Conference programme Thursday June 4, 2015

Conference programme
Thursday June 4, 2015
10.00 am
Tea
10.30 am
Welcome address: Christoph Schenker
Introduction: Gitanjali Dang
11.00 am
MEXICO CITY
Public Art in the Time of Political Collapse
The collaborative explores artistic interventions at a time when neoliberal
and narco forces determine the political as a pure administration of time,
space, life and death.
Helena Chávez Mac Gregor
Discusses actions in protests such as Yo Soy 132, Acción global por
Ayotzinapa (Global Action for Ayotzinapa) and works such as Teatro Ojo’s
Lo que viene and Nivel de confianza (Level of Confidence, 2015), by
Rafael Lozano Hemmer. In doing so, Helena Chávez engages with artistic
practices, which expand the possibilities of public space, in clear
antagonism with the state practices of memorialisation.
Teatro Ojo: Héctor Bourges Valles, Laura Furlan Magaril, Karla Rodríguez
Lira, Patricio Villarreal Ávila
Present Lo que viene (Whatever Comes, 2012), a project for which the
collective invited participants to share stories that transpired during the six
years of the former Mexican president Felipe Calderón’s “War against
Narco”.
Cuauhtémoc Medina
Explores the political construction in neoliberalism and the disappearance
of the public space in the form of the privatisation and collapse of politics.
Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote
12.30 pm
Lunch
2.00 pm
PROLOGUE
P. Sainath
The Predicament of the Rural – and the ‘Inevitability’ of the Urban
Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote
3.00 pm
ST. PETERSBURG
Chto Delat
Counter-Publics at a Time of Eroded Publicness
1/7
This session questions the tradition of the House of Culture, a state
supported infrastructure for leisure and education in the former Soviet
Union. Reimagining this model, members of the collective speak about
their planned experimental space called Rosa’s House of Culture. A
counter-public sphere, to realise oppositional interpretations of contested
notions such as community and engagement, the core activities of Rosa’s
House of Culture will include pedagogy and activism.
Dmitry Vilensky
Presents the project outline
Nikolay Oleynikov
Focuses on the activism
Tsaplya Olga Egorova
Speaks about the importance of performativity in constructing collective
practices
Moderator: Lawrence Liang
4.30 pm
Tea
5.00 pm
ZURICH
Christoph Schenker
Insight and Intensification: Artistic Research in Social Entanglement
Artistic research as a new academic discipline? Knowledge and science
are not identical, and knowledge of art cannot be reduced to scholarly
knowledge. Artists explore fields of competencies beyond the epistemic
competence, especially if they deal with conflictual social issues.
Christoph Schenker presents the method of a public art project in Zurich.
knowbotiq: Christian Hübler, Yvonne Wilhelm
Translocal Practices – The BlackBenz Race
A semi-fictive car race across Kosovan-European migration spaces, the
project spread rumours and eluded stagings as it oscillated between
unpredictable encounters, pseudo-events and political fictions. Did it
happen, or was the event a non-event?
Rohit Jain
Bollywood, Yoga – and IT
Based on fragmentary ethnographic vignettes, the presentation is a
glimpse into the multiple – and often incommensurable – production of
subjects, experiences, images and cultural artefacts in transnational public
spaces of postcoloniality between Switzerland and India.
Moderator: Lawrence Liang
6.30 pm
Welcome address: Rajeev Thakker, Studio X Mumbai
6.45 pm
Break
2/7
7.00 pm
FILM
Chto Delat, The Excluded, In a Moment of Danger, 2014, demo version of a 4 channel video
installation, colour, 56.46 min.
8.30 pm
COLLATERAL EVENT
Sound Reasons III
Four sound installations presented by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council in
collaboration with Clark House Initiative.
Artists
Marcus Maeder (Zurich), Trees: Pinus sylvestris
Farah Mulla (Bombay), Aural Mirror
Ish S (Delhi), Sitting Still
Salomé Voegelin (London), Listening to Noise and Silence
Venue
Clark House Initiative, c/o RBT Group, Ground Floor, Clark House
building, Colaba, 8 Nathalal Parekh Marg (Old Wodehouse Road),
Bombay
Friday June 5, 2015
10.00 am
Tea
10.30 am
Opening Remarks
10.45 am
HONG KONG
Cosmin Costinas, Para Site
A Journal of the Plague Year
Departing from Hong Kong’s SARS outbreak of 2003, which was followed
by the tragic death of Pan-Asian pop icon Leslie Cheung, the talk
introduces a touring exhibition, which first opened at Para Site in 2013.
The project analyses historical and contemporary imaginations and politics
of fear in the face of disease and the spectre of contamination in society
and culture.
Samson Young
How Does One Resist the Demon Without Giving the Demon One's
Thoughts?
Orchestra-making as a community-based practice, and the reasons that
led Samson Young there.
Giorgio Biancorosso
‘We Can Call It Our Own’: Musings on European Art Music in Hong
Kong
The ‘Western canon’ is at the centre of arguably one of the largest
transplants of the classical tradition ever recorded. The presence of
European art music in centres like Hong Kong is headlined by a repertory
3/7
of sonatas, symphonies, and cantatas. Is this a symptom of lingering
colonial oppression or post-colonial malaise? Or is it just another case of
translation?
Qinyi Lim, Para Site
A Luxury We Cannot Afford
Introduces an exhibition due to open at Para Site in September 2015. The
project derives its title from a speech Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s former
prime minister, gave not long after the country’s separation from Malaysia
in 1965. Removing the term “luxury” from its consumerist underpinnings,
this exhibition will read it in relation to the current state of civil liberties in a
developed society such as Singapore.
Moderator: Lawrence Liang
12.30 pm
Lunch
1.45 pm
FILM
Ju Anqi, There’s a Strong Wind in Beijing, 1999, 16mm, colour, 48 min.
2.45 pm
SHANGHAI
Ju Anqi, Li Zhenhua, Iris Long
Indian Square
An online search for India Square (Little Bombay) leads us to enclaves in
New York or New Jersey. Or at least, this is where Wikipedia leads us. We
have never been to these ‘enclaves’ and yet we believe the information
with ease. Media, mass media, social media and what have you are
increasingly shaping the public sphere. Slavoj Žižek calls Edward
Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange our new heroes because
their revelations are commentaries on ethics and hit on a different idea of
truth. Why then are we still so quick to believe what is in circulation?
We’re interested in the things we know exist but deny as unreal because
they lie outside the surge of information engulfing us. Indian Square – a
project undertaken by Ju Anqi, Li Zhenhua, Iris Long and Cedar Zhou – is
a meditation on a spectrum of media, from film to big data.
Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote
4.15 pm
Tea
4.45 pm
BOMBAY
Gitanjali Dang, Khanabadosh
An Unbearable Aboutness
Or what happens when certain worlds are eliminated in favour of others.
Gitanjali Dang reflects on the processes of elimination through the
Khanabadosh project 'Love in the Time of Choleric Capitalism' (2014),
Bombay, which travels to Delhi in 2016. The project questions the many
legacies of the iconic Taj Mahal through the lenses of memory, translation
and the unknown knowns.
4/7
CAMP: Zinnia Ambapardiwala, Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran
What We Mean When We Say “Infrastructure”
Since 2007 CAMP has been using the term "infrastructure" to describe a
field of awareness and activity, possibility and sensuality for the arts.
Rupali Gupte, Prasad Shetty
Of Trips, Kicks and the City Lived
City dwellers have absurd quests, unusual obsessions and bizarre
interests. Often discarded as stray preoccupations, these ‘trips’ and ‘kicks’
are in many ways the making of cities like Bombay.
Moderator: Lawrence Liang
Saturday June 6, 2015
10.00 am
Tea
10.30 am
Opening Remarks
10.45 am
CAPE TOWN
Riason Naidoo
1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective
Puts into relief a project that undertook the fraught task of revisioning a
century of South African art. The exhibition was Naidoo’s first curatorial
undertaking at the South African National Gallery as the recently
appointed Director and courted much controversy with it.
Jay Pather
Dancing on a Volcano: Site, Spillage, Slippage and Overflow in
Contemporary South African Performance
Drawing from the context of a troubled, suspended South African present
of dreams deferred, Pather considers some central performative ideas that
wrestle with this context, with reference to his recent site-specific
productions and from two festivals that he curates in Cape Town, Infecting
the City Public Art Festival and the Live Art Festival.
Richard Pithouse
South Africa in the Wreckage of Liberalism
Makes some remarks about reason, and the prospects for emancipatory
politics, amidst the fracturing of liberal hegemony in South Africa.
Moderator: Lawrence Liang
12.15 pm
HAMBURG
Sophie Goltz
To be announced
Alice Peragine
5/7
Enabling Cities
The blurred boundaries between work and leisure affect urban spaces,
dispersing the movement of our bodies. How then can artistic strategies
create different forms of living, continuity, and exchange within the
community?
Christoph Schäfer
Spatialise Your Desires
Urban space is regaining importance as the site of production. We must
now develop forms of political agency that don’t withhold the payoff until
after an imaginary urban revolution. Projects and forms of action should
already contain a utopian pulse.
Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote
1.15 pm
Lunch
2.30 pm
FILM
Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, to be announced
3.45 pm
Tea
4.15 pm
CAIRO
Sarah Rifky and Jens Maier-Rothe, Beirut
Fictitious Entities
Reflects on the institution as fiction and how we can learn from artworks
towards imagining what institutions (can) do in the context of Cairo, and
the world.
Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk
Enacting Imaginaries
Addresses the impasse of living in an age awash in exploitation. Key to
Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk’s artistic argument is the practice of
enactment, where the imaginary becomes central; overlaying the ‘real’
with the ‘fictional’ and/or performing the law to lay bare ritualised lies.
Alia Mossallam
Elusive Histories
Sifts through songs and archives exploring how histories relegated to the
margin of the Egyptian historical consciousness can be excavated, and
through theatre and theory, retold. Asking all along: How can fiction
become a driving force for the invisible truth?
Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote
5.45 pm
Closing Discussion
6.45 pm
EPILOGUE
Reza Negarestani
6/7
Researching Collective General Intelligence
Moderator: Lawrence Liang
7/7