This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies, which delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
What similarities and alliances can be drawn across borders, and how do we work and learn differently in response to the specificities of locality, place, culture and community? Can we work better together? What futures are possible or likely for the contemporary art ecology?
Biljana Ciric is an interdependent curator. She is currently conceiving inquiry for first Trans- Southeast Asian Triennial in Guang Zhou Repetition as a Gesture Towards Deep Listening. She was the co-curator of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennale for Contemporary Art (Yekaterinburg, 2015), curator in residency at Kadist Art Foundation (Paris, 2015), and a research fellow at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Høvikodden, 2016). Her recent exhibitions include An Inquiry: Modes of Encounter presented by Times Museum, Guang Zhou (2019); When the Other Meets the Other Other presented by Cultural Center Belgrade (2017); Proposals for Surrender presented by McAM in Shanghai (2016/2017); and This exhibition Will Tell You Everything About FY Art Foundations in FY Art Foundation space in Shen Zhen (2017).
iLiana Fokianaki is a writer and curator based in Athens and Rotterdam. In 2013 she founded State of Concept Athens, the first non-profit gallery in Athens that promotes Greek and international artists through solo exhibitions, but also invites international curators to create exhibitions that comment on the current socio-political landscape of Greece and beyond. The institution has worked with artists such as Laure Prouvost, Hito Steyerl, Basim Magdy, Keren Cytter among others, most of whom had never exhibited in Greece before. State of Concept is also focusing on a pedagogical programme that enables Greek art students and artists through free consultations, to further their studies and develop their projects. It has also been operating as an open platform that hosts fellow curators and artists for talks, events and presentations. In 2016, together with Antonia Alampi she founded Future Climates, a platform that aims to propose viable futures for small-scale organizations of contemporary art and culture, which manifested in Athens in March 2017 with a three-month program.
Experimental Institutionalism: Ecological
Ecological: Practices and challenges of sustainability
This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies, which delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
In this lecture, we are joined by José Roca, Artistic Director of the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, and artist Keg de Souza, with a focus on the practices and challenges of sustainability. Roca’s presentation questions whether biennales are sustainable, sharing the processes, curatorial considerations and some of the challenges faced in developing the 23rd Biennale of Sydney. de Souza’s presentation is centred on Ecologies of Place, exploring the importance of community, place, and collaboration in relation to their recent work Not a drop to drink 2021, followed by a discussion on building and imagining a more sustainable future for the arts.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
What similarities and alliances can be drawn across borders, and how do we work and learn differently in response to the specificities of locality, place, culture and community? Can we work better together? What futures are possible or likely for the contemporary art ecology?
José Roca is a Colombian curator living and working in Sydney. He is currently the Artistic Director of FLORA ars+natura, an independent space for contemporary art in Bogotá. Roca was recently appointed as Artistic Director of the 23rd Biennale of Sydney in 2022. For a decade, he managed the arts program at Banco de la República in Bogotá. Roca was previously Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art for the Tate, London, and for a decade oversaw the arts program at the Museo del Banco de la República in Bogotá, establishing the institution as one of the most respected in Latin America.
Keg de Souza lives and works in Sydney on unceded Gadigal land and uses mediums such as; temporary architecture, food, mapping and dialogical projects to explore the poetics and politics of space. This investigation of social and spatial environments is influenced by formal training in architecture and experiences of radical spaces through squatting and organising. Keg often creates site and situation specific projects with people, with an emphasis on knowledge exchange. These often manifest as temporary architectures that become framing devices to host pedagogical platforms, centring voices that are often marginalised, for learning about place.
Experimental Institutionalism: Electronic
Electronic: Modelling the digital present and tools for the future
This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies, which delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
What similarities and alliances can be drawn across borders, and how do we work and learn differently in response to the specificities of locality, place, culture and community? Can we work better together? What futures are possible or likely for the contemporary art ecology?
This series will be released on ACCA’s YouTube and Podcast channels.
Seb Chan is the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image where he is responsible for a holistic, multi-channel, visitor-centred design strategy for the institution. Until August 2015, he was Director of Digital & Emerging Media, at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. There he led the museum’s digital renewal and its transformation into an interactive, playful new museum reopened after a 3-year rebuilding and reimagining. His team’s work won awards from the American Association of Museums and Museums and the Web, One Club, D&AD, Fast Company Innovation by Design, Core77 Design Awards, and has been featured in Slate, The Verge, Fast Company and elsewhere.
A sculptor, coder, painter and performer, Sahej Rahal is a graduate of the Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Art, Mumbai. He has been a recipient of a number of residencies including Bar1, Bangalore, 2011; FUTUR foundation, Zurich, 2011; INLAKS Shivdasani Foundation sponsored residency at KHOJ international artists’ association, New Delhi, 2013. Rahal has presentd work in major solo and group projects, including recently at Akademie Schloss Solitude & ZKM Center for Art and Media, Stuttgart, Germany in 2018, at the Vancouver Biennale and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2019, in the 2020 Gwangju Biennale, and as part of Transmediale.
Experimental Institutionalism: Employment
Employment: Art, labour and changing modes of working
We’d love to hear your feedback on our lecture series via this short survey. This will help us understand our program from your point of view, and is invaluable for us to understand what is working and what can be improved. This survey will take about 2 minutes to complete and all responses are anonymous!
This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies, which delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
On Collaboration, Labour and Scaling-Up the Artist’s Studio Lecture by Alana Kushnir
The contemporary art ecology is experiencing a significant shift in working practices. This has been prompted by the rapid advancement of technology and the reduction of traditional streams of revenue. Both artist and art institution are therefore increasingly relying on collaborative, cross-disciplinary modes of working.
The future of these modes of working depends upon a solid legal structure. With a solid legal structure, the future art-work can be better built. But what does a solid legal structure look like? And how can we use it to empower both artist and art institution? Matters of ownership, licensing, crediting and remuneration should all be considered as part of this structural mix. This lecture will explore these ideas as part of a broader interest in the transition of artist from employee to entrepreneur.
Alana Kushnir an art lawyer, curator, art advisor and Director and Founder of Guestwork Agency based in Melbourne, Australia. She is the Principal Investigator of the Serpentine Galleries R&D Platform Legal Lab and a sessional lecturer at The University of Melbourne, teaching subjects on curating, contemporary art and art law. She is also a regular writer on art news and exhibition reviews for Broadsheet Media, a Director of the Lyon Foundation, which operates the Lyon Housemuseum & Galleries, and a volunteer lawyer with the Arts Law Centre of Australia. Alana was previously the General Counsel and Cultural Program Executive for the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival. Prior to this, she worked at one of Australia’s leading commercial law firms, King & Wood Mallesons. She holds a Masters of Fine Art (Curating) from Goldsmiths, University of London, a Bachelor of Arts (Art History) (Hons) and a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from The University of Melbourne. She is a former Board Member of Invisible Inc, which produces Runway, an independent Australian experimental art journal and Bus Projects, Melbourne.
We Made Such a Mess! Lecture by Julieta Aranda
In this presentation Julieta Aranda examines our relationship – as beings, as humans, as artists, as cultural workers – to the toxic environments that we have created. How can we negotiate life flourishing in the poisoned landscapes of industrial capitalism?
As we focus on planetary ecological concerns as subject matter for artistic production, we need to also make sure to produce the ecologies that we need for the art world to be a viable, liveable system. What I am trying to say here is, that to be able to produce sustainable futures, we need to firstly produce sustainable presents. And, looking at the presents in which we are living without retreating into nostalgic imaginaries, what kind of formulations of hope that can we offer to them?
Julieta Aranda is an artist and co-director of the online platform e-flux. Her artistic practice spans installation, video, and print media, with a special interest in the creation and manipulation of artistic exchange and the subversion of traditional notions of commerce through art making. Central to Aranda’s practice are her involvement with circulation mechanisms and the idea of a “poetics of circulation”; her interest in science fiction, space travel and zones of friction; the possibility of a politicized subjectivity through the perception and use of time, and the notion of power over the imaginary. As a co-director of the online platform e-flux together with Anton Vidokle, Aranda has developed the projects Time/Bank, Pawnshop, and e-flux video rental, all of which started in the e-flux storefront in New York. In addition to the Guggenheim Museum, Aranda’s work has been exhibited internationally, in venues such as the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014), Witte de With (2013 and 2010), Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genova (2013), ArtPostions, Miami Basel (2012), MACRO Roma (2012) Documenta 13 (2012), N.B.K. (2012), Gwangju Biennial (2012), Venice Biennial (2011), Istanbul Biennial (2011), Portikus, Frankfurt (2011), New Museum NY (2010), Kunstverein Arnsberg (2010), MOCA Miami (2009), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007), 2nd Moscow Biennial (2007) MUSAC, Spain (2010 and 2006), and VII Havanna Biennial; amongst many others. Aranda’s work has been selected for several international biennials including the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 and is included in important museum collections such as: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, New York, USA; MUSAC – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain; Fundación/Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico; CIFO – Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, USA.
Expanded: Collectivity and Solidarity in Changing Times
Speakers: ruangrupa and The Unbound Collective
This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies, which delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
What similarities and alliances can be drawn across borders, and how do we work and learn differently in response to the specificities of locality, place, culture and community? Can we work better together? What futures are possible or likely for the contemporary art ecology?
This series will be released on ACCA’s YouTube and Podcast channels.
ruangrupa is a Jakarta-based collective established in 2000. It is a non-profit organization that strives to support the idea of art within urban and cultural context by involving artists and other disciplines such as social sciences, politics, technology, media, etc, to give critical observation and views towards Indonesian urban contemporary issues. ruangrupa also produce collaborative works in the form of art projects such as exhibition, festival, art lab, workshop, research, as well as book, magazine and online-journal publication.
The Unbound Collective brings together years of research in a performance that moves through spaces that have historically seen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians excluded and reduced to tell untold chapters of Australia’s true history. The Collective consists of Ali Gumillya Baker (curator), Simone Ulalka Tur, Faye Rosas Blanch and Natalie Harkin.
We’d love to hear your feedback on our lecture series via this short survey to help us understand what we’re doing well and what can be improved. The survey takes about 2 minutes to complete and all responses are anonymous.
Education: Alternatives and the Academy
Speakers: Emily Floyd and Gridthiya Gaweewong
This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies, which delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
Loose Objects and Situated Knowledge
Lecture by Emily Floyd
Emily Floyd’s practice activates spatial and material strategies of child-centred learning, exploring possibilities and limitations for navigating the casualised realm of Contemporary Art’s critical classroom. Emily will discuss the concept of Loose Objects, an institutional experimentalism used in Montessori classrooms, referring to objects that can be moved around and manipulated by children as they play and explore. Like utopian artworks, Loose Objects play the role of itinerant, post-human educators; freely circulating across institutional frameworks. Yet, what happens when these haptic distractions can no longer deflect from the flaking paint on the kindergarten walls?
Emily Floyd works in sculpture and public installation. She explores the history of play, employing it as a frame for investigations into public philosophy, socially engaged design, typography and the legacies of modernism. Drawing parallels between educational models and contemporary art, Floyd’s works generate spaces for engagement and interaction. The artist has completed a number of large scale public commissions, including works for the 56th Venice Biennale, Heide Museum of Modern Art and Australia Square, Sydney. Floyd’s work is in the permanent collections including: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; National Gallery of Victoria; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Monash University Collection, Melbourne; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; GOMA Queensland; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and The British Museum, London. Emily Floyd is Senior Lecturer in the Fine Art Program at Monash Art Design and Architecture. She is a fellow of the Australia Council of the Arts and a Sydney Myer Fellow.
What’s missing with the Art School in Thailand (and beyond)?
Lecture by Gridthiya Gaweewong
Gridthiya Gaweewong founded arts organisation Project 304 in 1996, and is currently Artistic Director of the Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok. Her curatorial projects have addressed issues of social transformation confronting artists from Thailand and beyond since the Cold War. Gaweewong has organized exhibitions and events including Underconstruction, Tokyo (2000 – 2002), Politics of Fun at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2005), the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (1997–2007) (co-founded with Apichatpong Weerasethakul), Saigon Open City in Saigon, Vietnam (2006-07) (with Rirkrit Tiravanija) and Unreal Asia, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (2010). Gaweewong is on the curatorial team for the 2018, 12th Gwangju Biennale, Imagined Borders. She is also the head curator of ICI’s traveling exhibition Apichatpong Weerasethakul: The Serenity in Madness.
We’d love to hear your feedback on our lecture series via this short survey to help us understand what we’re doing well and what can be improved. The survey takes about 2 minutes to complete and all responses are anonymous.
Exchange: Reciprocity and institutional collaboration
Speakers: Nikos Papastergiadis and Laura Raicovich
ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
On the Museums of the Commons
Lecture by Nikos Papastergiadis
Museums of the Commons is a recent 2020 publication by Papastergiadis that examines L’Internationale, an ongoing confederation between six museums and contemporary art institutions in Europe. Chronicling the challenges faced by the museums, Papastergiadis goes on to situate their responses within the wider political and cultural context that is shaping the future of all contemporary art museums. Five key domains of research are explored within the book: the genealogy of the museum; the need for alternative models of trans- institutional governance; examples of innovation in the spaces of aesthetic production; experimentation in the forms of partnership and engagement with constituents; and finally, examination of the impact of a collaborative and collective regime of artistic practices. Museums of the Commons provides a multi- perspectival account of a trans-institutional and transnational collaboration.
Nikos Papastergiadis is Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures and Professor at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne and Visiting Professor in the School of Art, Design and Media, at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Chair of the International Advisory Board for the Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore. Co-chair of the Cultural Advisory Board for the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture, Melbourne. His current research focuses on the investigation of the historical transformation of contemporary art and cultural institutions by digital technology. His publications include Modernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012), Ambient Perspectives (2014), On Art and Friendship (2020), The Museums of the Commons (2020) as well as being the author of numerous essays which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the Biennales of Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul, Gwanju, Taipei, Lyon, Thessaloniki and Documenta 13.
On Interconnection, Culture, and Care
Lecture by Laura Raicovich
The activism of 2020 was a bright call for liberation. Indeed, this is the first moment in my lifetime when I feel there is truly an opportunity to make the radical change our society so desperately needs. Can it lead to an excising of the beliefs and behaviours that are poison to a culture that is killing itself by perpetrating such egregious harm? Can society recover from the delirium of individualism to recognize the fundamental interconnectivity of humanity? Can cultural spaces be undone and redone to accommodate and support this transformation, and even provide models for its manifestation in society at large? Through an examination of recent transnational events and their impact on perceptions of what is possible, I will consider how we might use cultural spaces as sites of societal transformation and civic life. Discussions of the myth of institutional neutrality as a gatekeeping device that supports the status quo, alongside unpacking protest and unionization efforts as acts of radical care, point to specific ideas and suggestions towards moving forward collectively and more equitably.
Laura Raicovich is a New York-based writer and curator who is completing a new book, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest (Verso 2021). She recently served as Interim Director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art; was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Bellagio Center; and was awarded the inaugural Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators at Hyperallergic. While Director of the Queens Museum from 2015 to 2018, Raicovich co-curated Mel Chin: All Over the Place (2018), a multi-borough survey of the artist’s work. She lectures internationally and in 2019-20 co-curated a seminar series titled Freedom of Speech: A Curriculum for Studies into Darkness at the New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics, from which she is co-editing an anthology of writings on the subject. She also is the author of At the Lightning Field (CHP 2017) and co-editor of Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (OR 2017).