Art and organisation

UKK invites you to a mini-symposium around art and organization, as part of our Annual General Assembly.

The symposium features curator and editor of the book ‘Self-organized’ Anne Szefer Karlsen; artist and co-founder of Diakron, David Hilmer Rex; and conceptual artist and founder of THE WINTER OFFICE, Hugo Hopping. Our invited speakers bring their experience and research into the context of these questions and as part of this mini-symposium. The speakers represent both practical, theoretical, artistic and curatorial positions which will help shape a interesting debate across fields, methods and thinking practices around the notion of art and organization.

Today artists, curators and cultural workers are strongly and naturally embedded in different modes of self-organization, especially as part of the process of establishing independent structures, and when aimed at nuancing the more conventional setups of the art world. The strategies of self-organization have historically existed since the early avant-garde and continue to proceed into success through the 1960’s into the 1990’s. In the last decade and today, in a Danish context, the structures of self-organized initiatives [and micro institutional layers] are actually considered somewhat stable and in contrast to the shifting agendas of bigger state institutions. The creative political economy of art creates a moment for us to reflect upon what constitutes the self-organized ideal and what political implication it naturally introduces.

What does this kind of organization entail for the individual and the collective? Do young artist and curators balance on a thin line between honestly earned independence and the creative economy?
On the one side, you have the entrepreneurial young spirit driving a ‘winner gets it all’ culture and on the other, you have the long-arc of true accomplishment and change. To the extent that self-organization has potentially become the main management theory for the creative classes factoring rewards and disappointments. Are we making a mistake when we consider it a subculture of art or should it be always understood as a strategy for making/embedding art in society? In this vain, does this revitalization of the self-organized moment and its conceptual definition today stay too comfortably within the systems of art? And is it time to rethink the boundaries of how this theory of creative management relate to other structures in our society in general?

The symposium is organised by Iben Elmstrøm og Gro Sarauw for UKK.

We are looking forward to seeing you at Overgaden Institute of Art!