What Now? 2014 is a two-day symposium organized by Art in General in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. This launches a new series of annual conferences, called to investigate issues arising in the field of contemporary art. This year's conference is dedicated to Collaboration and Collectivity and organized around three sessions spanning Friday and Saturday, with a keynote on Friday evening, delivered by Charles Esche.

In the spirit of philosopher Hannah Arendt, who taught at The New School for many years, the symposium examines collaboration through a politics of place—how the way in which we live and work together directly creates the political landscape we inhabit. In Arendt's words, "To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time."

Taking this central question of how we work together and how we form a community, What Now? 2014 explores collaborations between artists and institutions while examining the modes and methods of collective action, including positions of disengagement. With collaboration becoming a more prominent form of practice for both artists and institutions, the symposium questions some of the reasons behind this phenomenon—from the desires to produce new projects, knowledge, or research to developing new institutional structures. Through a variety of presentations featuring scholars, academics, artists, curators, and writers, What Now? 2014 aims to generate new thinking around these issues, including authorship and authenticity as well as modes of collaboration as strategies for social change.

The symposium comprises three sessions, Collective Authorship, Collective Bargaining and Collective (Dis)engagement. Confirmed speakers include Anne Barlow, Director, Art in General, New York;Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and Curator of the 2014 São Paulo Biennial; Mariam Ghani, artist, New York; Sean Jacobs, The New School for Public Engagement, New York;Carin Kuoni, Director and Curator, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, New York; Johan Lundh, Co-Director, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane;Laura Raicovich, Director of Global Initiatives, Creative Time, New York; Sarah Rifky, Co-Director, Beirut in Cairo; Nitin Sawhney, The New School for Public Engagement, New York; Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, artist, founder of The Art Law Office, New York; Robert Sember, Ultra-red, New York; Luis Silva and João Mourão, Co-Directors, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon; Sonja Srdanovic, Tufts University, Boston; Tercerunquinto, Mexico City; The Yes Men, New York; and Pieternel Vermoortel, Co-Founder and Director, FormContent, London. 

Program 

Saturday, April 5

11:00–1:00 p.m.
Session 2: Collective Bargaining

A panel of artists, curators, and academics will discuss the different aspects of collective work. Whether a group of individuals answering to a single name or namelessly acting together, what are the different structures of group entities and how do these structures affect the ability to provoke heightened self-awareness of our own social sphere? 

By exploring the vision of the collective as a unified body in which individuals are drawn into an anonymous mass alongside the notion of collective action with its multidirectional and unpredictable group dynamics, the panel will discuss the different modes of collaboration as artistic strategies for social change. 

1:00–2:00 p.m.
Lunch Break

2:00–4:00 p.m.
Session 3: Collective (Dis)engagement

Cultural or academic boycott is a strategy of protest and change often advocated by cultural producers, artists, and members of the creative industries. The boycott of South Africa during Apartheid is usually referenced as a particularly influential and successful example. In our contemporary moment, we ask for an appropriate form of engagement to affect change in a situation, government or institution that is not necessarily our own, whose ethics, however, is considered a source of conflict. As artists are increasingly recognized as producers of cultural, social, and economic capital, how can they leverage this power and act collectively in the most efficient ways to affect political, social, or cultural change?

A panel of artists, curators, and academics offers examples of different tactics that have been employed by groups or collectives to insert different discourses into existing contexts and structures, either by engaging or disengaging with them. What can be accomplished by creating an artist exchange with North Korea, by bringing gay artists' work to a biennial in St. Petersburg, by not traveling to certain countries or states? A brief summary of the South African boycott from the 1960s to 1990 introduces a discussion on how to align ethical standards of diverse groups of people, how to carve out an impactful role for collective bodies without ignoring the complexity inherent in any situation or site of discordance.

External Link »