Art Institutions: Seminar Schedule

SEMINAR SCHEDULE

Wednesday, 3.12.2003
KIASMA Theater

13.00: WORDS OF WELCOME

13.15 – 14.45: CRITIQUE AND CREATIVITY
Jonas Ekeberg, Henrik Plenge Jacobsen, Maaretta Jaukkuri, Lene Crone Jensen
Moderated by: Jens Hoffmann

Critique and Creativity will lead the discussion concerning institutional models to the examination of critical and creative engagements with institutional structures. Artworks and exhibitions that critically engage with the context in which they operate are nothing unusual anymore. Consequently institutional critique became in fact a common artistic method, a particular style that emerged from an application of a Marxist analysis of 20th century western society to the social relations of the art world. The panel will ask the question if this particular artistic approach can be translated to the work of institutions and curators. Is it possible for institutions and curators to use institutional conditions as conceptual material for their program? What form of critique and creativity can be articulated apart from institutional critique to challenge the institutional framework? What positions do artists and curators occupy when negotiating between a critical practice and the practical realities of working in an art institution? What role does the audience play in all of this?


14.45 - 15.15: Coffee break

15.15 – 16.45: INSTITUTIONS AS PRODUCERS OF PUBLIC SPHERES
Nicolas Bourriaud, Mary Jane Jacob, Jakob Jakobsen, Boris Ondreicka, Nicolaus Schafhausen
Moderated by: Nina Möntmann

Urban space, which is still assumed to be offering the purest form of public spaces, is increasingly privatized, which has the consequences that consumption is the main occupation in public space. One can also put it this way that public space in (neo)capitalist societies is producing consumers. Which kind of public sphere can an art institution produce in relation to that? Many institutions tried willingly or saw themselves forced to follow up to the commercial model and opened up for event culture, established big museum shops and so on. Above that the audience, which is traditionally linked to the museum, the bourgeoisie, is no more a representative social group. Thus the museum is loosing its primary task: to offer education and aesthetic pleasures, which initially formed its socially constitutive basis. A major part of institutional work today is about finding out and defining, who this public groups linked to the museum, kunsthalle, kunstverein etc. can be. Some institutions try to evacuate exhibitions to urban space in order to reach a larger public. Also artists have left the institution to collaborate with local communities and bring their work to a diverse public attention. Then there is a tendency to adopt other disciplines to reach out to a public, which is linked to for example cinema, club culture or political activism. This current situation is causing some basic revisions in institutional work: Can art institutions today produce a public sphere, which in dialogue is supporting and forming the institution, as it has been the case with bourgeoisie? How do institutions try to follow up, or on the other hand criticize this model? Or is the art institution more likely dependent on gathering individuals derived from various fields? What could be the chance in working with a hybrid public?



SEMINAR SCHEDULE


Thursday, 4.12.2003
KIASMA Seminar Room

10.00 – 11.30: ETHICAL IMPERATIVES
Catherine David, Kestutis Kuizinas, Marysia Lewandowska, Jérôme Sans
Moderated by: Robert Fleck

Contemporary art institutions are in danger of being crushed between commercial imperatives and the moralistic pressure of society in our populist age. The growing similarity between museums of modern art and institutions of the entertainment industry, combined with the narrowing scope of social and cultural tolerance, has permanently changed the position of museums within society. Against this background, strategies of art mediation are emerging which make ethical imperatives the guiding principle of curatorial action. These are communicated between artists on the one hand, whom the ethically motivated museum can support in the role of adviser, aide or protective shield, and the public on the other, to whom the ethical museum proposes alternative orientations to those propagated by a moralistic society and the commercial worlds of the media and the entertainment industry. Can the museum of contemporary art obey ethical imperatives? Can it enforce ethical imperatives in the art business? Do we need an ethical code for our everyday dealings with artists and other museums? Does the museum have an ethical duty that relates to society as a whole?


11.30 - 11.45: Coffee break

11.45. – 13.15: NOTIONS ON THE AUDIENCE, INTERACTION, AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
Vanessa Joan Müller, Tellervo Kalleinen, Mats Stjernstedt, Matias Faldbakken
Moderated by: Kaija Kaitavuori

In regard to the audience, the contemporary art presents a situation completely – or at least highly – different from the classical and even modernist art. Some of the features that could describe the new situation are for example: Art can no longer be recognized as art by the physical form or materials used. The viewer needs other indicators to tell him/her that it is art. Art can be encountered outside (as well as inside) of the sites specifically designed for exhibiting art. The risk of being exposed to art in the every day life grows. Art puts the spectator in a situation where s/he has to take an active role: often the art works do not position the viewer in a defined standing point but involve him/her physically, or demand interaction / participation, or even are created with the audience. The spectator becomes a participant / user / co-producer of art. Can we expect of a non-specialized audience to grasp this spontaneously? What methods and strategies should institutions and museum/gallery education in particular adept in order to give the audience keys to interpretation and dialogue, and to facilitate the enjoyment and engagement with art? Taking into account the activating nature of contemporary art could art institutions provide the audience a space for dialogue and debate, and could / should they promote social inclusion of various groups of society? Should they even act as agents of social change? How? What should the museum and other art institutions be used for?


13.15 - 14.30: Lunch Break

14.30 – 16.00: CULTURAL ECONOMY
Anthony Davies, Maria Hlavajiova, Joanna Mytkowska, November Paynter, Andrzej Przywara
Moderated by: Simon Sheikh

Contemporary art institutions can be said to function within different, albeit related, economies. In order to access the role of institution, it is therefore crucial to analyze these economies and their interrelations. Firstly, institutions today are increasingly expected to adopt to a business model, defining their activities in terms of productivity, revenues and consumption. In the case of state funded institutions, the state expects the institutions to define themselves in terms of audience numbers and economic surplus as well as along lines of symbolic, cultural capital (histories of the nation, explorations of the ’new’, and so on). Institutions are expected to work more closely with the private sector in forms of sponsoring, but perhaps also in organizatorial forms. Which leads us to the second point, the corporatization of institutions. Institutions, both private and public, are placed within a culture industry, and as such to seen as factories, produced goods in the form of exhibitions, public and educational programs, and in the form of knowledge. A level of branding is involved, mirroring the structural and symbolic organization of international corporations. Finally, concurrently with this corporatization, we are witnessing an artistic and institutional fixation on the new network-based information industries, aka immaterial labor. Project work has become the model of the work, both in terms of the actual labor performed, but also in form of the symbolic work, the ’look’ of the exhibitions and art works. In the purpose of this panel, is to discuss how institutions can place themselves in this scenery of related economies and how they can function as critical spaces based with the culture industry and as producers of cultural capital.



REGISTRATION
Please register for the panel discussion to sanna.juntunen@kiasma.fi
The panel discussion is free. NIFCA will contact all the participants and give more information about the dining possibilities and accommodation in the end of November.

For more information please contact
Jens Hoffmann tel. +49 173 295 0556 or Jens@jenshoffmann.org
and please see www.kiasma.fi and www.nifca.org

Institution2 is curated by Jens Hoffmann.
The seminar has been organized in collaboration with NIFCA curator Nina Möntmann.