Three symposiums in 2019, with the aim of investigating questions around art and finance, as they relate to the role of the artist, the circulation of work and novel organisational forms in the field of art.
Macro was a symposium held at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts on January 18th, 2019.
Our interest with the symposium was to explore how, where and in what ways we care for and organize the field of art at macro scale / collective levels.
What organizational forms operate at the macro scale and what visions of art do they further? Why do we have the set of macro-scale institutions we have? What might be missing at these scales? If we argue that the organizational models operating in the field of art are central in negotiating the parameters and qualities of artistic practices, and how the latter are in turn disseminated and brought to a variety of publics, then the question is what is currently being omitted but may be of urgent necessity?
Some examples of existing macro-scale organizational models in the art field outside the nexus of organizations and institutions aiding in production and presentation of art include different types of unions, interest organizations (BKF, UKK, UKS), mission-driven organizations (W.A.G.E.), global and niche financial actors (Deloitte, Athena Art Finance, Artist Pension Trust,), financial technology and other market-oriented startups (Maecenas, Codex Protocol, Artsy), galleries (Gagosian, Hauser and Wirth, David Zwirner), private foundations and national art foundations. The symposium explored the different functions and purposes such initiatives serve in rendering and articulating the reality of the art field, and what criteria by which their capabilities and limitations are to be assessed, in order to further the art field’s development.
The three speakers were curator, writer and consultant Victoria Ivanova, Director of Strategy at Gnosis Kei Kreutler, and Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the University of West London Helen Hester. The symposium was moderated by researcher Aslak Aamot Kjærulff.
Mourning Money was three symposiums, the aim of which was to investigate questions around art and finance, as they relate to the role of the artist, the circulation of work and novel organisational forms in the field of art.
Each symposium addressed questions in relation to the value of art and the labour of artists as it is configured between disparate, yet mutually dependent, systems. UKK invited international artists, writers, and theorists to address, firstly, the role of the artist as subject to technology and feminisms; secondly, the operative powers of a (post-)contemporary art practice; and thirdly diverging functions of macro organisations in art.
In strengthening the development of critical consciousness around systemic agencies in art and relationships between art and finance, UKK wishes to show how artists and curators are key constituents of these relationships, and have the capacity to directly affect them.
The programme was kindly supported by Bikubenfonden and Beckett Fonden and hosted by Kunsthal Aarhus and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts in Copenhagen.
Speakers: Jesse Darling, Angela Dimitrakaki, Nora N. Khan and Patricia Reed
Moderator: Lotte Løvholm
Location: Kunsthal Aarhus
New Roles For The Artist looked at how technologies might develop new ways of thinking and understanding artistic production. The aim of the symposium was to further locate and discuss the future role of technology in art, in relation to the agency of feminisms within an art context, and speculate how these together might be utilised in rethinking the production of art and the role of the artist.
What potentials and pitfalls do new technologies hold for future-oriented thinking around resistance and solidarity within art and feminisms under global capitalism? What happens to the role of embodiment and identity in the era of accelerating technology? Within the consistent pressure to produce, how might we rethink the question of cultural/social/sexual production and reproduction?
With these overall questions the symposium sought to probe historical, as well as future-oriented, alignments of technological perspectives alongside feminist agency in order to question how these might shed light on horizons of possibility.
The symposium was held at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts on January 17th, 2019.
‘Operative Powers of Art Practice’ considered the implications of control in relation to the operative powers of the practice of art. The aim of the symposium was to discuss (post-)contemporary art practice as it has become increasingly subjected to arts financialization. With the awareness of the financialization of art, the symposium sought to address how art practices may become more visibly and actively ‘in control’ of current financial dynamics. Through the contributions of the invited speakers, we sought to strengthen the notions around ‘arts systemic agency’ – whether this means to allow it to be understood as a more abstract notion or through a complex and operational understanding of this agency.
In the current context of competing global crisis’, we asked what transitional role art may face considering its systemic agency. Reassessing the term ‘artistic agency’ would be important to this task. We asked what are the scales and implications necessary, to allow art to bend the means of control rather than causing it to block future potential development.
The three speakers were the artist duo, João Enxuto & Erica Love, artist Alexandra Pirici, writer and associate curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Tirdad Zolghadr.