of speaking-as-doing-as-discursive practice crucial to We are the Center for Curatorial Studies – a multi-year exhibition and research program incorporating talks, artist projects, exhibitions, collaborations – as an evolving exhibition gathering its form through a deep consideration of the spaces of juxtaposition between subjects, things, images, words, structures, and/ or display.

We hope you will consider ‘the discursive’ as a starting point to think of different modes of address, speculative approaches, or propositional means to enunciate ourselves. Put simply, for whom do we exhibit? From where do we speak when we exhibit the curatorial? What does it actually mean to be a subject being addressed within a space? What does it mean to imply that it has a center or epicenter for such curatorial invocations? Equally, what does it mean to be outside, marginal or beyond such a center?

As well as coming to talk with us, we hope you will spend some time with us, and to make use of our resources: the museum, the archive, the library, the classroom, and the graduate program, with its faculty, staff and students. We want to study the form(s) and modes of address in your work, and what it is you think it is actively addressing in the world. We want to listen to what it is that is being exhibited when we speak of the curatorial, the discursive and when we speak through our practice, and to whom we are addressing when we speak or when we ‘speak ourselves’ in the world?

We are the Center for Curatorial Studies is a means to reflect upon curatorial studies and to extend a conception of the curatorial to account for multiple sites of contact, assemblages and gathering of diverse bodies and subjects as well as their discursive connections. In doing so, it opens up a concept of the formation of the ‘exhibition’ itself as a potential mode of research action in its own process of becoming.

We are looking forward to seeing you soon, and to hearing your thoughts.

Warmest wishes,

Paul O’Neill

Director of the Graduate Program

Transforma tus ideas en acciones cívica / Transform your ideas into civic actions

31.03.2017 – 01.04.2017 / 11:30 a.m. – 06:30 p.m.
Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki
66 Vasilissis Olgas Avenue
546 42 Thessaloniki, Greece

International Conference

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WORK AS INVENTION. ART FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Text: Prof. Dr. Sotirios Bahtsetzis

The Artecitya Conference by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki aims at creating a productive exchange between the fields of art, labour, politics and research-based knowledge, aiming at a trans-disciplinary approach. It shows the mutual dependence of work and art in envisioning the future of an upcoming society.

Our understanding of the concept of work is closely linked to industrial wage labor and employment. With paid work, we combine the meaning of life and the social legitimacy of individuals and collectives. This mental understanding becomes increasingly precarious, while corresponding with changes in the Welfare State and the globalised society. In the post-industrial society technological developments (internet and digital networking as well as mobility of labour) enabled various alternative forms of human labour to emerge, thus challenging conventional modes of work. New media researchers, digital craftsmen, socially engaged activists, permaculture makers, post-industrial designers, as well as innovative policy makers act towards inventing new forms of work as interaction with the social and natural environment.

In the meanwhile, many artists today are deeply committed to making work that addresses pressing social issues and changes in the way we perceive the world: social cohesion, post-democracy, environmental crisis and scarcity of resources, intersection of leisure and work etc.. The potential of art for social change can be deployed in order to rethink the concept of work and offer alternatives to a precarious living, characterised by permanent unemployment, indebtedness and deprivation of civil rights, as well as the damaging lack of creative and resilient solutions for society.

Artists explore new forms of “social practice” that become involved in addressing communities and conventional institutions. These experiments engage both with the notion of creativity (e.g. low and high culture), as well as with a redefinition of work (e.g. DIY, Makershops, Fablabs, alternative economies). Moving beyond the function of commenting and responding to society by means of creating visual, auditory or performing artefacts, socially engaged art can ignite demands for change, and provide a platform for reflection, collaboration and laboratories for building socially resilient practices of work.Our aim is to provide equal space to both scholarly and artistic contributions, as well as presentations of best practice models in society, in order to explore these highly relevant social, economic and aesthetic developments. Focusing on three specific areas -that is art, community and politics- various scientists, scholars, educators, artists, civil society activists, as well as stake holders in politics and economy are invited to deeply explore this state of things and offer proposals for building alternative models of work and art. Possible perspectives for contributions could be: new technologies, urban creativity, transformation design, art activism, civic participation, commons, alternative economies, social cohesion, best practice in social entrepreneurship, resilient and post-growth society, global governance and post-humanism. The list of contributors includes scholars, policy makers, and individuals who have already promoted significant and successful innovations in the sectors mentioned above.

A specific trait of the Conference is its format, which will be directed as a creative laboratory paying particular attention to audience interaction. 

The event will be held at Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki and at the Museum der Kulturen in Basel. Following the format of a “staged performance” the meeting departs from the conventional conference, in order to enhance participation and activation of the public, as well as an inclusive exchange of ideas. Contributors are invited to participate either with a video statement or with a a short lecture which will comment and further expand issues and themes presented in the video statements.

The 2-days conference will be live-streamed on the official site of Artecitya and various social media platforms. Art and educational institutions around the world, such as the KUNSTrePUBLIK in Berlin will host the live-streaming of the conference. Public attending theconference live as well as public worldwide attending via live-streaming can submit questions to the contributors. Moderators will present a selection of the submitted questions to the contributors and ask them to comment. The stage design will be created by the artists collective Practise(in)Cognition, who have emerged as a result of artist Eric Ellingsen’s residency last Summer. The language of the conference will be English with a simultaneous translation into Greek for the public attending the conference.

CONTRIBUTORS

Video Statements

Tania Bruguera, political artist

Kari Conte, Director of Programs and Exhibitions, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York

Pablo Helguera, artist, educator, author 

Jeanne Van Heeswijk, artist

Dr. Phil. Monika Kästli, art historian and curator

Achilleas Kentonis, trans-disciplinary artist, innovation trainer and engineer; founder and director of ARTos Foundation Nicosia

Dimitri Konstantinidis, director, Apollonia European Art Exchanges

Florian Malzacher, freelance curator, writer and dramaturge, artistic director of Impulse Theater Festival 

Pedro Reyes, artist

Prof. Dr. Felix Stalder, Professor for Digital Culture, Zurich University of the Arts; Senior Researcher, World Information Institute, Vienna

Nato Thompson, Artistic Director, Creative Time, New York

Responders

Sepake Angiama, documenta 14, Head of Education

Prof. Dr. Sotirios Bahtsetzis, curator, author, educator, Principal Scientific Consultant of the Conference

Stephanie Bertrand, independent curator

Niels Boeing, journalist, author, co-founder of Fab Lab Fabulous St. Pauli, Hamburg

Lydia Chatziiakovou, ArtBOX, Artistic Director of Artecitya by Helexpo

Elli Chrysidou, Vice-Mayor of Culture, Municipality of Thessaloniki

Prof. Dr. Christopher Dell, Professor for Urban Design Theory at HafenCity University Hamburg

Eric Ellingsen, artist, architect, educator & Practise(in)Cognition, artists group

Giovanni Flore, Benetton Digital Signage Project Management, former consultant at Fabrica

Dr. Giorgos Gkiouzepas, environmental scientist

Harikleia Hari, architect

Philip Horst, artist, KUNSTrePUBLIK, co-founder ZK/U Berlin

Lena Jöhnk, PhD student in the field of Socially Engaged Art, HafenCity University Hamburg

Samuel Kalika, artist, designer; founder of Critical Concrete, Porto

Christof Mayer, Raumlabor, Berlin 

Christos Pierros, Economist, Senior researcher at Labour Institute ofGSEE (General Workers Confederation of Greece)

Rainer Rosegger, sociologist

Christos Savvidis, ArtBOX, Artistic Director of Artecitya by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki

Prof. Max Spielmann, Hyperwerk Institute for Postindustrial Design, Basel

Dr. Kostis Stafylakis, art theorist and visual artist, political scientist, Adjunct at the University of Patras

Prof. Dr. Nicholas Theocarakis, Associate Professor of Political Economy and History of Economic Thought at the Department of Economics of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Arnisa Zeqo, documenta 14, Coordinator of Education

>  April 2017
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Technical Landscapes: Aesthetics and the Environment in the History of Science and Art

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Out of Place: From Site-Specificity to Political Timing-Specificity

Workshop

Fri, Apr 7, 2017, 3–5 pm

Level 3, CRC/bookshop

Scholar Rebecca Uchill with artist and current Radcliffe Fellow Tania Bruguera lead a workshop,Out of Place: From Site-Specificity to Political Timing-Specificity, to critically engage notions of place, politics and “site-specificity” as part of the Mahindra Humanities Center conferenceTechnical Landscapes: Aesthetics and the Environment in the History of Science and Art.

The conference will address what Peter Galison calls “technical lands” and examine sites where global knowledge practices and aesthetic categories have converged to literally transform the physical geography of the land. Conventional terms like “nature,”“culture,”“value,”“capital,”“territory,” and “site” no longer exist as clearly delineated categories (indeed if they ever did). Technical landscapes constitute the meeting points of contested relations between history, knowledge, material practices, and environmental change.


The conference will include keynote addresses by Peter Galison, Harvard History of Science, with Caroline Jones, MIT History of Art and Architecture, and Rebecca Uchill, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology. It will also feature a series of thematically linked events including a GPS-based interactive “sound walk” at the Harvard Arnold Arboretum by Teri Rueb (multi-media artist and professor, Department of Media Study, SUNY Buffalo), an evening reception and sound performance at the Waterworks Museum.  

Organized in affiliation with Mahindra Humanities Center’s interdisciplinary graduate student conference, Technical Landscapes: Aesthetics and the Environment in the History of Science and Art. Hosted by the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. Tania Bruguera is Elizabeth S. and Richard M. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Rebecca Uchill is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Art, Science & Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Vigilantes – The dream of reason

07.04.2017 – 10.06.2017 / Opening 05:00 p.m. – 08:00 p.m.
Weinberg/Newton Gallery
300 W Superior Street, Suite 203
Chicago, IL 60654, US

Group Exhibition

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In Acts

Opening April 7, Weinberg/Newton Gallery presents In Acts, a group exhibition inspired by the summit that will bring international artists to the University of Chicago’s campus later that month to ask: Whatis an Artistic Practice of Human Rights? Featuring Lola Arias, Jelili Atiku, Tania Bruguera, Zanele Muholi, Carlos Javier Ortiz, and Laurie Jo Reynolds, In Acts provides a setting for artworks by these artists who advance human rights discourse and policy through their art.

These artists are performative, searching, and ambitious, yet incisive in emotional acuity. Their practices are at once endeavors in political engagement and sensitive creative explorations. In Acts makes apparent the intricate systems that undergird the discrimination and inequality in global culture. The exhibition strives to amplify a sense of political efficacy amongst its visitors, willing them to take action in matters of human rights–from immigrant and refugee justice to LGBTQ rights to the eradication of poverty and youth violence.

Two artists use fresh approaches to the tradition of documentary photography and filmmaking in order to shed light on underrepresented communities, in which they have personal stakes. Zanele Muholi makes images of members of her own community– queer and trans South Africans. Her portraits on display from the series Faces and Phases vibrate with the energy of their subjects. Muholi regards her practice as visual activism, a stand against the frequently violent homophobia that pervades contemporary South African culture. Carlos Javier Ortiz makes documentary films and photographs that capture the effects of violence on American families in cities like Chicago. Ortiz often depicts Puerto Rican and black families that have experienced the loss of kin to violence in order to provide viewers with insight into the nuances of such violence, the factors that produce it, and the resilience of people who live through it. His short film A Thousand Midnights illustrates socioeconomic realities for African-Americans living through the Great Migration and in its wake.

Two more use their own bodies and personae in high stakes live performances to elicit reactions and mobilize their audiences. Jelili Atiku addresses pressing human rights struggles while incorporating elements of traditional Nigerian performance into his works. Atiku’s emphatic, boldly embodied performances often traverse public space, dragging issues of poverty, corruption, climate change, and prejudice out into the open air. In preparation for his Chicago performance, which will begin in Hyde Park at the summit and end at Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Atiku will collect written responses to questions about LGBTQ rights. During the performance, he will wear a cloak made from hundreds of glass bottles that contain the collected responses. The material aftermath from his performance on April 29 will be added to Atiku’s gallery installation. Tania Bruguera’s performances situate themselves in the space where art and activism overlap. Although she performs in her work, her projects are often not truly realized until other people respond, participate, and interact – utilizing the very model of participatory democracy as artistic practice. In doing so, Bruguera proposes solutions to political problems through art.

The remaining artists reframe existing structures of power in order to remake them for the future. Laurie Jo Reynolds confronts tools of discrimination within the US criminal justice system, like solitary confinement in prisons and public crime registries. Ephemera that conveys her current efforts to disrupt the 20-year long systematic registry of sex offenders will be on display. Reynolds refers to her practice as legislative art and regularly engages institutions and people outside of the art world to yield tangible effects. Lola Arias retells prevailing realities from the past and the present. She imaginatively reconstitutes localized histories through her theatre-based projects. Veterans is a five-channel video installation examining the long- lasting effects of military action on Argentinean men who served in the Malvinas/Falklands War in 1982. Arias collaborates with non-professional performers in the creation of her work, asking them to combine their lived experiences with aestheticized embellishments to shed light on the political inheritances that shape our time.

Weinberg/Newton Gallery has partnered with the University of Chicago’s Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, Logan Center for the Arts, and Pozen Family Center for Human Rights to bring the work of these artists into dialogue with one another for this exhibition. The summit What is an Artistic Practice of Human Rights? will take place on April 29 and May 1.

ABOUT WEINBERG/NEWTON GALLERY

Weinberg/Newton Gallery is an exhibition space with a mission to educate and inform the public on social justice issues. Through artwork and programming, the gallery provides an engaging environment for discourse on critical contemporary issues facing our communities. Connecting artists with social justice organizations, the gallery works to drive change and cultivate a culture of consciousness.

Endgame by Samuel Beckett

20.04.2017 – 21.04.2017 / 03:00 p.m. and 09:00 p.m.
Mosteiro de São Bento – Teatro Nacional São João
Praça da Batalha
4000-102 Porto, Portugal

Theatre play

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ENDGAME

Tania Bruguera is a Cuban artivist making her first foray into the world of theatre with her version of Beckett’s “Endgame.” She has designed a 8.50 meter tall cylinder of scaffolding, from where the audience watches the performance happening below.

At each new reading of the text, Bruguera considers that “a different dynamic between the characters is revealed and new layers are projected: the dialogue happens between a black person and a white racist, between a battered woman and her aggressor, between lovers…”.

Tania Bruguera transposes the power relations between the characters to the visual set-up and to the cast, which includes one professional actor (Brian Mendes as Hamm), a different amateur actor for each performance (as Clov) who hears and repeats the text for the first time in a declared submission to the words, and two actors whose voices do not come from their bodies, but from the sound equipment around the audience.

Endgame by Samuel Beckett

Directed by: Tania Bruguera

Architects: Dotan Gertler Studio

With: Brian Mendes, Jess Barbagallo, Pedro Aires and Lara Ferreira

Light design: Rui Monteiro

Light assistants: Carin Geada and Manuel Alão

Sound design: Rui Lima and Sérgio Martins

Assistant director: Mitchell Polonsky

Technical director: Patrícia Gilvaia

Production: BoCA 

Production Manager: Ana Rita Osório

Executive producer: Francisca Aires

Co-production: São João National Theatre (Oporto, PT), Colectivo 84 (PT), Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels, BE), Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (Nanterre, FR), Festival d’Automne à Paris (Paris, FR), Fondation d’Enterprise Hermès (Paris, FR), International Summer Festival Hamburg (Hamburg, DE), Estudio Bruguera

Acknowledgements:John Romão, Christophe Slagmuylder, Philippe Quesne, The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard College TDM, James Stanley, Achy Obejas, Tricia Van Eyck & MCA Chicago, Bob Wilson & The Watermill Center, Estudio Bruguera, New York City Players, Nicholas Elliot, Katiana Rangel, Regina Vorria, Alessandra Saviotti.

The Artist’s Voice

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THE ARTIST’S VOICE: NARI WARD AND TANIA BRUGUERA

The relationship between art and politics is continually redefined by today’s artists living in an increasingly divisive social and political landscape. In this very special engagement, hear from two extraordinary artists—Nari Ward and Tania Bruguera—who have taken different approaches to their important roles as artists and citizens.

Ward is featured in the ICA exhibition Sun Splashed, addressing issues of citizenship and migration in American society, among other themes. Artist Tania Bruguera considers herself an ‘initiator’ and has developed various longterm collaborative projects, such as Migrant People Party and The Institute of Artivism Hannah Arendt. Bruguera also recently announced her candidacy for presidency in Cuba. ICA Associate Curator Ruth Erickson will moderate this important and timely discussion.

Nari Ward: Sun Splashed is organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami Associate Curator Diana Nawi.

The Boston presentation is coordinated by Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, with Jessica Hong, Curatorial Associate.

The Francis Effect

28.04.2017 – 20.08.2017 / 10:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.
La Triennale di Milano
Viale Alemagna, 6
Milano, Italy

Exhibition

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The Restless Earth

The Restless Earth borrows its title from a collection of poems by Édouard Glissant, a Caribbean writer who probed the question of how different cultures can coexist. The exhibition shares in Glissant’s project—a pressing and necessary one that tries to describe this unstable and agitated present as a polyphony of voices and narratives. Through the works of more than sixty artists from more than forty countries—such as Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Turkey—and with historical documents and objects of material culture, this exhibition charts both experiences and perceptions of migration and the current refugee crisis as an epoch-making transformation that is reframing contemporary history, geography, and culture.

The Restless Earth explores real and imaginary geographies, reconstructing the odyssey of migrants through personal and collective tales of exodus inspired by varying degrees of urgency and longing. The exhibition revolves around a series of geographic and thematic lines of inquiry—the war in Syria, the state of emergency in Lampedusa, life in refugee camps, the figure of the nomad or stateless person, and Italian migration in the early 20th century—which intersect with works that serve as visual metaphors for conditions of mobility and precariousness.

The Restless Earth focuses in particular on how artists bear witness to historic events, and how art can describe social and political change in the first person. The works on view point to a renewed faith that art and artists have a responsibility to portray and transform the world, creating not just images of conflict, but images that provide a space for critical thinking and exchange. Together, these stories—poised between historical epic and real-time diary—yield a vision of art as lyrical journalism, emotional documentary, and vivid, vital testimony. 

Artists: Adel Abdessemed – John Akomfrah – Pawel Althamer –  Francis Alÿs – El Anatsui – Ziad Antar – Kader Attia – Brendan Bannon – Yto Barrada – John Berger and Jean Mohr – Alighiero Boetti – Anna Boghiguian – Andrea Bowers – Tania Bruguera – Banu Cennetoglu and Nihan Somay in collaboration with UNITED – Phil Collins – Comitatio 3 ottobre – Constant – Thierry De Cordier – La Domenica del Corriere – Forensic Oceanography / Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani – Meschac Gaba – Charles Gaines and Ashley Hunt for Gulf Labor Artists Coalition – Giuseppe ‘Pinot’ Gallizio – Rokni Haerizadeh, Ramin Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Manaf Halbouni – Mona Hatoum – Lewis Wickes Hine – Thomas Hirschorn – Wafa Hourani – Pravdoliub Ivanov – Khaled Jarrar – Isaac Julien – Hiwa K – Yasmine Kabir – Šajla Kamerić – Bouchra Khalili – Runo Lagomarsino – Dorothea Lange – Zoe Leonard – Glenn Ligon – Liu Xiaodong – Ahmed Mater – Steve McQueen – Aris Massinis – multiplicity in collaboration with Giovanni Maria Bellu – Paulo Nazareth – Adrian Paci – Maria Papadimitriou – 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography – Marwan Rechmaoui – Hrair Sarkissian – Thomas Shcütte – Hassan Sharif – Augustus Sherman – Xaviera Simmons – Mounira Al Sohl – Hamid Sulaiman – Rayyane Tabet – Pascale Marthine Tayou – Wolfgang Tillmans – Andra Ursuta – Dan Võ – Henk Wildschut – Zarina (Zarina Hashmi).

What is an Artistic Practice of Human Rights?

29.04.2017 and 01.05.2017 9:30 a.m. – 05:00 p.m. and 06:00 p.m. – 09:00 p.m.
Logan Center for the Arts
University of Chicago
915 E. 60th St.
Chicago, IL, US

Summit

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What is an Artistic Practice of Human Rights?

What is an Artistic Practice of Human Rights? is a multi-day summit hosted by the University of Chicago and composed of a group of distinguished international artists who will propose, examine, and challenge the ways in which creative cultural resistance can broaden our collective understanding of human rights.  

Through artist performances and presentations on April 29 and a public forum on May 1, the summit will delve deeply into how artists are utilizing creative expression to frame conversations and advance action around myriad human rights issues, from criminal justice to LGBTQ rights, youth violence to poverty, immigration rights to refugee crises, and other areas where the personal intersects the political. Co-presented by the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, the Logan Center for the Arts, and the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights.

Artists: Lola Arias, Jelili Atiku, Tania Bruguera, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti of Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency, Carlos Javier Ortiz, and Laurie Jo Reynolds .

Curated by Mark Bradley, Zachary Cahill, Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, Leigh Fagin, Susan Gzesh, David Levin, Steven Rings, Jacqueline Stewart, Sonali Thakkar and Yesomi Umolu (University of Chicago) and Thomas Keenan (Bard College).

What is an Artistic Practice of Human Rights? is presented alongside the Weinberg/Newton Gallery exhibition In Acts, featuring works by each of the summit artists. The exhibition runs April 7-June 10. 

Artist Presentations

Day one features an immersive day of artist presentations to include performances, screenings, conversations, and lectures. Each artist has been provided with a 45-minute slot during which they will either deliver a presentation about their particular practice and the ways in which it illuminates human rights issues, or present a work of art created specifically for the summit. 

Public Forum

Day two features an open forum with the summit artists, including a Q&A and the opportunity for attendees to engage in dialogue with one another. 

>  May 2017
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How to transform affect into political effectiveness

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Tania Bruguera: How to transform affect into political effectiveness

Tania Bruguera addresses issues of power and control through her often controversial performances and installations. Hear Bruguera discuss her work, including the moving performance piece featured in the exhibition.

The talk is organized as part of the public program for Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flânerie.

Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flânerie features work by more than 50 international artists who have taken to the street to play detective, make fantastic maps, scavenge and shop for new materials, launch guerrilla campaigns, and make provocative spectacles of themselves to speak to issues as diverse as commodity fetishism, gentrification, gender politics, globalization, racism, and homelessness. The exhibition is on view February 25 through May 22, 2017, and features works, new performances, and historical pieces by Marina Abramović, Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Constant, David Hammons, and Zhang Huan, among many others.

While much of the exhibition will be presented in the Barnes Foundation’s Roberts Gallery, Person of the Crowd will also reach into the city of Philadelphia. A series of performances—by artists including Sanford Biggers, Tania Bruguera, Ayana Evans, Zachary Fabri, and Wilmer Wilson IV—will take place on the streets of Philadelphia, and billboard and street poster projects will activate the city throughout the exhibition run.

The Barnes has also commissioned New York-based artist Man Bartlett to create a project site and digital artwork exploring themes related to the exhibition and the concept of “cyberflânerie.” Bartlett will act as a flâneur by documenting the street performances taking place throughout the run of the exhibition and inviting the general public to step into the position of the flâneur and share their perceptions of everyday urban life via social media using the hashtag #personofthecrowd. He will also work with teens in the Philadelphia region to develop videos documenting their own experiences as flâneurs inspired by their engagement in the public spaces of the city.

Bartlett will weave together this rich digital content—his documentation of the performances, the public’s social media posts as interpreted by a custom-built machine learning application, and Philadelphia students’ videos—to create the final piece which will live on a project site and will be projected inside the Barnes Foundation’s Annenberg Court.

Displacement/Destierro

04.05.2017 / 05:00 p.m. – 07:00 p.m.
Philadelphia City Hall
1401 John F Kennedy Blvd
Philadelphia, PA 19107, US

Performance

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Displacement/Destierro

In this performance, Tania Bruguera walks through city streets in a garment made of earth, cloth, wood, and nails—the embodiment of a living nkisi nkonde, or Congolese power figure. Originally performed in 1998 in Havana on Fidel Castro’s birthday, Bruguera conceives of this work as “an allegorical way to approach political reality and the social promises that have been made and never kept.”

The performance is organized as part of the public program for Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flânerie.

Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flânerie features work by more than 50 international artists who have taken to the street to play detective, make fantastic maps, scavenge and shop for new materials, launch guerrilla campaigns, and make provocative spectacles of themselves to speak to issues as diverse as commodity fetishism, gentrification, gender politics, globalization, racism, and homelessness. The exhibition is on view February 25 through May 22, 2017, and features works, new performances, and historical pieces by Marina Abramović, Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Constant, David Hammons, and Zhang Huan, among many others.

While much of the exhibition will be presented in the Barnes Foundation’s Roberts Gallery, Person of the Crowd will also reach into the city of Philadelphia. A series of performances—by artists including Sanford Biggers, Tania Bruguera, Ayana Evans, Zachary Fabri, and Wilmer Wilson IV—will take place on the streets of Philadelphia, and billboard and street poster projects will activate the city throughout the exhibition run.

The Barnes has also commissioned New York-based artist Man Bartlett to create a project site and digital artwork exploring themes related to the exhibition and the concept of “cyberflânerie.” Bartlett will act as a flâneur by documenting the street performances taking place throughout the run of the exhibition and inviting the general public to step into the position of the flâneur and share their perceptions of everyday urban life via social media using the hashtag #personofthecrowd. He will also work with teens in the Philadelphia region to develop videos documenting their own experiences as flâneurs inspired by their engagement in the public spaces of the city.

Bartlett will weave together this rich digital content—his documentation of the performances, the public’s social media posts as interpreted by a custom-built machine learning application, and Philadelphia students’ videos—to create the final piece which will live on a project site and will be projected inside the Barnes Foundation’s Annenberg Court.

The activity of a lifetime

06.05.2017 / 11:30 a.m. – 01:00 p.m.
Frieze New York
Randall’s Island Park
New York, US

Panel discussion

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Frieze Talks New York: Exploring agency, politics and perspective

Taking place daily at Frieze New York, Frieze Talks is curated for the fourth consecutive year by Tom Eccles (Executive Director, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York).

From the re-hang of the Museum of Modern Art’s collection in response to Executive Order 13769, to the controversy over representation of racial trauma in the Whitney Biennial, New York’s artistic community continues to confront questions of agency, politics and perspective.

Exploring these themes, this year’s Frieze Talks features Claudia Rankine—2016 MacArthur Fellow and winner of the 2017 Bobbitt National Poetry Prize for her collection Citizen: An American Lyric—discussing her writing and her newly-founded Racial Imaginary Institute; a panel on art and social commitment chaired by Shuddhabrata Sengupta of Raqs Media Collective (curators of the 11th Shanghai Biennial, ‘Why Not Ask Again’) and featuring artists Tania Bruguera, Anri Sala and—ahead of her major project with Philadelphia Museum—Jeanne van Heeswijk; and a conversation on ‘complicating the Modern’ with Ann Temkin, Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA. The program additionally offers a chance to deepen discussion and understanding of content within the fair itself, such as the enhanced presence of Modernist and political art.

11.30am, Saturday, May 6

Panel: The activity of a lifetime

with artists Tania Bruguera, Anri Sala and Jeanne van Heeswijk

Chaired by Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Co-founder, Raqs Media Collective)

Autobiography (the remix) and Las Chancletas Vanguardistas

06.05.2017 / 02:00 p.m. – 04:00 p.m.
Online Broadcasting
Radio Program

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Los contenedores (no) son mejores vacíos

los contenedores (no) son mejores vacíos is a research and curatorial online radio program which broadcast music that has been fundamentally impacted, in content and circulation, by the political history of Cuba.

By adopting the political potential of broadcasting and digital media, the program utilizes online radio as a platform to provide alternative perspectives on the effects of the Cuban Revolution. Against a backdrop of a growing demand for more accessible WiFi, a number of Cubans on the island and abroad are taking to the Internet via blogs, social media sites, and USB thumb drives to publish and circulate their daily social and political experiences.

Tuning into instances of Cuban music, from the history of Hip-Hop to the growth of Electronic music, multiple episodes act as a gateways into the contexts in which these forms of musical expressions and experiences arose and operate from. Experimenting with the transmissions of playlists and interviews, modes of popular music are listened to as a means to which explore the potential futurities of Cuba amidst an uncertain political, economical, and social present.

los contenedores (no) son mejores vacíos programming can be accessed via Bard College’s WXBC  and contenedoresnoson.net (Live on April 9th).

Contributions by: Tania Bruguera, Krudas Cubensi, Ted Henken, Hanny Mirin and Chris Stover

Produced by Lola Martinez

Isasthenai

10.05.2017 – 25.08.2017 /
V-A-C Foundation
Palazzo delle Zattere
Venice, Italy

Performance

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Space Force Construction

V-A-C Foundation is proud to present Space Force Construction, organised with the Art Institute of Chicago, for the launch of V-A-C’s new Venetian headquarters.

Marking the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Space Force Construction considers the legacy of early Soviet art and its spaces of display. The exhibition brings together more than 100 works from the 1920s and ‘30s along with major reconstructions of spaces, sculptures and functional objects by key Soviet artists such as El Lissitzky, Gustav Klutsis, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. These recreations and historical art works are brought into dialogue with new commissions and recent works by contemporary visual and performing artists, among them Abraham Cruzvillegas, Melvin Edwards, Janice Kerbel, Irina Korina, Barbara Kruger, Christian Nyampeta, Florian Pumhösl, Wolfgang Tillmans and Mikhail Tolmachev.

The exhibition revisits through contemporary eyes the international exchange of ideas opened up by early twentieth-century Russian artists, suggesting for their time and ours how we might reconceive spheres of public and private life to bring about social change.

Space Force Construction will organise the entire Palazzo delle Zattere into display spaces that were exemplary in the early Soviet period: battleground, factory, exhibition, school, home, theatre, press and festival.

An atrium on the ground level becomes a “Lenin Wall,” filled with original posters, book covers,drawings and photographs that feature the founding Soviet leader. Near this space is a rare early printing of the iconic poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1920) by El Lissitzky. A large room at the rear contains Rodchenko’s 10- meter-long Workers’ Club, first made and shown in Paris in 1925, which artist Christian Nyampeta will use during the opening days to hold discussions among philosophers and students in Venice. Further groups will be invited to self-publish and exhibit materials in an adjacent printing room that Nyampeta has helped organise.

Three rooms on the first floor will contain recreations of radical abstract sculptures exhibited in May 1921 at the second exhibition of OBMOKhU (Society of Young Artists), including Rodchenko, Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg, and Karl Ioganson. These dramatically simple forms paved the way for International Constructivism, a movement that swept Europe in the 1920s and ‘30s and was widely reinterpreted in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the United States during the 1950s-1970s. Works in the show by Abraham Cruzvillegas, Melvin Edwards, Janice Kerbel, David Musgrave, and Florian Pumhösl attest to the ongoing relevance of this Russian-born movement.

A new commission by Barbara Kruger will cover the floor and walls of a room on the second floor of the palazzo with an image of a hand holding out an iphone with apps that show declarative virtues and vices in Russian, English and Italian. Kruger will also place a text addressing mass media and demagoguery on the floor of the room, surrounding a prototype for a multimedia kiosk designed by Gustav Klutsis in 1922. The kiosk will contain books and magazines, and a period newsreel projection. Another room on this floor includes a barbed-wire sculpture from 1970 by Melvin Edwards, Wolfgang Tillmans’ 2015 photograph The State We’re In, and text-and- image elements from the series The Transported of KwaNdebele (1983- 1984) by South African photographer David Goldblatt. The three artists’ works raise issues of migratory labour – a contemporary theme that puts the heritage of Soviet constructivism and photojournalism to new and very different uses.

The exhibition features new works by emerging Russian artists including an installation by Kirill Glushchenko who explores the concept of the ‘ideal’ in Soviet Brezhnev–style modernity. At the core of his project is the history of a massive reconstruction of the city of Ulianovsk, its local memorial complex and hotel Venets, all built in 1970 to mark the centenary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin. Glushchenko will recreate the interior of the hotel lobby and room on the ground floor of the palazzo. The installation embodies a constellation of objects related to Soviet material culture and its utopian promise.

Mikhail Tolmachev’s project, SLON, is devoted to the lost story of the Solovki prison camp on the Solovetsky Islands, revealing a parallel existence of official and hidden Soviet history. Despite the common belief that a wide labour camp system in the Soviet state was an invention of the Stalinist era, Solovki prison camp was founded in 1920 and considered to be the first of its kind. Tolmachev explores the camp’s social and cultural structures through three official photo albums produced at the labour camp’s studio.

Space Force Construction is curated by Matthew Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator of the Department of Photography, Art Institute of Chicago and V-A-C Curator Katerina Chuchalina, with Anna Ilchenko. Peter Taub is in charge of a performance programme that is integral to the exhibition. The Art Institute of Chicago has published a richly illustrated, scholarly catalogue to coincide with the Venice exhibition, devoted to art and its display in the early Soviet period. An entirely historical version of the joint undertaking, called Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test, will be presented from 29 October 2017 – 14 January 2018 at the Art Institute of Chicago. A major lender is the Ne boltai! Collection, who have enriched the exhibitions in Venice and Chicago with many key works relating to the early Soviet era. 

Introduction to Arte Útil

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Future Climates – The School of Redistribution

Future Climates is a platform initiated by Antonia Alampi and iLiana Fokianaki that aims to propose viable futures for independent cultural practice. Its objective is to actively shape the forecast of institutional climates by addressing the precarious conditions of individual workers and small-scale organizations of contemporary art. At its core lies the urgency to imagine and implement new sustainable economies in response to the changing weather that affects labour rights, work ethics and funding methods.

In March 2017, Future Climates will launch in Athens with “The School of Redistribution”, a three-month long exhibition, research and public program, and a newly commissioned performance: all dressed as a school. Conceived as a dialogue across contexts, methodologies and practices it wants to investigate the economic conditions that determine and define the work of small-scale organizations of contemporary art and culture in Athens. It will revolve around a central question: how to transform the increasingly precarious existence of small-scale organizations and independent art workers into a more sustainable one, both in terms of economy and work ethics?

The space of State of Concept will be designed by the Studio Miessen and is titled “ΧάιτερμπιςΒÏŒλκικ – Heiter bis Wolkig” (sunny with cloudy intervals). As a commentary on the current, post-2008 conflictual relationships across Europe, which – at least partially– relate to linguistic misunderstandings cum spatial separation, Miessen’s intervention consists of a space of conversation based on the typology of a bar, which positions itself within a longstanding tradition of artist-run bars. Precarious times of uncertain futures require different forms of discursive spaces. Instead of formalized institutional conditions, the project claims normative, popular spaces of conversation as a form of practice. Within this, Navine Khan Dossos will realize “Navigating the Numbers” a new wall painting inspired by flow charts of information without content, emphasizing exclusively their infrastructure. The juxtaposition of environmental predictions of climate change, funding applications and cultural hierarchies come together in a complex diagram, a futuristic model of data and movement.

Alexandra Pirici will present a new ongoing action commissioned by Future Climates together with KADIST. “Parthenon Marbles” is a work that tells a story that evolves around the controversial request of repatriation of those marbles to the Acropolis Museum in Athens, as a metaphor and an entry point into a larger discussion about capital, accumulation, circulation, redistribution and the role of the arts within today’s economies. It proposes a performative repatriation, an immaterial version of the sculptural ensemble. This action includes a performed research into the financial and legal implications of the sculptures’ situation: a speculative journey into a “what if” scenario of return developed in collaboration with writer and curator Victoria Ivanova.

Films of Martha Rosler addressing the stressed relationships between institutions, cultural workers and their audience, such as the seminal “Museums will eat your Lunch” will co-exist with sculptural interventions of Alexandros Tzannis, remnants of the previous exhibition hosted at State of Concept, named by the artist as “Athenian parasites”.

Several screenings will take place throughout the three months (please refer to website for further information) amongst them the “Moving Pictures: Artists’ Films from the Film London Jarman Award”, and Nicoline Van Harskamp’s Englishes.

The research program, commencing on March 27, will include fieldwork, visits to Athens-based organizations, workshops and lectures by international and Greek independent and institutionally affiliated art workers, public programs, and writing. Its aim is to draw on the collective knowledge and experience of its participants to not only address but also speculatively propose alternatives for future scenarios of practice. Participants to the program, selected via an international open call, Denise Araouzou, Jane Fawcett, Ioli Kavakou, Laura Lovatel, Federica Menin, Giulia Palomba, Sol Prado, Rosana Sánchez Rufete and Aris Spentsas, Sara Santana, Dora Vasilakou and Maya Tounta as repondent.

Contributors to the program include Victoria Ivanova, Maria Lind, Prosorini Akadimia Tehnon Athens, Emily Pethick, Martha Rosler, Bik Van der Pol, Nora Sternfeld, Olav Velthuis, 3 137 (Kosmas Nikolaou, Paky Vlasopoulou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki), Enterprise Projects (Vassilis Papageorgiou, Danai Giannoglou), Katerina Nikou, Polyna Kosmadaki, Kostis Stafylakis, Jens Maier-Rothe, Jonas Staal, Angela Dimitrakakis, Theo Prodromidis, Mohammed Salemy, Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson, Stella Baraklianou and DIY Performance Biennial (Athens), Tania Bruguera among others.

Head of research: Evita Tsokanta
Co-ordination: Maria-Adela Konomi

Design: Rana Karan 

Resisting is not enough

13.05.2017 / 11:00 a.m. – 05:00 p.m.
Onassis Cultural Center
107 Syngrou Avenue,
11745 Athens, Greece

Keynote Lecture

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FFF4 – International Symposium: On Homelands and the Stateless as the World Tilts Right

An international symposium co-organized by the Fast Forward Festival and Creative Time (New York) that brings together international and Greek delegations of artists, curators, cultural administrators, and organizers to address the challenges facing progressive artists and activist communities under prevailing economic and political conditions.

Co-organized by The Onassis Cultural Centre and Creative Time (New York), the international symposium, part of the Fast Forward Festival,  “On Homelands and the Stateless as the World Tilts Right”will serve as a discursive platform offering expressions of solidarity, interdependence and resistance in this critical moment.

Taking its cue from the Fast Forward Festival’s thematic interest in transcending borderlines, the symposium brings together seven international and Greek delegations of artists, curators, cultural administrators, and organizers to provide geographically diverse, transdisciplinary, on-the ground accounts of political and aesthetic tactics to effectively mobilize in the face of statelessness, virulent nationalisms, and increasingly precarious livelihoods.

Athens today is witness to two of the world’s most urgent, and lived, issues. The destruction wrought by the Syrian war has caused thousands to flee to Greece’s shores. At the same time, a strict austerity regime and the resurgence of neoliberalism have caused a multifaceted social crisis. Globally, these events have found terrifying handmaidens in the rise of xenophobia, reactive populism, and waning support for internationalism.  At this critical conjuncture, the “On Homelands and the Stateless as the World Tilts Right” symposium will address the challenges facing progressive artists and activist communities under prevailing economic and political conditions.

Curated by:Katia Arfara, Artist Director of Theatre & Dance, Onassis Cultural CentreNato Thompson, Artistic Director, Creative Time

Director of Creative Time Summit: Sally SzwedOrganization: Marina TroupiCoordination: Teal Baskerville

Endgame by Samuel Beckett

16.05.2017 – 21.05.2017 / 06.00 p.m. and 08:30 p.m.
Kunstenfestivaldesarts
Cinéma Marivaux
Boulevard Adolphe Maxlaan, 98 1000 Brussels, Belgium

Theatre play

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Endgame

Can art change the world? For Tania Bruguera, the answer is yes. Famous for her uncompromising work combining activities, performances and installations, the Cuban artist and activist questions, often in connection with her homeland’s turbulent history, the control that political and economic power exerts on our everyday lives. Her work deals with individual experience as a reflection of a collective history and memory. Her actions encourage the audience to confront themselves with notions of anxiety, frailty and dependence. At the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Bruguera is creating a piece for theatre for the first timeEndgame is a staging of the famous one-act play by Samuel Beckett, a post-apocalyptic play on death and despair in its purest form. For Beckett, there was nothing funnier than unhappiness. Building on this momentum, Bruguera reveals a play about domination, power and the limits of our limitless freedom that is universal in scope.

Direction: Tania Bruguera

Text:End Game by Samuel Beckett

Architects: Dotan Gertler Studio

With: Brian Mendes, Jess Barbagallo

Voices: Jacob Roberts, Chloe Brooks

Light design:Rui Monteiro

Sound design: Rui Lima & Sérgio Martins

Sound engineer: Pedro Lima

Sound recording: Luke Martinez

Direction assistant: Mitchell Polonsky

Technical direction: Patrícia Gilvaia

Production: BoCA Biennial (Lisbon/Porto)

Production direction: Ana Rita Osório

Executive production: Francisca Aires

Thanks to: John Romão, Christophe Slagmuylder, Philippe Quesne, The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard College TDM, James Stanley, Achy Obejas, Tricia Van Eyck & MCA Chicago, Bob Wilson & The Watermill Center, Estudio Bruguera, New York City Players, Nicholas Elliot, Katiana Rangel, Regina Vorria, Alessandra Saviotti

Presentation: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Hotel Marivaux

Co-production: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, São João National Theatre (Porto), Colectivo 84 (Lisbon), Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (Nanterre), Festival d’Automne à Paris, International Summer Festival Kampnagel (Hamburg), Estudio Bruguera

With the support of: Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès, in the framework of the New Settings programme

Displacement/Destierro

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As If Sand Were Stone: Contemporary Latin American Art from the AGO Collection

For the first time ever, the AGO presents its extensive collection of Latin American contemporary art as the focus of its own exhibition. The artists, originating from Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, are each influenced by the specific geographic, political and social contexts and artistic legacies of their respective countries. Brought together, these artists’ works provoke visitors to reflect upon issues of time, place and identity and to question issues of belonging, precarity and transience.

The AGO’s collection of Latin American Contemporary art has been acquired through purchase as well as corporate and private donations. Brascan Limited made a substantial gift in the 1970s, and the Volunteer Committee contributed acquisition funds in the 1990s. Today this tradition is being continued by the Sherritt International Corporation and The New Group.

Sherritt International Corporation has worked closely with the AGO to acquire contemporary art by Cuban artists, and as such contributed to building the largest museum collection of Cuban art in Canada. This exhibition marks the tremendous gift of the Sherritt Collection to the AGO, and includes works by Los Carpinteros, Carlos Garaicoa, Glenda Leon, Tania Bruguera and Wilfredo Prieto, all of which will be on view.

CycleNews

30.05.2017 / 10.00 a.m.
New York City Hall
New York City

Collaborative Art Project

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NYC MAYOR’S OFFICE OF IMMIGRANT AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS’ PUBLIC ARTIST IN RESIDENCE TANIA BRUGUERA LAUNCHES “CYCLENEWS”

On bicycle routes in and around Corona, Queens, CycleNews will bring information on essential government services to immigrant-rich communities and communicate community needs back to local government CycleNews aims to build trust between immigrant communities and local government.

CycleNews is a project by Immigrant Movement International initiated by Tania Bruguera in collaboration with Mujeres en Movimiento and Kollektiv Migrantas

NEW YORK—Today, NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl and Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Nisha Agarwal joined artist Tania Bruguera and the Mujeres en Movimiento to launch “CycleNews,” a new collaborative art project that seeks to build bridges between New York City government and its immigrant residents by demonstrating that we respect and protect all of our communities. The announcement was made at a rally for Immigrant Respect on the steps of City Hall. Pictures of the project in action are available here.

“Art has the power to heal, to transform, and to bring us together. This groundbreaking collaboration between the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, our Public Artist in Residence Tania Bruguera, and the Mujeres en Movimiento is an extraordinary example of this,” said Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl. “Two of my great passions in life are bicycles and social activist art, so I’m thrilled for the launch of CycleNews. Local government is responsible to local residents, and it’s our obligation to work with them and listen closely to their needs – something that this project powerfully expresses.”

“At a time when immigrant communities are under attack, it is more critical than ever to keep the channels of communication open and reinforce that the City of New York still has your back,” said Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Nisha Agarwal. “The work of Mujeres en Movimiento to empower their neighbors and networks through information is precisely the type of inspiring community action that the City wants to uplift and support at this important moment for so many of our residents.”

CycleNews is a project by Immigrant Movement International initiated by Tania Bruguera, in collaboration with Mujeres en Movimiento and Kollektiv Migrantas. Tania Bruguera is the Public Artist in Residence (PAIR) with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and Department of Cultural Affairs. The project seeks, among other things, to build trust between government agencies and new and undocumented immigrants, and to connect immigrant populations to critical services MOIA provides: IDNYC, ActionNYC legal services, English conversation classes, and know your rights materials.

“After spending time getting to know the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, I wanted to build on MOIA’s community outreach strategies and initiatives, furthering their relationship with the communities they serve,” said Public Artist in Residence Tania Bruguera. “The idea for CycleNews is to create a two way street where immigrant communities are able to trust the government and, equally important, the government demonstrates that it trusts the immigrant communities of New York City.”

CycleNews will begin with a pilot program in Corona, Queens working in collaboration with approximately 15 women from Mujeres en Movimiento, a local group of Spanish-speaking mothers and neighborhood advocates. The Mujeres formed from Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International, an art project/think tank/community center initiated in 2011 in Corona with Creative Time and the Queens Museum. Coming together through self-organized fitness classes in Immigrant Movement International, the Mujeres have since become neighborhood leaders, using tactics from art and community organizing to advocate for community improvements, including adding bike lanes along Roosevelt Avenue.

“We feel very proud to be part of CycleNews because this project makes us more aware of our rights, reinforces our community power, and unites us as immigrants with renewed freedom and pride in our roots,” said Mujeres en Movimiento. CycleNews helps us to be better citizens who live and work around the clock in and for our New York City.”

“Nos sentimos muy orgullosas de ser parte de Cyclenews porque este proyecto nos hace ser más conscientes de nuestros derechos, refuerza nuestro poder comunitario, a la vez que nos une como inmigrantes y nos empodera con respeto, libertad y orgullo de nuestras raices,” dijeron Mujeres en Movimiento.“Este proyecto nos ayuda a ser mejores ciudadanas, viviendo y trabajando de sol a sol en esta nuestra ciudad de Nueva York.”

The Mujeres have been working with Bruguera and training with MOIA to develop strategies to educate and engage immigrant residents about their rights and the services available to them. One of the initial steps of this collaboration was to revisit the way that services are communicated. By working with Kollektiv Migrantas, a Berlin-based artist collective specializing in migrant rights, Bruguera, the Mujeres, MOIA, and DCLA came together to co- create picture-based materials that outline critical MOIA services while centering on immigrant experiences. The materials were created through a series of participatory storytelling workshops facilitated by Kollektiv Migrantas with the Mujeres and MOIA, separately. Kollektiv Migrantas combined these images and stories into the graphic materials ultimately produced.

The Mujeres will deliver this specially crafted information on CycleNews bicycles, as bike messengers, and in accompanying uniforms; serve as a direct point of contact between immigrant communities and government institutions; and bring first-hand feedback, ideas, hopes, and fears from immigrant communities to City officials and policymakers. CycleNews aims to strengthen direct lines of communication between policymakers and those most affected by immigration policies.

At the press conference, attendees heard from Queens Poet Joyce Sanchez of Poem Songs – Salmos de Fronteras, of Ecuadorian heritage, who performed an original poem titled Mujeres in English, Spanish, and Quechua; a singer from the New Day United Methodist Worship Team in the Bronx, Rae Wesley, who sang about immigrant rights and family; and Mobile Print Power, a multi-generational artist collective based out of Immigrant Movement International in Corona, Queens. Mobile Print Power uses silkscreen printmaking and participatory design in public space to engage communities and explore social and cultural situations.

“I’m proud of the City of New York for taking a strong stand in solidarity with our neighbors in immigrant communities working just like us to realize a better life for themselves and their families,” said Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer. “As the Chair of the Committee on Cultural Affairs, I firmly believe that art has a unique power to connect us to each other and helps to break down barriers so that all can find a sense of place and community where they live. I’m thrilled that this new collaboration between world renowned artist-in-residence Tania Bruguera, Mujeres en Movimiento, and the City of New York, will connect immigrant communities with the resources they need to feel fully protected, respected, and empowered.”

“Our City is finding new and creative ways to build trust between government and immigrant communities,” said Council Member Carlos Menchaca, Chair of the Immigration Committee. “When agencies and artists collaborate they close the divides that separate residents from City activities and services. I look forward to the work of Public Artist in Residence, Tania Bruguera, and Mujeres en Movimimento as the Cycle News project shows how art can promote mutual respect among New Yorkers.”

Bruguera was the first Public Artist in Residence announced as the program was expanded under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Other PAIRs include artist Mary Miss with the Department of Design and Construction; Bryan Doerries with the Department of Veterans Services; and The Lost Collective with the Administration for Children’s Services. More information is available on DCLA’s website.

About NYC Public Artists in Residence (PAIR) Program

Launched by the Department of Cultural Affairs in 2015, New York City’s PAIR – Public Artists in Residence – is a municipal artist residency program that embeds artists in city government to propose and implement creative solutions to pressing civic challenges. PAIR artists create lasting impact by working collaboratively and in open-ended processes to build community bonds, open channels for dialogue, and create new possibilities for those who experience and participate in the work.

About Tania Bruguera + Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA)

Bruguera asks the questions: how can immigrant communities trust the government and how, in turn, will the government demonstrate that it trusts immigrant communities? Bruguera began her research phase at MOIA in the fall of 2016. CycleNews marks her first major project with MOIA.

>  June 2017
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The role of human rights and democracy in the implementation of the EU-Cuba agreement

06.06.2017 / 09:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
European Parliament
Rue Wiertz
B-1047 Brussels

Conference

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ALDE Conference: ‘The role of human rights and democracy in the implementation of the EU-Cuba agreement’

Cuba and the EU concluded their negotiations for a Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement on 11 March 2016 and it was signed by both parties in December 2016. In view of this agreement, the ALDE Group would like to continue the debate, following its seminars organised in February 2015 and May 2016.  The European Parliament has to give its consent to the agreement in July 2017.

Program

09:00 – 09:05Opening by Pavel Telička MEP, Vice-President of the European Parliament (MEP, ALDE)

09:05 – 09:20Edita Hrdá, Managing Director of Americas of the European External Action Service

09:20 – 10:15Round Table

Pedro Fuentes-Cid (Spokesperson for the Cuban Political Presidency Council, Vice-President of the International Platform for Human Rights in Cuba, Legal Advisor and Member of the Advisory Board of the Democratic Directorate)

Sayli Navarro, (Ladies in White)

Tania Bruguera, (Cuba performance Artist and Activist. Founder of the Institute of Artivism Hannah Arendt)

10:15 – 10:45Q&A

10:45 – 10:50Closing remarks by Maria Teresa Gimenez Barbat, ALDE shadow for the EU-Cuba agreement consent procedure (MEP, ALDE)

Tania Bruguera: Talking to Power/Hablándole al Poder

16.06.2017 – 29.10.2017 / 11:00 a.m. – 06:00 p.m. Tue-Wed-Fri-Sat-Sun / 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. Thu
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
94103 San Francisco CA

Survey Exhibition

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Tania Bruguera: Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder

Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder is a survey exhibition that presents all of Bruguera’s long-term, socially engaged art projects to date. As part of the exhibition, the artist will also open a school in YBCA’s galleries. The Escuela de Arte Útil will convene weekly classes, taught by Bruguera and other prominent artist-educators, on topics such as systems of power and creative dissent. A cohort of YBCA Fellows will serve as the primary pupils, but members of the public are welcome to attend classes on a drop-in basis.

Bruguera works at the intersection of activism and performance art to address structures of power, devise new utopian models of authority, and create alternative structures that aim to transform and redistribute power. This has resulted in long-term art projects that take the form of social movements, newspapers, and schools—and even Bruguera’s own provocative self-nomination for the 2018 Cuban presidential election, a gesture meant to invite others to do the same. Time and again, she proves that systems of power can be reimagined, changed, and made more inclusive and democratic.

Escuela de Arte Útil

As part of the exhibition, YBCA and Tania Bruguera will open a fully functioning school inside of the galleries.

Classes will be held Tuesday–Thursday from 4–8PM, and students will learn about the creation of “useful art” from some of the world’s most influential practitioners. The primary pupils of the school will be a new cohort of YBCA Fellows who are working under Bruguera’s direction. Gallery visitors and the public are always welcome to join classes on a drop-in basis. See the most recent class schedule below.

Whether through self-organized groups, individual initiatives, or the rise of user-generated content, people are developing new methods and social formations to deal with issues that were once the domain of the state. These initiatives are not isolated incidents, but also part of an art history that has been neglected, yet shapes our contemporary world. This class will focus on the concept of Arte Útil, which roughly translates into English as “useful art,” while also suggesting that art can be a tool or device. Studying the shifting role of contemporary art, the class will consider factors of the practice of Arte Útil such as institutional self-criticism, active hyperrealism, a-legality, reforming capital, beneficial outcomes, sustainability, intersection with other disciplines, and modes of creative collaboration. We will have weekly guest lectures and case study presentations, as well as access to ongoing Arte Útil projects in the Bay Area.

Sin título [untitled], 2016

23.06.2017 – 22.10.2017 / 11:00 a.m. – 06:00 p.m.
Corpartes
Rosario Norte 660, nivel -2,
Las Condes, Santiago, Chile

Yoko Ono’s retrospective exhibition where she invited a group of 12 Latin American artists (six men and six women) as part of the Water Event

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Yoko Ono: Dream Come True

This is the first retrospective of artist Yoko Ono (Tokyo, 1933)—an essential figure in conceptual and participatory contemporary art—to be held in Argentina. The show includes over eighty works, among them objects, videos, films, installations, sound pieces, and recordings produced from the early sixties through the present. The cornerstone of the show is the Instructions Pieces, which Ono has been working on for over fifty years. The artist will travel to Buenos Aires in June to attend the opening.

Through her works, Ono has created an array of relationships with viewers, inviting them to play an active role in her art’s creative process. She uses a clear language to produce objects, events, rituals, and actions that are consummated, both materially and mentally, by the audience.

Simple and poetic messages, the “instructions” invite viewers to perform certain actions. They formulate questions about the conceptual basis of the work of art, viewers’ participation in its material production, the ephemeral, and the desanctification of the art object.

The exhibition project contains two discrete instances: the show itself in MALBA’s galleries and the exhibition and communication of many works in the public space (signs, buses, billboards), the mass media (newspapers, magazines, radio, and television), and the social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr), where Ono is also a point of reference.

The Francis Effect

23.06.2017 – 30.07.2017 / 10:00 a.m. – 06:00 p.m. Tue/Fri-Sun – 10:00 a.m. – 08:00 p.m. Wed/Thu
Kunsthaus Zürich
Heimplatz 1
CH–8001 Zürich
Switzerland

Exhibition

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Action!

Art lives from participation

Why are ephemeral and process-oriented forms of art back in fashion? In our “Action!” exhibition we set out to answer this question, examining the concept in both its formal and its political sense. 

The refugee crisis, the resurgence of right-wing populist parties and the questioning of fundamental democratic values are impacting art as well. Artists are voicing opposition to trends towards curtailing individual freedom. 

As long ago as 1967, Allan Kaprow called for the modern museum to become an ‘agency for action’, serving as a platform for social engagement. Now, a young generation of artists are revisiting the heyday of performances, happenings and art actions in the 1960s and 1970s. For its part, the Kunsthaus is opening up a space for live actions and performances. Historical performances are being revived or presented in new stagings, while our five-week exhibition presents works in which you too can be an active participant. Why not get involved and share? Upload your sounds and pictures, sign a postcard to the Pope.

Includes works by: Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978), Francis Alÿs (b. 1959), Nina Beier (b. 1975), !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Trisha Brown (1936–2017), Tania Bruguera (b. 1968), Lucinda Childs (b. 1940) / Ruth Childs ( b. 1984), Guy Debord (1931–1994), Valie Export (b. 1940), William Forsythe (b. 1949), Simone Forti (b. 1935), Guerrilla Girls, Sharon Hayes (b. 1970), Adelita Husni-Bey (b. 1985), Florence Jung (b. 1986), Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) / San Keller (b. 1971), Georg Keller (b. 1981), Dieter Meier (b. 1945), Musée de la danse / Boris Charmatz (b. 1973) / Aernout Mik (b. 1962), Yoko Ono (b. 1933), Ahmet Ögut (b. 1981), Adrian Piper (b. 1948), Alexandra Pirici (b. 1982), Rimini Protokoll, Tracey Rose (b. 1974), Tino Sehgal (b. 1976), Marinella Senatore (b. 1977), Cally Spooner (b. 1983), Koki Tanaka (b. 1975).

Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (Version for Greece)

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Summer Nostos Festival 2017

As part of its broader philanthropic activity and its continuous support to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) establishes -and supports through an exclusive grant- the open, week-long events that are held every June at the SNFCC. Admission to the events is free for all participants.

This year’s events will take place between June 18th and June 25th, 2017, and the Festival is introduced to the public under the name Summer Nostos Festival (www.SNFestival.org), suggesting a collective “return” to all those things and ideas that the arrival of the summer means for each one of us. The establishment of the SNFestival comes as a natural development of the successful open events held in previous years (2016: Metamorphosis. The SNFCC to the World, 2015: Light Up the Night at the Stavros Niarchos Park), both of which received a warm response from visitors. 

The Summer Nostos Festival will consist of a continuously enriched cultural, educational and sports program, addressed to people of all ages and interests, aiming to provide an annual creative meeting point, fostering expression and the exchange of ideas. 

The central programmatic areas of SNFestival 2017 unfold around music, dance, sports, open discussions, arts and architecture and, of course, include activities for children and families, while the program is complemented by additional events, such as screenings, guided tours and magical happenings! This year’s program will embrace over 75 different events in the course of 8 days, with the participation of 130 international and 160 Greek artists, as one of the Festival’s main objectives is to encourage collaborations between local and international artists, to promote the exchange of expertise and experience, and to set the ground for creative synergies or collaborations 

The cultural offering, curated by the SNF Team in collaboration with Limor Tomer, Concerts & Lectures General Manager at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, as well as a team of consultants-experts in their respective fields, includes classical and contemporary classical music, rock, jazz, hip-hop and pop music concerts, performances and installations, lectures and movie screenings with live music, DJ sets, dance and many other events. All the above will activate multiple areas of the SNFCC, both indoors and outdoors, while two stages will be set up at the Stavros Niarchos Park, and a new stage will be set at the Canal. 

With particular emphasis on the music program, the line-up will include, among others, artist Leonidas Kavakos in a unique recital, Yo La Tengo, one of the most influential bands from the American indie rock scene, the atmospheric British group The Cinematic Orchestra, the sensual voice of Belgian jazz singer Melanie De Biasio, the pioneering representative of the Greek electronic music scene Lena Platonos, the minimalist group Bang On A Can All-stars, the dynamic performer of the Greek alternative scene Monika in a collaboration with the ERT Symphonic Orchestra, the rapper, slam poet and New York Times and Esquire columnist, Saul Williams, the popular Greek band Melisses, the DJs Alex Cruz and Jonathan Toubin, Dimitris Kalantzis with his quintet and Kamerata. Music journalist Kafka (Katerina Kafentzi), following up on her personal project “Kafka Takes Notes”, will present and coordinate Q&A sessions between the audience and the artists, held before the live acts.

The Festival’s dance program presents the radical and daring choreographer Elizabeth Streb, in a performance that challenges the physical limits of dancers, and Apostolia Papadamaki in collaboration with Heidi Latsky Dance.

In regards to visual arts and architecture, Robert Storr and a team of acclaimed curators will present the program “Only Connect” -as a response to British novelist E.M. Foster’s mandate of the same title- a selection of video and performances that address the problems and possibilities associated with being connected at a time when the connections among people –as individuals, as groups, as communities, as nations- are under extreme stress. At the same time, during the SNFestival, the exhibition “Renzo Piano Building Workshop – Piece by Piece” will also be on show, presenting models, drawings, photographs and videos from architectural projects by the international firm Renzo Piano Building Workshop, realized during the last 30 years. The presentation of the exhibition at the SNFCC marks the completion of its tour which commenced in 2013 at the Gagosian Gallery in New York, where the show was solely funded by the SNF. The exhibition was later presented in Padua in 2014 at the Palazzo della Ragione, as part of the International Biennial Architecture, and at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai at 2015. The SNFCC’s visionary architect, Renzo Piano, will be in Athens once again, this time to discuss his work, philosophy and inspiration with the New York Times architectural critic Michael Kimmelman.

Physical exercise and sports remain at the heart of the activities hosted at the SNFCC. This summer, as part of the Summer Nostos Festival, the race SNF RUN: Running into the Future, returns for the 3rd year on Friday, June 23rd, on the occasion of the International Olympic Day. This time, in addition to the 6k race from Panathenaic Stadium to the SNFCC, an enriched route of 10k will also take place. In parallel, the 1k run for Special Olympics athletes will be organized once again. The race, along with a number of additional sports activities to be held as part of the Festival, is organized in collaboration with NGO “Regeneration & Progress”. In addition, the legendary chess master Garry Kasparov will be with us for yet another year, inviting Greece’s younger generation to a simultaneous chess encounter.

With a number of collaborations, the Greek National Opera (GNO) and the National Library of Greece (NLG) will play a vital role in the Festival. The GNO will participate in the programming with a performance by its new artistic director Giorgos Koumendakis, and a dance piece choreographed by its ballet director Antonis Foniadakis, performed by members of the GNO ballet and independent dancers. Respectively, the NLG will present a series of talks and an interactive exhibition on reading. 

The week-long events, which aim to be a large, open celebration of public encounters, fun and optimism, will be complemented by guided tours, movie screenings, discussions, creative and recreational programs for children and the amazing magic tricks of internationally acclaimed magician Mark Mitton

Admission to events is free for all.

>  July 2017
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Escuela de Arte Útil

20.06.2017 – 11.08.2017 / Tue/Wed/Thu – 4:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA

Escuela de Arte Útil

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Escuela de Arte Útil

As part of the exhibition, YBCA and Tania Bruguera will open a fully functioning school inside of the galleries.

Classes will be held Tuesday–Thursday from 4–8PM, and students will learn about the creation of “useful art” from some of the world’s most influential practitioners. The primary pupils of the school will be a new cohort of YBCA Fellows who are working under Bruguera’s direction. Gallery visitors and the public are always welcome to join classes on a drop-in basis. See the most recent class schedule below.

Whether through self-organized groups, individual initiatives, or the rise of user-generated content, people are developing new methods and social formations to deal with issues that were once the domain of the state. These initiatives are not isolated incidents, but also part of an art history that has been neglected, yet shapes our contemporary world. This class will focus on the concept of Arte Útil, which roughly translates into English as “useful art,” while also suggesting that art can be a tool or device. Studying the shifting role of contemporary art, the class will consider factors of the practice of Arte Útil such as institutional self-criticism, active hyperrealism, a-legality, reforming capital, beneficial outcomes, sustainability, intersection with other disciplines, and modes of creative collaboration. We will have weekly guest lectures and case study presentations, as well as access to ongoing Arte Útil projects in the Bay Area.

Invited guest lecturers are Alistair Hudson, Debt Collective, Jeanne van Heeswijk, WochenKlausur, Rick Lowe; other guests whose projects are included in the archive: Debt Collective – Bay Area, Damon Rich and Jae Shin, Suzanne Lacy, Daniel Godinez Nivon, The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Bonnie Ora Sherk.

The program is coordinated by Alessandra Saviotti and facilitated by Gemma Medina Estupiñan (Asociación de Arte Útil).


Dignity has no nationality

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Pledges of Allegiance

Pledges of Allegiance is a serialized commission of sixteen flags, each created by an acclaimed artist. “We realized we needed a space to resist that was defined not in opposition to a symbol, but in support of one, and so we created a permanent space. The flag seemed an ideal form to build that space around both practically and symbolically,” says Creative Time Artistic Director Nato Thompson.

Each flag points to an issue the artist is passionate about, a cause they believe is worth fighting for, and speaks to how we might move forward collectively. Conceived in response to the current political climate, Pledges of Allegiance aims to inspire a sense of community among cultural institutions, and begin articulating the urgent response our political moment demands.

Participating artists include Tania Bruguera, Alex Da Corte, Jeremy Deller, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ann Hamilton, Robert Longo, Josephine Meckseper, Marilyn Minter, Vik Muniz, Jayson Musson, Ahmet Ögüt, Yoko Ono, Trevor Paglen, Pedro Reyes, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Nari Ward.

Pledges of Allegiance officially launched on Flag Day, June 14th. Each month a new flag will be raised on a flagpole atop Creative Time’s headquarters at 59 East 4th Street, and at partner sites nationwide.

>  August 2017
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Escuela de Arte Útil

20.06.2017 – 11.08.2017 / Tue/Wed/Thu – 4:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA

Escuela de Arte Útil

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Escuela de Arte Útil

As part of the exhibition, YBCA and Tania Bruguera will open a fully functioning school inside of the galleries.

Classes will be held Tuesday–Thursday from 4–8PM, and students will learn about the creation of “useful art” from some of the world’s most influential practitioners. The primary pupils of the school will be a new cohort of YBCA Fellows who are working under Bruguera’s direction. Gallery visitors and the public are always welcome to join classes on a drop-in basis. See the most recent class schedule below.

Whether through self-organized groups, individual initiatives, or the rise of user-generated content, people are developing new methods and social formations to deal with issues that were once the domain of the state. These initiatives are not isolated incidents, but also part of an art history that has been neglected, yet shapes our contemporary world. This class will focus on the concept of Arte Útil, which roughly translates into English as “useful art,” while also suggesting that art can be a tool or device. Studying the shifting role of contemporary art, the class will consider factors of the practice of Arte Útil such as institutional self-criticism, active hyperrealism, a-legality, reforming capital, beneficial outcomes, sustainability, intersection with other disciplines, and modes of creative collaboration. We will have weekly guest lectures and case study presentations, as well as access to ongoing Arte Útil projects in the Bay Area.

Invited guest lecturers are Alistair Hudson, Debt Collective, Jeanne van Heeswijk, WochenKlausur, Rick Lowe; other guests whose projects are included in the archive: Debt Collective – Bay Area, Damon Rich and Jae Shin, Suzanne Lacy, Daniel Godinez Nivon, The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Bonnie Ora Sherk.

The program is coordinated by Alessandra Saviotti and facilitated by Gemma Medina Estupiñan (Asociación de Arte Útil).

Poetic Justice

19.08.2017 – 01.04.2018 / 10:00 a.m. – 05:00 p.m.
MCA
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 E Chicago Ave
Chicago, US

Exhibition

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We are here

In honor of the MCA’s 50th anniversary, the museum presents We Are Here, a major three-part exhibition drawn from the MCA’s significant collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art. The multigenerational artists featured in the exhibition have lived and worked around the world and create works in a broad range of media, including painting, sculpture, installation, sound, film, and video. We Are Here reexamines these works from the vantage point of our present moment, declaring that art and culture have the power to change the way that we see and act in the world.

The exhibition overturns the traditional model of the anniversary exhibition, focusing instead on the relationship between artist and viewer. Museums’ collections and the knowledge and ideas they represent are not static. They are assembled over time, encapsulating the momentary interests of their curators, donors, and publics. The meaning of a work may shift based on a viewer’s perspective or the passage of time. To demonstrate this idea, three of the museum’s curators mined our collection to develop We Are Here in three sections based on themes that resonate with our time and relate to our inner, outer, and social lives.

I Am You, located on the museum’s second floor, gathers works that underscore how each of our unique social and natural landscapes shape a diverse cultural environment. It includes works by recognized artists such as Francis Bacon, Marisol, and Shirin Neshat, as well as younger artists, such as Jonathas de Andrade and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—all of whom rely upon personal experiences to illuminate the vastness of contemporary life. It presents our interior universe as part of a larger constellation of individuals.

In October, two additional parts of the exhibition, You Are Here and We are Everywhere, open on the museum’s fourth floor. You Are Here examines how the role of the viewer has changed over time, especially since the 1960s, from passive onlooker to active participant. Artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Robert Morris forge a new physical relationship between the viewer and the art object. Other artists, including Huang Yong-Ping, explore representations of political figures and political power—specifically, how the body may be subjected to power.

We Are Everywhere, showcases artists who borrow from popular culture—soup cans, movie stills, neon signage, or floor tiles—to consider the ways that our social lives inflect our perceptions of the world around us. Artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Bruce Nauman, as well as Chicago Imagists Karl Wirsum and Roger Brown, re-present and reveal social realities that may otherwise go unnoticed. Artists such as Stan Douglas, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, Jeff Koons have engaged with new forms of media to extend the reach of their own viewpoints and experiences. Barbara Kruger and Lawrence Abu Hamdan further encourage us to think twice about the power structures in which we invest, be they the notion of the state or the corporation.

Together, these three independently curated yet interrelated “chapters” invite viewers to bring their own perspectives to the museum’s collection and to think about how to be active participants in the meaning of art and its making.

I Am You is organized by José Esparza Chong Cuy, Pamela Alper Associate Curator; You Are Here is organized by Naomi Beckwith, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator; and We Are Everywhere is organized by Omar Kholeif, Manilow Senior Curator and Director of Global Initiatives, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

>  September 2017
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Transforma tus ideas en acciones cívicas / Transform your ideas into civic actions

07.09.2017 – 01.10.2017 / 10.00 a.m. – 06.00 p.m. – Closed on Tuesday
CARTEC – Cava Arte Contemporanea
Galleria Comunale d’Arte di Cagliari
Public Gardens
Largo Giuseppe Dessì
Cagliari, Italy

Video screening

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CampoSud . A Visionary Camp
Gramsci project

A project by Praxis network and Sardegna Teatro
Curated by Giulia Palomba and Maria Paola Zedda
Head of Scientific Research: Alessandra Marchi

CampoSud is an island of action and thought, temporary and autonomous, where artists, curators, philosophers and intellectuals are invited to explore the tension between aesthetics and praxis, between performative and political practices in the field of contemporary art.
Originating from a reflection on the Southern Question, initiated by Antonio Gramsci this past century, CampoSud projects and conjugates Gramscian thought within the present, in the aim to confront contemporary issues such as migration, new citizenships, the right to education, gender politics, ecological thought.
CampoSud is a space of research and reflection in which the most diverse languages converge. Multiple experiences of thinkers, artists and participants are linked by the fil rouge of praxis.
South is to be interpreted as a revolutionary practice far from the hegemonic though; it is not as a geographical dimension but as a poetic space, state of mind, revolutionary, aesthetic and political praxis.
Four days of School of Revolution – a lab of ideas coexistence inspired by the free School of politic – conceived by Gramsci during his detention in the island of Ustica, will transform the public spaces of Giardini Pubblici, CARTEC and Teatro Massimo into a platform of sharing, research, participation, and reflections.
Lectures, screenings and experience sharing are some of the necessary tools for an active critical analysis of the sociopolitical issues addressed. Performances, rituals and collective constructions of imaginaries complete the activities of CampoSud and shape a new in-progress space for sharing and meeting, contamination and experimentations, within which communion constitutes a language of itself, a poetic and political tool to imagine a different reality.

Artists: Andreco, Tania Bruguera, Gelitin, Thomas Hirschhorn, Laboratory of Militant Communication, Claudia Losi, Maria Papadimitriou, Jonas Staal,

The Francis Effect

08.09.2017 – 11.11.2017 / Wed – Sat 11:00 a.m. – 06:00 p.m.
Samson Gallery
450 Harrison Avenue &/@ 29 Thayer Street
Boston, MA, United States

Exhibition

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Immigrancy

alien, immigrant, expat, asylum seeker, refugee, undocumented, tourist, fugitive, exiled, homeless

All of the above are words used to describe people and situations related to the individuals who come to live in, travel throughout, or escape from, a country or condition. Every single artist in this exhibition has been one of the above. Despite their situational differences, all peoples navigating immigrancy hold a powerful position. This exhibition is additive. These works of thought will come and go as their creators. The exhibition will change. It will never be static.

The noun we assign to each differing situation has a distinct connotation and stigma attached; we see manifestations of these differing connotations in legislation, in travel bans, in fetishized radical fantasies of revolution, and in the selection of words themselves (e.g. the use of ‘expat’ mostly for people of European descent and ‘immigrant’ for people of color).

…invaluable and threatening to the new leaders in the U.S. Not only are immigrants among America’s most defenseless residents—making them the easiest to scapegoat—they also bear inconvenient witness by their very presence to a history of authoritarianism that complicates the power-hungry narratives of figures like…

Artists must take a cue from America’s most vulnerable residents: its refugees. Before you get back to work at your studio or office, assume, like many of America’s most defenseless immigrants, that everything you treasure— home, family, well being your own hard-fought place in the world—can be taken away from you tomorrow.

 Confessions of an American Refugee, Christian Viveros-Fauné


With Immigrancy, Samsøñ is presenting its final exhibition at 450 Harrison Avenue/29 Thayer Street. With this presentation, we announce our future status as émigré: asylum seeker of culture, nomadic contributor, transitional refugee, fugitive participant, and exiled aspirant in the artistic diaspora.

Boston’s South End has been home for almost 14 years: we have seen the neighborhood, climate and audience change. September is when the students from all over arrive in Boston; it’s always stressful to move all you have to what you think you want. Who and what helps? FEMA? EAS? NOAA? DACA? IKEA? MAGA? TSA? Transnational corporations with the same rights as individuals?!

We have seen local collectors, curators and critics falter and we have seen galleries exhibiting the same demographic of artists, time and time again.

We have decided to pivot our focus: Samson is in the process of transitioning to a private advisorial service with non-profit status. Samson is not closing: in a way, it’s expanding. We will be continuing with art fairs, satellite projects (New Orleans, LA & Atlanta, GA), alternative domestic spaces (Boston, MA & Wellington, FL) and traveling container exhibitions (Istanbul & Havana) in hopes of adding to the diversity of culture and thought.

Constant growth with resources that don’t grow? 

Artists: Kader Attia, Nadia Ayari, Meriem Bennani, Ashley Bickerton, Tania Bruguera, Carlos Jimenez Cahua, Jimmie Durham, Lalla Essaydi, Jonah Freeman & Michael Phelan, Ariel Basson Freiberg, Regina Jose Galindo, Jeffrey Gibson, Josephine Halvorson, Lucy Kim, Andy Li, Glenn Ligon, Carlos Martiel, Gabriel Martinez, Andrew Mowbray, Gabriel Orozco, Daniel Pflumm, William Pope l, Lisa Sigal, Alexandria Smith, Kianja Strobert,  Umar Rashid (frohawk two feathers), Ai Wei Wei, Anicka Yi.

The Arte Útil archive

09.09.2017 – 07.01.2018 / Fri 03:30 p.m. – 06:30 p.m. / Sat-Sun 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 03:30 p.m. – 06:30 p.m.
Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea
via del campanile,
13 Foligno (PG)
Italy

Exhibition

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MANUFATTO IN SITU / 10 LANDSCAPES

A project by Viaindustriae

Manufatto in Situ / 10 landscapes is an archive – exhibition on contemporary landscape, an inquiry on natural and urban spaces crossed by artistic works / artefacts from 1962 to the present, in Umbria, Italy and abroad. It si the result of a research led by artists, curators, architects in the intersection between art, nature and architecture. Curated by Viaindustriae, Manufatto in Situ describes 10 years of artistic residency in the Umbrian landscape (Art Park in Cancelli, Val Menotre, Foligno downtow, Foligno industrial area, Perugia San Pietro’s garden, Natural History Museum of Casalina, Isola Maggiore of Lake Trasimeno). Based on a “site-specific” practice, the inquiry gathers traces, works, documents that, in the occasion of this exhibition, dialaogue with other regional and extra-regional environmental artistic contexts.

The exhibition develops through 10 thematic tables, presenting works of art, photographs, drawings, writings, artist’s books, ephemera, posters, political posters, extensive documentation of the complex geography of the landscape, art, public space and common goods.

Artists: A Constructed World, Vincenzo Agnetti, Mario Airò, Gianfranco Baruchello, Joseph Beuys, Caretto&Spagna, Chto Delat, Gino De Dominicis, Fernando De Filippi, Lucio Fontana, Piero Gilardi, Stefano Graziani, Kinkaleri, Sol Lewitt, Enzo Mari, Luca Maria Patella, Anne & Patrick Poirier, Raqs Media Collective, Mauro Staccioli, Ufo, Giuseppe Uncini, Vito Acconci, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tania Bruguera, Alberto Burri, John Cage, Alexander Calder, Mario Ceroli, Enrico Cattaneo, Giuseppe Chiari, Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Giancarlo De Carlo, Nico Dockx, Luciano Fabro, Emilio Fantin, Francesco Fonassi, Buckminster Fuller, Dino Gavina, Aldo Grazzi, Licio Isolani, Mikhail Karikis, Jannis Kounellis, Ugo La Pietra, Myriam Laplante, Leoncillo Leonardi, Francesco Lo Savio, Eliseo Mattiacci, Gino Marotta, Virgilio Massani, Amedeo Martegani, Maurizio Nannucci, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Giancarlo Norese, Ico Parisi, Claudio Parmiggiani, Cesare Pietroiusti, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Umberto Raponi, Superstudio, Cy Twombly.

Archives: ASAT Archivio Storico Acciaierie Terni, Parco Arte Vivente Torino, Archivio Mauro Staccioli, Biblioteca Comunale Volterra, Fondazione Cassa Risparmio Volterra, Comune di Gubbio, Archivio Enrico Crispolti, Archivio Maurizio Cancelli, Progetto Diogene Torino, Archivio Progetto Oreste, Neon Campobase Bologna, Fonoteca Regionale O. Trotta, Orto Botanico San Pietro, Cittadellarte Biella, Archivio Arte Útil, Archivio Studio A’87, Radio Papesse Firenze, Archivio Flash Art, Black Market International, Archivio Moreno Orazi, Archivio Licio Isolani, Comune di Volterra, Archivio Sergio Borghesi, Comune di Campello sul Clitunno, Fondazione Centro Studi Piero Gilardi Torino.

Monument to New Immigrants

16.09.2017 – 19.11.2017 / Always accessible
City Hall Area
Philadelphia
US

Temporary Public Sculpture

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Monument Lab

Monument Lab: A Public Art and History Project operates around a central guiding question: What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia? This line of inquiry is aimed at building civic dialogue and stoking historical imagination as forces for social change.

From September 16–November 19, the Monument Lab curatorial team and Mural Arts have installed temporary prototype monuments by 20 artists across 10 sites in Philadelphia’s iconic public squares and neighborhood parks. These site-specific, socially engaged artworks are presented together with research labs, where creative monument proposals are collected from Philadelphians and visitors. The proposals will become a dataset of public speculation presented in a final report the city. During the exhibition, the entire collection is on view at the Morris Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Philadelphia is a city full of monuments and memorials. Philadelphia is also a city full of monumental histories, many of which are little known, obscured, or simply unacknowledged. These underrepresented histories often exist in tension with officially acknowledged narratives. The projects that make up Monument Lab address issues of social justice and solidarity, including matters of race, gender, sexuality, class, and national belonging. The monuments proposed through this exhibition are made of stone and bronze, as well as recycled materials, images, sounds, and the byproducts of community process.

Five years ago, Monument Lab emerged from a series of classroom conversations. In 2015, it grew to include the installation of a pair of outdoor classrooms in the courtyard of City Hall through a discovery phase funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. In the continued spirit of collaborative learning, this current citywide exhibition with Mural Arts uses monuments to understand the ways we live together with our histories, our ideas for uplift, and our urgencies. As we experience this moment of intensity and uncertainty around public monuments—especially those that symbolize the enduring legacies of racial injustice and social inequality—we are reminded that we must find new, critical ways to reflect on the monuments we have inherited and imagine future monuments we have yet to build.

Drawing on meaningful modes of social engagement through creative response, the project is an invitation to not only answer a shared question but to explore, excavate, and reflect multiple forms of historical knowledge. Rather than asking for only the feasible or practical, Monument Lab seeks ideas that speak to the evolving core values and visions of the city.

Artists: Tania Bruguera, Mel Chin, Kara Crombie, Tyree Guyton, Hans Haacke, David Hartt, Sharon Hayes, King Britt & Joshua Mays, KLIP Collective, Duane Linklater, Emeka Ogboh, Karyn Olivier, Michelle Angela Ortiz, Kaitlin Pomerantz, RAIR – Recycled Artist in Residency, Alexander Rosenberg, Jamel Shabazz, Hank Willis Thomas, Shira Walinsky & Southeast by Southeast, Marisa Williamson

The Monument Lab Curatorial Team is led by Paul M. Farber and Ken Lum.

The Francis Effect

16.09.2017 – 25.02.2018 / Wed, Thu, Sat and Sun 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. – Fri 11:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
molaa
Museum of Latin American Art
628 Alamitos Avenue
Long Beach, CA 90802
US

Group Exhibition

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Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago

Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, curated by Tatiana Flores, is MOLAA’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibition. It is a major survey exhibition of twenty-first century art of the Caribbean that employs the archipelago as an analytical framework. The exhibition is divided into four thematic sections: Conceptual Mappings, Perpetual Horizons, Landscape Ecologies and Representational Acts and features over 80 artists with roots  in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, Aruba, St. Maarten, St. Martin, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Trinidad, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Barbados, and St. Vincent whose works have informed and shaped those themes.The exhibition includes painting, installation art, sculpture, photography, video, and performance.

Conceptual Mappings

Adler Guerrier, Charles Campbell, Ellen Spijkstra, Engel Leonardo, Ewan Atkinson, Firelei Báez, Glenda León, Ibrahim Miranda, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Juana Valdes, Karlo Andrei Ibarra, Kim Brown, Limber Vilorio, Lisa C Soto, Maria Elena González, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, María Martínez-Cañas and Kim Brown, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Nyugen Smith, Samir Bernárdez,  Scherezade Garcia, Tania Bruguera

Perpetual Horizons

Andil Gosine, Blue Curry, Carlos Martiel, Fausto Ortiz, Fermín Ceballos, Humberto Díaz,  Janine Antoni, Jason Mena, Jeannette Ehlers, Joiri Minaya, Jorge Luis Bradshaw, Laura Castro, Manuel Piña, Marianela Orozco, Nadia Huggins, Quisqueya Henríquez, René Emil Bergsma, Roberto Stephenson, Tony Cruz, Yoan Capote

Landscape Ecologies

Allora & Calzadilla, Angel Otero, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Charles Juhasz-Alvarado,  Christopher Cozier, David Gumbs, Deborah Jack, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Frances Gallardo,  Glenda Salazar Leyva, Guerra de la Paz, Jean-Luc de Laguarigue, Lilian Garcia-Roig, Lynn Parotti, Marc Latamie, Natusha Croes, Nicole Awai, Ricardo de Armas, Sofia Maldonado, Tony Capellán, Vladimir Cybil Charlier

Representational Acts

Antonia Wright, Barbara Prézeau, Camille Chedda, Charo Oquet, Cosmo Whyte, David Bade, Didier William, Marlon Griffith, Ebony G. Patterson, Edgar Endress with incarcerated Haitians, Elia Alba, Ernest Breleur, Jimmy Robert, Jorge Pineda, Kishan Munroe, Maksaens Denis, Miguel Luciano, Myrlande Constant, Raquel Paiewonsky, Sandra Stephens and David Sansone, Sasha Huber, Sofía Gallisá Muriente

Endgame by Samuel Beckett

22.09.2017 – 01.10.2017 / Tue to Fri: 07:30 p.m. – Fri 22.09: 09:00 p.m. – Sat 05:00 p.m. and 09:00 p.m. – Sun: 03:30 p.m and 07:00 pm
Nanterre-Amandiers, centre dramatique national
7 avenue Pablo Picasso
92000 Nanterre
France

Theatre Play

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Endgame

An artist, performer or, as she defines herself, an artivist, Tania Bruguera, has taken it upon herself to write her own story of Cuba. She does so in terms that are free and uninhibited. This time around she has chosen the words of Beckett, in an End Game the title of which alone is indicative of a whole programme.
In a country where speaking up is something not to be taken for granted, Tania Bruguera has never stopped searching for different modes of expression. Her aim: to write Cuba’s story in her own terms. Her work is situated at the crossroads between the visual arts and performance. By inviting anonymous individuals to take to the microphone in the emblematic Square of the Revolution, her concern was, and still is, to give others the chance to speak rather than taking it away from them. The Cuban government did not back down, but then neither did Tania Bruguera: in 2015, in La Havana, she founded the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism. Its objective was to highlight the need for a “civil literacy campaign” in order to regain a lost freedom of speech. Her decision to bring End Game to the stage reflects a desire to reconnect with words. Words which are also those of tyranny: “I’ll give you just enough to keep you from dying”, as Hamm says to Clov. Around ten years ago, the words of Beckett were the inspiration behind the series of installations she put together under the title of Study for End Game. This time round, the artivist embraces the text body and soul, and gives it a voice. End Game opens with the following programmatic words: “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished”. Now, it’s over to Tania Bruguera.

Directed by Tania Bruguera
With, Brian Mendes, Jess Barbagallo and two local actors to be announced

Architects, Dotan Gertler Studio
Voices, Jacob Roberts, Chloe Brooks
Lighting, Rui Monteiro
Sound, Rui Lima & Sérgio Martins
Sound Engineer, Pedro Lima
Sound Recording, Luke Martinez
Assistant director, Mitchell Polonsky
Technical direction, Patrícia Gilvaia

Production: BoCA Biennial (Lisbon/Oporto) // Production direction: Ana Rita Osório // Executive production: Francisca Aires // Co-production São João National Theatre (Oporto, PT) ; Colectivo 84 (PT) ; Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (Nanterre, FR) / Festival d’Automne à Paris (Paris, FR) ; Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels, BE) ; International Summer Festival Kampnagel (Hamburg, DE) ; Estudio Bruguera// With support from the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès as part of its New Settings programme. With the support of Onda
Premiered on 20 April 2017 at BoCA Biennial (Lisbon/Porto)

Arte Útil: Una herramienta de cambio

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Ideas – Pensemos Juntos El Futuro

The Department of Art of the UTDT, along with the Secretariat of Federal Integration and International Cooperation of the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, are pleased to present a conference of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera on art, education and politics.

Speakers: Gérard Biard, Tania Bruguera, Kevin Esvelt, Luciano Floridi, Bernard-Hénri Levy, Azar Nafisi, Anna-Christina Nobre, Tariq Ramadan, Sergio Ramírez, Carlo Ratti, David Rieff, Julia Shaw, Charles Villa-Vicencio

Arte, Educación y Política

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IDEAS. “Pensemos juntos el futuro”

The Department of Art of the UTDT, along with the Secretariat of Federal Integration and International Cooperation of the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, are pleased to present a conference of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera on art, education and politics.

Second International Arte Útil Summit: Does Art Have Users?

27.09.2017 – 30.09.2017 / Wed 04:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. – Thu 10:30 a.m. – 09:00 p.m. – Fri 10:00 a.m. – 08:30 p.m. – Sat 11:00 a.m. – 06:00 p.m.
SFMOMA
151 Third Street
San Francisco, CA
YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS
701 Mission Street
San Francisco
USA

Symposium

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Does Art Have Users?

Does Art Have Users? is a symposium exploring art in terms of its use value — that is, whether and how art can be used as a tool — focusing on the roles that individuals and constituencies play in socially engaged artistic practices. From the platforms needed to support community-created artwork to the role of documentation and archives, participants will discuss the varied ways in which artists work with individuals and organizations at the intersection of art and activism to imagine new contributions to social, civic, and political life.
Bringing together the leading voices of the Arte Útil (Useful Art) movement, along with participants from related fields, the event incorporates the second international Arte Útil Summit. Focusing on specific needs and urgent questions animating Bay Area neighborhoods, the symposium includes panel discussions, presentations, and workshops that explore art and its potential usership from a wide variety of viewpoints. Topics include immigration, youth development policy, and civic knowledge sharing.

Program
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Mission District Field Trip: Walking Tour with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
Meeting place: Bernal Heights Park Parking Lot, 3450 Folsom Street
4–5:30 p.m.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Panel: Can We Teach Artists to Be Useful?
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
10:30 a.m.–noon

Panel: What Can We Learn about Art’s Social Uses?
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
12:30–2 p.m.

Panel: What Happens at the Intersection of Art and Data?
SFMOMA, Phyllis Wattis Theater
4–5:30 p.m.

Panel: What Does a Useful Museum Look Like?
SFMOMA, Phyllis Wattis Theater
6–7:30 p.m.

Opening: Public Knowledge Library
SFMOMA, Koret Education Center
7:30–9 p.m.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Panel: How Do Artists Create More Inclusive Systems of Power?
SFMOMA, Phyllis Wattis Theater
10:30 a.m.–noon

Panel: What Can Public Knowledge Be?
SFMOMA, Phyllis Wattis Theater
1–2:30 p.m.

Panel: How Can Libraries Incubate Contemporary Art?
SFMOMA, Phyllis Wattis Theater
3–4:30 p.m.

Panel + Performance: What Is the Sound of Your San Francisco?
San Francisco Public Library, Main Library, Koret Auditorium
7–8:30 p.m.

Saturday, September 30, 2017

Workshop: In Print/Imprint: Designing Political Print Pieces with Users in Mind
SFMOMA, Koret Education Center, Studio 2
11 a.m.–1 p.m.

Workshop: Seeing Social Practice
SFMOMA, Koret Education Center, Studio 1
11 a.m.–1 p.m.

Roundtable: Can Art Be a Tool for Thinking in New Ways about Civic Life?
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
2–6 p.m.

Part of SFMOMA’s Phyllis Wattis Distinguished Lecture Series, as well as our Public Knowledge initiative, Does Art Have Users? is presented in partnership with the Asociation de Arte Útil and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and its exhibition Tania Bruguera: Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder.

This event series is free; museum admission is not required. Seating for each event is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

>  October 2017
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On implementing Arte Útil

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On implementing Arte Útil

Tania Bruguera’s socially engaged, political projects apply the aesthetics of art to everyday life. Focusing on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness, they are intensive interventions into the institutional structure of collective memory, education, and politics. In this talk, Bruguera will discuss her summer 2017 YBCA project, Arte Útil, and will explore the concept of “arte útil” a term that, when activated, harnesses the potential of art to shift perspectives and initiate social, political, and cultural change.

Participating Units: Arts + Design Initiative; Arts Research Center; Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Wiesenfeld Visiting Artist Lecture Series

Tractions: Art talks with Tania Bruguera

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TRACTION: Art Talks with Tania Bruguera

Bruguera’s focus on how art interacts with the everyday political life––and on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness–– makes her the ideal artist to launch UCSC’s Institute of the Arts and Sciences new speaking series, TRACTION: Art Talks. The series, organized for 2017/18  in collaboration with Jennifer González and A. Laurie Palmer, brings internationally renowned artists to the UC Santa Cruz campus. The series is designed around the conviction that the arts offer profound insight into the most pressing ecological, cultural, political, and social questions of our time. TRACTION exposes students, faculty, and the broader public to the concerns of contemporary art, always with an eye on how those concerns reflect the larger world.

At UC Santa Cruz, Bruguera will discuss her long-term projects as intensive interventions on the institutional structure of collective memory, education and politics. She will give an overview of how her practice aims to expose the social effects of political forces and present global issues of power, migration, censorship and repression through participatory works that turn “viewers” into “citizens.” UCSC History of Art and Visual Culture professor Jennifer González will then join her in conversation.

Bruguera was awarded an Honoris Causa by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, selected one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, shortlisted for the #Index100 Freedom of Expression Award, a Herb Alpert Award winner, a Radcliffe and Yale World Fellow, and the first artist-in-residence in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. She established the Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art) program at Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and has recently opened the Hannah Arendt International Institute for Artivism, in Havana – a school, exhibition space and think tank for activist artists and Cubans. Born 1968 in Havana, Cuba, Bruguera lives and works in Havana, New York and Cambridge.

The Francis Effect – Transforma tus ideas en acciones cívicas/Transform your ideas into civic actions

07.10.2017 – 08.10.2017 / 12:00 a.m. – 00:00 a.m.
BAK basis voor actuele kunst
Pauwstraat 13A,
3512 TG Utrecht
NL

Exhibition

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Propositions #1: What We Mean

“Propositions #1: What We Mean” is the inaugural performative conference of BAK’s long-term research itinerary “Propositions for Non-Fascist Living,” prompted by the dramatic resurfacing and normalization of historical and contemporary fascisms in our present. Through impromptu artworks, lectures, readings, discussions, screenings, performances, and explorations of the assembly—of being together—as an art form, it opens up a space for politico-aesthetic experiments practicing art as imagination, thought, and action intervening in the contemporary. The gathering takes place in a makeshift environment amid the renovation of BAK’s new venue and brings together diverse publics with the BAK 2017–2018 Fellows, as well as other artists, scholars, and activists to take on the pressing concerns of our time.


Contributors include BAK 2017–2018 Fellows: Sepake Angiama; Isshaq Al-Barbary and Diego Segatto (Campus in Camps); Matthijs de Bruijne; Luigi Coppola; Quinsy Gario; Ola Hassanain; Otobong Nkanga; Wendelien van Oldenborgh; and Pelin Tan.


Other contributors, who will be present either in person, in work, or in video, include, among others: Nico Angiuli; Kader Attia; Amy Balkin; Yael Bartana; Tania Bruguera; Susan Buck-Morss; Danilo Correale; Dilar Dirik; Mijke van der Drift; Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian; Stefano Harney and Fred Moten; Sanja Iveković with Angela Dimitrakaki and Antonia Majaca; Hiwa K; Karrabing Film Collective; Evi Lachana (with Otobong Nkanga); Charl Landvreugd (with Wendelien van Oldenborgh); Delaine Le Bas; Isabell Lorey; Sven Lütticken; Migrant Domestic Workers network FNV (with Matthijs de Bruijne); Aernout Mik; Ahmet ÖÄŸüt; Antonis Pittas; Elizabeth A. Povinelli; Nina Power; Vijay Prashad; Oleksiy Radynski; Pedro Reyes; Marinella Senatore; Koki Tanaka; Ana Teixeira Pinto; Gloria Wekker; Giovanna Zapperi; and Vivian Ziherl.

The Francis Effect

10. 10. – 11. 11. 2017 / Wed – Sat 2:00 p.m. – 07:00 p.m.
tranzit/sk
Beskydská 12
Bratislava, SK

Exhibition

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Collection Collective. Template for a Future Model of Representation 

The project Collection Collective. Template for a Future Model of Representation explores the present-day crisis of the collection-based institution of contemporary art and identifies potential in a model of (art) collection that is simultaneously assembled, owned and run by artists and other cultural producers. A five-week-long exhibition with invited artists, a closed workshop and a public seminar with artists, lawyers, social theorists, economists, and academics are organized in an attempt to question how such a model could function.

The project considers the contemporary reciprocities between a collection’s usefulness without use and its market value, and between meaning-making and financial capitalization. It observes how institutions of contemporary art opt for blockbuster shows with high visitor numbers whilst their own collections lie in storage; or how private collections are revolving more and more around collectors whose fortunes are built on suspicious businesses or financial speculation. One could also point to the transnational collections kept secret in no man’s lands between borders, the hollow flow of images in Instagram-type collecting, the speculations of the auction houses, and the artists’ collections with works by other artists.

Collection Collective does not attempt to situate itself outside these parameters, but rather aims to change the position from which cultural producers and consumers negotiate their roles. In our proposal for articulating a collective collection we seek to de-privatize the collecting subject: to rethink the relationship between self-interest and collective goal, between individual addiction and group strategy, between private taste and collective socio-political tactic and between insular neurosis and therapeutic friendship. Collection Collective. Template for a Future Model of Representation seeks to understand the practical ways in which such a subject could be articulated within a collective collection. The type of collection we propose is owned, managed and maintained by its producers. It is not defined by national or geographic determinations; it recognizes the inherent subjective grounds of its constitution and does not attempt to grow indefinitely. The Bratislava instalment of Collection Collective is offered as a template that could be replicated in other circumstances, with other people, in other forms.

Once Collection Collective ends, all works will be returned to the artists. We hope and expect that the future will see Collection Collective effectively established, yet we are open to the possibility that, until then, it remains a conceptual proposal in progress, which we are inviting you to experience and discuss in Bratislava.

Curated by: Judit Angel, Vlad Morariu, Raluca Voinea

Participating artists: Vlad Basalici, Tania Bruguera, Fokus Grupa, Jana Kapelova, Dan Mihaltianu, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova, Ilona Nemeth, Lia Perjovschi, Martin Piacek, Martha Rosler, Martina Ruzickova & Max Lysacek, Peter Szabo

Further contribution: Andi Gavril, Alena Kunicova, Peter Lenyi, Dan Perjovschi, Alexandra Pirici

Art Activism and Democratic Action

12.10.2017 – 13.10.2017 / Thu 10:00 a.m. – 07:00 p.m. Fri 08:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College
35 Henderson Cir Dr
Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504
US

Conference

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Hannah Arendt Center’s 10th Annual Fall Conference

Crises of Democracy: Thinking In Dark Times

We are experiencing a worldwide rebellion against liberal democracy. In Hungary, Russia, Turkey and other countries across Europe, right- and left-wing parties flirt with authoritarian rule. In the United States, President Donald J. Trump channels the voices of the self-described disenfranchised. Representative governments everywhere are shown to be corrupt, inefficient, and undemocratic. The great political achievement of the modern era – stable representative democracy – is everywhere under attack.

Hannah Arendt knew that democracy is tenuous. In 1970 she famously wrote:

“Representative government is in crisis today, partly because it has lost, in the course of time, all institutions that permitted the citizens’ actual participation, and partly because it is now gravely affected by the disease from which the party system suffers: bureaucratization and the two parties’ tendency to represent nobody except the party machines.” 

Democracy is weakened when citizens are encouraged to hand over the time-consuming work of self-government to professional politicians. Arendt was continuously critical of representative models of democracy that rely upon experts in place of participation, which is why she rooted the crisis of democracy in the dissipation of public power. The disempowerment of the people in representative democracy embraces a bourgeois preference to pursue individual interests, to be relieved of the duty of politics and public virtue. But as we have seen recently, this separation between citizens and government has only further weakened the principles of liberal, representative democracy.

Today, the authority and power of experts is waning. The elected politicians that represent the traditional institutions of democracy are being replaced by outsiders. The rise of networks with access to infinite information means that the authority of any one source is diminished. Expertise of the press is challenged by online news and social media. The authority of democratic government is undermined by accusations of corruption and bias. And the hypothetical claim of science to truth is diminished by the infinite multiplication of information. In all realms, power has shifted toward the masses of individuals who identify as outsiders. And they are organizing themselves in energetic communities based on eccentric beliefs impervious to wider standards of common sense and truth. In light of these crisis of democracy we are at risk of losing our common liberal pluralist community, a meaningfulness unity amongst real differences.

The crisis facing democratic regimes today is cause for serious concern; it is also an opportunity for deep reflection on questions and assumptions concerning liberal representative democracy. Instead of assuming a defensive posture and taking up arms to defend the status quo, our conference asks: How can we take advantage of this crisis to make democracy stronger?

Our two-day conference will seek to answer the following questions:

  • Are we experiencing a crisis of democracy?
  • Are we witnessing the rise of authoritarian or fascist governments?
  • Does rule by experts and bureaucrats threaten democracy?
  • How does the centralization of power contribute to the crisis of democracy?
  • Does identity politics threaten or enable pluralist government?
  • Does the information explosion render obsolete the authority of democratic institutions?
  • What motivates us to take part in democratic processes?
  • Is representative democracy an inherently unstable model of government?

More info about the program here: https://www.facebook.com/events/267429420327639/

Tania Bruguera was invited to be the 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities/Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Visiting Fellow

Keynote

20.10.2017 / 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern ParkwayBrooklyn, New York 11238-6052
US

Conference

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The Brooklyn Conference: Inspiring Social Change

We are organizing a major gathering of artists, filmmakers, writers, and performers alongside leaders, activists, and elected officials for two days of dynamic and thought-provoking programming. The Brooklyn Conference explores the intersections of art and social justice, shining a light on what unites and separates us as a nation, and in hopes of inspiring a more connected, civic, and empathetic world. Join us for some creative thinking about social change.

The Fight for Opportunity: Immigration Now Tania Bruguera, artist and inaugural Artist-in-Residence of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, joins Murad Awawdeh, Vice President of Advocacy, New York Immigration Coalition, and artist Felipe Baeza for a discussion of political challenges facing New York’s immigrant communities and the creative possibilities of Arte Útil, or “useful art.”

The first day of the conference includes a full day of programming and networking, followed by a cocktail reception.

Speakers include:

  • Keynote: U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D “’ New York)
  • Charles Blow, op-ed columnist, The New York Times
  • Tania Bruguera, artist
  • Bob Bland, co-founder, Women’s March on Washington
  • Murad Awawdeh, Director of Political Engagement, New York Immigration Coalition
  • Deborah Berke, architect; Dean, Yale School of Architecture
  • Rashida Bumbray, curator, choreographer
  • Amanda de Cadenet, photographer, producer; creator of The Conversation, on Lifetime
  • Katie Capiello, teacher, writer, director
  • Judy Chicago, artist
  • Sarah Sophie Flicker, performer, activist
  • Jodi Archambault Gillette, President Barack Obama’s special assistant for Native American affairs
  • Ebony Noelle Golden, founder, Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative
  • Sally Kohn, political commentator, CNN
  • Shaun Leonardo, artist
  • Paola Mendoza, filmmaker, activist
  • Carmen Papalia, artist
  • Adam Pendleton, artist
  • Claudia Rankine, writer
  • Laurie Jo Reynolds, artist
  • Linda Sarsour, co-founder, Women’s March on Washington
  • Alvin Starks, Open Society Foundation
  • Neera Tanden, President, Center for American Progress
  • Hank Willis Thomas, artist
  • Roberta Uno, theater director; founder, ArtChange US: Art in a Changing America
>  November 2017
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It Starts in the Streets

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Festival Albertine 2017

Curated by pioneering feminist writers and activists Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, the fourth annual Festival Albertine will take place from November 1st through 5th, 2017 and offers an opportunity to realize a vital exchange of ideas between leading francophone and U.S.-based thinkers and artists.

The event is a timely new iteration of a longstanding and mutually-energizing dialogue that stretches back to the mid-20th Century, when Simone de Beauvoir published her groundbreaking 1949 book The Second Sex, having traveled across the United States for four months in 1947; and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique debuted in 1963, inspiring the establishment of the National Organization for Women. In 1972, Ms. magazine’s historic inaugural cover story, “We Had Abortions,” followed the example of French feminists who had signed a petition demanding abortion’s decriminalization. In 1984, de Beauvoir and Morgan joined forces to cofound the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, the first international feminist think tank. 

While the U.S. and France have long produced some of the most influential feminist thinkers and still do, their sometimes diverging perspectives on questions surrounding issues such as religion, childcare, and work-life balance, together with their commonalities, will offer material for fruitful debate.

Events will take place at Albertine Books, located in the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York (972 Fifth Avenue). Festival Albertine is free, open to the public. Seating is limited and works on a first-come, first-serve basis and will be streamed live at livestream.com/frenchembassy.

FESTIVAL LINEUP

Wednesday, November 1 | 7PM

From the Voting Booth to Your Living Room

A conversation between Christiane Taubira, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan on how the fight for more diverse and inclusive political representation can have a very real impact on our daily lives.

Thursday, November 2 | 7PM

Making the Invisible Visible 

Taking stock of the dangers and crises facing the new media environment, Laure Adler, Soraya Chemaly, and Nassira El Moaddem discuss how to make an individual, group, fact, idea, or chosen identity visible in the current media landscape. Moderated by Lauren Wolfe.

Friday, November 3 | 7PM

Body: Image vs. Reality 

Roxane Gay, Mona Chollet and Camille Morineau explore the struggle to reclaim the integrity of the female body and various representations that reject its objectification and oppression. 

Saturday, November 4 | 5PM

The Politics of Language 

Authors Mary Kathryn Nagle, Marie Darrieussecq, Anne Garréta and Robin Coste Lewis examine the way languages—the very first way we assign a gender to the world around us—shape our actions and opinions. Moderated by Gloria Steinem. 

Saturday, November 4 | 7:30PM

The Politics of Religion 

Wassyla Tamzali, Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, Annie Laurie Gaylor, and Daisy Khan discuss the influence of religion on women’s lives. Moderated by Robin Morgan.

Sunday, November 5 | 3:30PM

It Starts in the Streets  

The panel will open with a spoken word poetry performance by Staceyann Chin. 

Marie de Cenival, “Frida Kahlo” of the Guerrilla Girls, Houda Benyamina and Tania Bruguera will reflect on the ways that big changes have begun in small places, both through activism and through the arts. Moderated by Elizabeth Sackler. 

Sunday, November 5 | 6PM

An Egalitarian Future 

Caroline de Haas, Elizabeth Diller, Cecile Richards, and Heidi Steltzer will discuss how the equality and welfare of women hold the key to our future. Moderated by Carol Jenkins. 

All events will take place at Albertine at 972 Fifth Avenue and are free and open to the public. All events will be streamed live at livestream.com/frenchembassy and archived at the same address. 

Retrospectives of Carole Roussopoulos and Nathalie Magnan at Anthology Film Archives

From November 5-9, Anthology Film Archives, the international center for film study, preservation, and exhibition in New York, will present rare films by feminists Carole Roussopoulos (1945-2009), a pioneer of activist media in France, and Nathalie Magnan (1956-2016), a media theoretician and champion of cyberfeminism. Follow this link to view the schedule of screenings.

Festival Albertine is made possible with major support from The Recanati-Kaplan Foundation, Susannah Hunnewell, Van Cleef & Arpels, Air France, Fondation CHANEL, and Institut français. Generous support is provided by Champagne Pommery and Intercontinental New York Barclay.

Tania Bruguera: Arte Útil

08.11.2017 / 06:00 p.m. – 08:00p.m.
OCAD University
100, McCaul Street
Toronto, Canada

Talk

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Nomadic Residency Public Talk

Tania Bruguera: Arte Útil

Tania Bruguera’s projects apply the aesthetics of art to everyday life. Focusing on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness, they are intensive interventions into the institutional structure of collective memory, education, and politics.

In her public talk, as part of the Nomadic Residents series, Bruguera will discuss the concept of Arte Útil, a term that, when activated, harnesses the potential of art to shift perspectives and initiate social, political, and cultural change.

Bruguera participated in the Documenta 11 exhibition and also established the Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art) program at Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Her work has been shown in the 2015 Venice Biennale, at Tate Modern, London, Guggenheim and MoMA, New York, among others. Bruguera has recently opened the Hannah Arendt International Institute for Artivism, in Havana – a school, exhibition space and think thank for activist artists and Cubans.

Born 1968 in Havana, Cuba, Bruguera lives and works in Havana, New York and Cambridge.

About Nomadic Residents – International Residencies at OCAD University

The Nomadic Residents program was launched in 2006. Residents include Rirkrit Tiravanija (2006) Ann Hamilton (2007), ORLAN (2008), Hal Foster (2009), Adel Abdessemed (2010), Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh (2012), Candice Breitz (2013) and Pedro Reyes (2014), and Ryan Gander (2016). The series continues with the generous support of the Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation.

Nomadic Residents aims to inspire and influence the OCAD University community and the public by featuring artists and thinkers from around the world whose work questions issues such as travel, mobility, displacement, dislocation, and homelessness, as well as the speed or instability of modern life. In bringing these innovative and diverse individuals to take up temporary residence at OCAD U, Nomadic Residents joins here to there, the local to the global and the provisional and the permanent.

Memoria de la Postguerra / Postwar Memory I-III

8.11.2017 – 28.01.2018 11:00 a.m. – 07:00 p.m.
Kunsthalle Wien
Museumplatz 1
Wien, Austria

Exhibition

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Publishing as an artistic toolbox 

1989 – 2017

What is the role of art publishing today? How have artists adapted modes of publishing as a tool for their specific practice? How has the notion of the artist’s publishing activity changed, given the ever-increasing amount of fairs and an evolving number of book-related collections in contemporary art museums?

Publishing has become, especially since the 60’s, a favourite site and medium for aesthetic and artistic experimentation. It has also become an alternative space for promoting unrestricted individual or collective discourse.

The project Publishing as an Artistic Toolbox : 1989–2017 aims at exploring the potentials of publishing – in the form of books, magazines, journals, artistic interventions, websites – as a particular medium and context both to circulate information and knowledge – and to produce art.

Curator: Luca Lo Pinto

Estadística (Statistics)

10.11.2017 – 17.03.2018 / Tue, Wed, Sun 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. / Thu 11:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. / Fri, Sat 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Walker Art Center
725 Vineland Place,
Minneapolis, MN 55403
US

Exhibition

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Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950

Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950 looks at how Cuba’s revolutionary epoch shaped 65 years of Cuban art. The exhibition brings together more than 100 important works of painting, graphic design, photography, video, installation, and performance created by more than 50 Cuban artists and designers.

Anchored by key moments of the 20th- and 21st-century Cuban history, Adiós Utopia is the most comprehensive and significant presentation of modern and contemporary Cuban art shown in the United States since 1944, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented Modern Cuban Painters.

Although many artists have emigrated from Cuba to live and work abroad, Adiós Utopia focuses on the untold narrative of those artists who remained in Cuba or whose careers took off after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. Through a selection of pivotal artworks—created in each of six decades since 1950—the exhibition explores Cuba’s artistic production through the lens of utopia, both its construction and its deconstruction. Adiós Utopia introduces US audiences to key events in Cuban history and explores ways that this history has affected individual artists, shaped the character of art produced on the island, and conditioned the reception of Cuban art both in there and abroad. A newly published, related publication accompanies the exhibition.

Artists: Alejandro Aguilera, Santiago (Chago) Armada, Alexandre Arrechea, José Bedia, Tania Bruguera, Alejandro Campins, Iván Capote, Yoan Capote, Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas, Los Carpinteros, Mario Carreño, Javier Castro, Jeanette Chávez, Raúl Cordero, Salvador Corratgé, Arturo Cuenca, Sandu Darie, Felipe Dulzaides, Antonia Eiriz, Ricardo G. Elías, Juan Francisco Elso, Tomás Esson, Antonio Eligio Fernández (Tonel), José A. Figueroa, Raúl Corral Forna (Raúl Corrales), René Francisco, Carlos Garaicoa, Flavio Garciandía, Alejandro González, Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez (Alberto Korda), Carmen Herrera, Mario García Joya (Mayito), Glenda León, Pedro Álvarez López, Alexis Leyva Machado (Kcho), Carlos Martiel, Raúl Martínez, José Mijares, Esterio Segura Mora, Servando Cabrera Moreno, Reynier Leyva Novo, Glexis Novoa, Pedro de Oraá, Ernesto Oroza, Luis Martínez Pedro, Umberto Peña, Manuel Piña, Eduardo Ponjuán, Wilfredo Prieto, Sandra Ramos, Fernando Rodríguez, Lázaro Saavedra, Loló Soldevilla, Rafael Soriano, Leandro Soto, JoséÁngel Toirac

Curators: Cuban independent curators Gerardo Mosquera, René Francisco Rodríguez, and Elsa Vega with museum advisors Olga Viso and Mari Carmen Ramírez

Walker Coordinating Curator: Olga Viso with Fabián Leyva-Barragan

INSTAR – Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt First workshop

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Third Workshop with Creative Art Ensamble and Brian Holmes

For more information about the programme of the workshops visit INSTAR website and INSTAR Facebook page.

Implementing Arte Útil

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Implementing Arte Útil

Join artist Tania Bruguera to hear about Arte Útil. Arte Útil is a way of working with aesthetic experiences that focus on the implementation of art in society where art no longer functions as a space for “signaling” problems, but the place from which to create possible solutions. In Bruguera’s words, “We should go back to the times when art was not something to look at in awe, but something to generate from. If it is political art, it deals with the consequences, if it deals with the consequences, I think it has to be ‘useful art.’ ”

>  December 2017
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Awarness, Action and Dissent (Part II)

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In Conversation: Awarness, Action and Dissent (Part II)

Join us for the second installment of “In Conversation:  Awareness, Action and Dissent” the panel will continue to explore the power of art to raise awareness and inspire action amid politically and culturally tumultuous times. The New Yorker journalist and former Beijing bureau chief Evan Osnos will moderate the discussion between artists Tania Bruguera, Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman.  Bruguera, Thomas and Gottesman have made headlines in both the art world and political world, recently by standing up for freedom of speech and through the creation of the first art based Super PAC.

INSTAR – Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt Second workshop

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Second Workshop with Gregory Sholette and Olga Kopenkina

Read a full report about the workshop on Gregory Sholette Blog: Part 1 and Part 2

For more information about the programme of the workshops visit INSTAR website and INSTAR Facebook page.