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Tate Britain
14 February, 2009, 2-7pm
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With an Unprecedented number of people living in displaced environments-whether because of choice, economic necessity, military conflict, or ecological reasons-contemporary artists have addressed the anxious social conditions of uprooted subjects in transnational environments. They have responded to the growing presence of politically excluded populations, the existential vulnerability of dislocation, and the alienation of the resulting social isolation. Yet while the discourse around socially-engaged art is now quite established (consider the energetic reception of Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics), it has remained limited to the questions of the political and ethical character of community formation. This workshop will consider how socially-engaged art practices have confronted globalisation's stateless subjects and transnational social relations. Special pre-workshop screening: Anand Patwardhan's War and Peace,
2002 (130 minutes). Tate Britain Auditorium, Friday, 13 February,
6:15pm. The filmmaker Anand Patwardhan will introduce the film. Filmed over three tumultuous years in India, Pakistan, Japan and the USA, following nuclear tests in the Indian sub-continent, War and Peace
is a remarkable and award-winning documentary journey of peace activism
in the face of global militarism and war. The screening is free, but
seats must be booked in advance. |
Participants
JOHN AKOMFRAH (London)
John Akomfrah is a film-maker who has won critical acclaim internationally for his features and documentary work. In 1982 he helped found the Black Audio Film Collective, the seminal black film-making workshop, which for fifteen years produced a broad range of films, winning over thirty-five international awards, and which was recently the subject of a major retrospective exhibition and catalogue, "Ghost of Songs: Black Audio Film Collective," organized by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar of the Otolith Group. Akomfrah came to prominence in 1986 when he directed Handsworth Songs, which explores the contours of race and civil disorder in 1980s Britain. The film won seven international awards including the Grierson Award for Best Documentary. Akomfrah has lectured throughout the world on black British cinema in a range of institutions and has also written extensively on film theory and aesthetics.
AYREEN ANASTAS and RENE GABRI (New York)
Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri are frequent collaborators, making films
and videos, and connecting cultural practice and political thinking.
They are both involved in 16 Beaver (16beavergroup.org), a space in New
York City initiated and run by artists to create and maintain an ongoing
platform for the presentation, production, and discussion of a variety
of artistic/cultural/economic/political projects. Recently they
completed Camp Campaign (2007), entailing a 45-day journey
across the United States in 2006 which attempted to address the
internment camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by connecting it to various
contemporary and historic sites of 'juridical exception' in the USA and
elsewhere.
CLAIRE BISHOP (New York)
Claire Bishop, Associate Professor of Art History, is an internationally acknowledged scholar of contemporary art. The author of Installation Art: A Critical History and the editor of Participation, Bishop has published art historical texts and criticism widely, including "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics" (October, 2004) and "The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents" (Artforum, 2006). Bishop curated the exhibition Double Agent at London's ICA earlier this year, and is currently working on a book about socially-engaged art and spectatorship.
TANIA BRUGUERA (Chicago/Havana)
Tania Bruguera is a political and interdisciplinary artist whose works
focus on the relationship between art, politics and life, and
particularly the insertion of art into everyday political life. Bruguera
has participated in exhibitions internationally, including Documenta 11
(2002), biennials in Venice, Sao Paolo, Istanbul, Moscow, Johannesburg,
and Shangai, and in shows at The Kunsthalle Wien; Museo Nacional de
Bellas Artes; and The New Museum of Contemporary Art; The Whitechapel
Art Gallery and the 2009 Tate Triennial, among many others. She has
lectured extensively internationally, and was a Guggenheim fellow in
1998. Bruguera is the founder/director of Arte de Conducta (behavior
art), the first performance studies program in Latin America, hosted by
Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and is on the faculty at the
University IUAV in Venice, Italy and The University of Chicago, United
States.
NINA MÖNTMANN (Stockholm)
Nina Möntmann is Professor and Head of Department of Art Theory and
the History of Ideas at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in
Stockholm. From 2003 to 2006 she was Curator at the Nordic Institute for
Contemporary Art (NIFCA) in Helsinki and curated the Pavilion of the
Republic of Armenia at the 52nd Biennial of Venice 2007. She has been
curatorial advisor for Manifesta 7, 2008 and recently curated If We Can't Get It Together: Artists Rethinking the (Mal)Functions of Communities, a group exhibition for The Power Plant in Toronto (December 2008 - February 2009). Möntmann is also correspondent for Artforum, and contributes to Le Monde Diplomatique, Parachute, metropolis m, Frieze and others.
ANAND PATWARDHAN (Mumbai)
Anand Patwardhan has been making political documentaries for nearly three decades, pursuing diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India. Many of his films-which include War and Peace (2002); Fishing: In the Sea of Greed (1998); Father, Son and Holy War (1995); and In the Name of God (1992)-were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India, the censorship of which Patwardhan successfully challenged in court. Patwardhan has been an activist ever since he was a student, having participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement, volunteering in Caesar Chavez's United Farm Worker's Union, working in Kishore Bharati, a rural development and education project in central India, and participating in the Bihar anti-corruption movement in 1974-75 and in the civil liberties and democratic rights movement during and after the 1975-77 Emergency. Since then he has been active in movements for housing rights of the urban poor, for communal harmony, and has participated in movements against unjust, unsustainable development, militarism and nuclear nationalism.
EMMA RIDGWAY (London)
Emma Ridgway is curator and producer at the Arts and Ecology Centre, Royal Society of Arts; she was previously at Serpentine Gallery, London. She edited the book Experiment Marathon (Serpentine Gallery and Reykjavik Art Museum, 2009) and curated Beings and Doings at the British Council (New Delhi, 2007) following her research into humour as form of aesthetics. She is currently researching engagements with ethics and ecology through the arts.
POOJA SOOD (New Delhi)
Pooja
Sood is a founding member and Director/Curator of KHOJ International
Artists' Association, an autonomous, artist-led registered society in
Delhi aimed at promoting intercultural understanding through exchange.
She works with artists' communities in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh,
and Nepal, facilitating exchange through workshops and residencies in
the region. Over the past seven years, she has promoted the development
of a South Asian Network by building capacity and assisted with
fundraising, communication and networking strategies. Sood is also the
Director of Apeejay Media Gallery, the first new media gallery in India
since 2002. She has curated/programmed several large Indian and
international video art exhibitions over the past 5 years. More recently
she curated India's first live art festival KHOJLive 08 and 48C. Public.Art.Ecology,
an ambitious art project across 8 public sites in Delhi. Sood has been
on the jury of the Transmediale Award 2009 and the Fukuoka Triennial
2009. She has spoken widely and is editor of several catalogues
including the first publication of Indian video art, Video Art in India (2003).
The discussion will be moderated by organizer TJ Demos
* Image: Tania Bruguera, Delayed Patriotism, 2007 (Photography and live
experience, including the following materials: eagle, photo of Cuban
dictator Fulgencio Batista (deposed by Fidel Castro), frame, information on the involvement of
the U.S. government and the CIA in the installation of dictators,
photographer, photo card holder, sticker, ink, eagle trainer, audience). Photo: Bronx Museum / Performa 07
@Tania Bruguera, 2007