[spectre] Symposium, 26/11/09, Arnolfini, Bristol UK

[geoff cox]

Who's Recuperating Who?
Thursday 26 November, 11-6pm
Arnolfini, Bristol, UK
Suggested donation £15 / £7 (concs)

Ursula Biemann, Geoff Cox, Peter Fend, Janna Graham, Nav Haq, Brian 
Holmes, Esther Leslie, Sebastian Lutgert, Gustav Metzger, PLATFORM, Tom 
Trevor

As part of the Artist Activist season and 100 Days, Arnolfini invites 
you to Who's Recuperating Who?, a symposium that aims to explore some of 
the paradoxes of the artworld's interest in working with activists.

This is the second Who's Recuperating Who event, the first being at the 
start of the eight week C Words exhibition at Arnolfini, curated by 
PLATFORM. This second event is intended to reflect on the artist / 
activist season of work at Arnolfini, as well as examine the wider 
relationship between art and politics.

The symposium will examine critical questions that have been raised: 
what are the power relations between art, activism and cultural 
institutions? Who ultimately benefits from this relationship? What 
critical role can art and/or activism have in a situation where any form 
of critique is automatically recuperated and neutralised by the 
mainstream? Under these conditions, what are effective strategies of 
opposition? And above all – 'What is to be done (with art)'?

This day will include presentations from speakers including: influential 
artist and activist Gustav Metzger; artist Ursula Biemann; Peter Fend, 
artist and founder of Ocean Earth Development Corporation; curator Janna 
Graham, member of art collaboration Ultra-red; theorist and writer Brian 
Holmes, initiator of the seminar programme and website 'Continental 
Drift'; Esther Leslie, Professor in Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, 
University of London; Sebastian Lutgert who will introduce his 'Oil of 
the 21st Century' project; and artist / activist group PLATFORM, 
curators of the current exhibition C Words at Arnolfini.

Who's Recuperating Who?
Thursday 26 November, 11-6pm

11.00 Introduction by Tom Trevor

11.10 Brian Holmes, Radical Artists and Mainstream Institutions: A 
Marriage Made at Increasingly Hot Temperatures

11.35 Esther Leslie, We call it Recuperation

12.00 Sebastian Lütgert, Introduction to the Oil of the 21st Century project

12.25 Janna Graham, title TBC

12.50 Panel moderated by Geoff Cox

13.30 Lunch

14.30 Film, TBC

15.00 Gustav Metzger, title TBC

15.25 Ursula Biemann, Mission Reports

15.50 Peter Fend, Action Not Activism

16.15 PLATFORM, Inside Out: the Uses of Discomfort

16.40 Break

17.00 Panel moderated by Nav Haq

18.00 Ends, followed by launch of Concept Store #2 Journal.

The artist/activist season at Arnolfini includes the exhibitions: C 
Words curated by PLATFORM, Ocean Earth: Technology Change/Climate 
Stability, Beyond the Acid Free: Artist Placement Group Revisited, and 
Craftivism.

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/