Program Symposium Art in the New Field of Visibility

Van 19-01-2007 t/m 20-01-2007


Pascal Beausse, Corin Braga, Edwin Carels, Emilian Cioc, Irina Cios, Ann Demeester, prof. dr. David Garcia, Bogdan Ghiu, Katarina Gregos, Sagi Groner, Hanneke Grootenboer (o.v.), prof. dr. Boris Groys, Khalil Joreige, Eric Kluitenberg, Vesna Madzoski, Nataša Petrešin, Jean-Christophe Royoux, Bart Rutten, prof. dr. Rolf Sachsse, Ive Stevenheydens, Suzanne van de Ven


Within the context of the debate about the role and function of image in our society, the symposium “Art in the New Field of Visibility” attempts to create a broader framework for comprehending the recent metamorphosis of all the communication forms and its implications in the art field.

The emergence of a new synthesis of the worldwide communications field has generated an interesting process of unifying the semiotic distinctions between words and images, between art and non-art, between visibility and non-visibility. This process reveals a paradigm shift that is dramatically altering the boundaries, calling for new strategies of research and approach, adjusted continuously to the increasing complexity of our world.

Through four interdisciplinary panel sessions and a final debate, the participants at the symposium will discuss the various aspects and features of our predominantly visual culture, exploring artists’ reaction to the generalized media experience and to stereotypes and globalization. Topics referring to the new regimes of image as a consequence of living in a transparent society, as well as topics referring to the crisis of representation and the existing situation of visual homogenization, will also be discussed.

 


CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Friday January 19

Place: VLAAMS CULTUURHUIS DE BRAKKE GROND
Nes 45, 1012 KD Amsterdam

9.30- 10.00 Welcome to the participants
10.00-10.15 Welcome speech: Leen Laconte, director of De Brakke Grond
Maria Rus Bojan & Bogdan Ghiu: Introductory Remarks to the Conference

Themes of discussion:
The transparent society considered as environment and condition of contemporary artistic creation.
The new artistic dilemma: approach the media process non-technologically, or subject the technology to artistic purposes?
The contemporary artist’s status, between revolt and desire for diversion, and the risk of being absorbed by the general media flow.
Moderator: Maria Rus Bojan

10.15-10.45 Heiner Holtappels, director Nethrelands Media Art Institute, Montevideo: The Influence of New Technologies on Culture, with a focus on visual art
10.45-11.15 Bogdan Ghiu, philosopher and writer: Imperceptible, Hyper-perceptible: the New Hodological Condition.
11.15-11.45 Emilian Cioc, philosopher, New Europe College Bucharest: Art in a Destitute Time
11.45-12.15 David Garcia, media theorist, Utrecht School of Arts: Visualizing Networked Freedom
12.15-12.45 Pascal Beausse, artcritic and curator: The Artist as a Self-media
13.00-14.00 Lunch in the restaurant of De Brakke Grond

Panel 2: Tuin Zaal Conference Hall, ground floor
Themes of discussion:
Image as mental environment and primordial element of the social space
The dissidence of image in the artistic approaches and the hyper-valorisation of image through spectacle in media.
The new invisibility seen as a state of non-representation and reaction against the media flow.
Moderator: Irina Cios, director of ICCA Bucharest

14.00-14.30 Corin Braga, writer, Babes Bolyai University, Faculty of Letters: ”Imagination”,”Imaginaire”, ”Imaginal”
14.30-15.00 Eric Kluitenberg: Networks of (in-) visibility, Cartographies of the Unseen in Hybrid Space
15.00-15.30 Jean Christophe Royoux, artcritic, France: The dissidence of images
15.30-16.30 Khalil Joreige, artist, Lebanon: Undisclosed Title
16.30–17.00 Sagi Groner, artist: Ready Media

Panel 3. Groene Zaal Conference hall, ground floor
Themes of discussion:

Crisis of representation? An analysis of the existing situation of visual homogenization and democratic aestheticism.
The role of art and its ethical responsibility.
Moderator: Suzanne van de Ven

14.30-15.00 Bart Rutten, curator, Stedelijk Museum Den Bosch, Literary Deduction as Contemporary Navigation Practice
15.00-15.30 Vesna Madzoski, artcritic: Archeology of the Invisible: Shifting Paradigms and Aborted Artworks
15.30-16.30 Prof. Dr. Rolf Sachsse: Behemoth and Leviathan: Ethos in Art and Design under Digital Conditions
17.00-18.30 Opening exhibition: CORCORAN Strategies of Confinement in the Age of Biopolitics, curated by Zoran Eric, exhibition hall De Brakke Grond
21.00-22.00 Opening exhibition: Distorted fabric, Shadow cabinet, curator Natasa Petresin (first part), De Appel, Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10



Saturday January 20

VLAAMS CULTUURHUIS DE BRAKKE GROND
Nes 45, 1012 KD Amsterdam

9.45 -10.00 Coffee

Panel 4. Tuin Zaal Conference Hall, ground floor
Themes of discussion:
Artistic representations of constructed realities.
The battle of art against the new codification and the stereotypes consolidated by media.
Moderator: Natasa Petresin, Artcritic and curator, Paris

10.00–10.30 Hanneke Grootenboer, Senior Researcher, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, UVA: 'Restoring the Infinite'.
10-30-11.00 Zoran Eric, curator Museum of Modern Art Belgrade: Glocalization and “Ethno-cultural World Art”: Artistic responses to stereotypical image(s) of national/ regional representation
11.00-11.30 Jennifer Steetskamp, art historian, collection, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo: Strategies of Appropriation: the Use of Media Images in Video Art
11.30-12.00 Coffee break
12.00-13.00 Lecture of Prof. Dr. Boris Groys: “Art in the Digital Age”, Tuin Zaal Conference Hall, ground floor
13.00-14.00 Lunch, restaurant of De Brakke Grond
14.00-16.00 Conclusions of the Symposium
17.00-18.30 Opening of the exhibition “Investigations”, curated by Pascal Beausse, Maison Descartes, Vijzelgracht 2A
20.30-21.30 Screenings at De Appel (part 2), Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10



List of participants at the symposium:


Pascal Beausse is an art critic and curator. Since 2001 he is Professor of Photography Theory at the School of Arts and Design, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Maria Rus Bojan is an art critic and curator, co-director of The Project Stichting Amsterdam. She has curated several exhibitions on the issue of the identity of periphery (The triangle of peripheries, Shake the Limits, Re:Location 2/4 ) and has organized various interdisciplinary symposia’s on the problematic of image, imagined worlds and visual representation. She is the initiator of the symposium “Art in the New Field of Visibility

Corin Braga
is professor at University Babes Bolyai Cluj, Faculty of Letters and director of the Department of Compared Literature. He is author of several books on the archetypes of European culture, and compared literature.

Emilian Cioc is a philosopher and cultural analyst, fellow at New Europe College Bucharest, PhD candidate at Babes-Bolyai University Cluj and at Nice Sophia-Antipolis University, with a research project on the modern fulfilment of nihilism.

Irina Cios is the director of the International Center for Contemporary Art in Bucharest. She is a PhD candidate in theory of image at University of Bucharest.

Ann Demeester is an art critic and curator, director of De Appel Stichting Amsterdam.

Zoran Eric is art historian and curator. He defended his PhD thesis at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. He is working as curator of Center for Visual Culture at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade.

David Garcia is a media theorist, founding member of Amsterdam's Time Based Arts and creator of a number of international conferences which explore ways in which live events and public debate can be enhanced by being combined with electronic communications media such as television, radio and computer networks.

Bogdan Ghiu is a philosopher and writer, poet, analyst of media, professor at University of Bucharest, Faculty of Letters. He is the author of several books of philosophy and media theory.

Sagi Groner is an Israeli artist based in Amsterdam. His interest is focused on works from several film makers which use ready media and recycle it into a reflection on the medium of images.

Hanneke Grootenboer is an art historian, research leader at Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam and adviser researcher at Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. She is the author of several books and essays related to the history of vision.

Boris Groys is a major European art thinker and philosopher. He is famous for his statements about the post communist society. Boris Groys is the author of several books of philosophy and art theory and professor for philosophy and media theory at the Academy for Design (Hochschule fuer Gestaltung) in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Heiner Holtappels is the director of the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo

Khalil Joreige is a filmmaker, artist and university instructor based in Beirut, Lebanon. He is working together with Joana Hadjithomas. Their collective oeuvre comprises books, photo and video installations, short films and one feature film.

Eric Kluitenberg is a theorist, writer, and organiser on culture, media and technology. He is head of the media program at De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics in Amsterdam, and teaches a.o. at the Institute for Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. He lectures and publishes extensively on culture, new media, and cultural politics throughout Europe and beyond.

Vesna Madzoski is a PhD candidate at Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis on the topic Art That Never Happened: Middle Voice of Contemporary Art. Editor of Prelom Magazine in Belgrade, currently developing projects in Public Space With a Roof in Amsterdam.

Nataša Petrešin
is a freelance curator, contemporary art critic and new media specialist based in Paris.

Jean Christophe Royoux is an art critic, founder of the Agency of artistic production 'histoires parallèles'. A number of his essays were published in 2001 under the title: 'L’exposition du spectateur : enquêtes sur les nouvelles modalités du récit dans les arts visuels'. Currently he is the director of FRAC Languedoc Roussillon.

Bart Rutten is an art critic and curator. He works as curator in Stedelijk Museum Den Bosch

Prof. Dr. phil. Rolf Sachsse, is one of the most prominent German specialist in the History of Photography. Currently he is teaching at HBK Saar, Saarbrücken at the department History if Design and Design Theory.

Jennifer Steetskamp is an art historian, working in the Collection department of Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo

Suzanne van de Ven
is an independent curator and writer based in Amsterdam. She holds a guest-professorship Curatorial Studies at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe and was conductor of the curatorial course of the University of Amsterdam. Van de Ven currently works on an international exhibition project in collaboration with Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam.
For registration to the symposium please contact De Brakke Grond info@brakkegrond.nl Tel: 31.20.6229014, fax: 31.20.6253279

Entrance fee symposium: 20,- (10,- for students)

Event organized by:

Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond
Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Montevideo/Time Based Arts
De Appel
Maison Descartes, Institut Francais des Pays Bas
Romanian Cultural Institute, Bucharest
Goethe Institut Amsterdam

Met dank aan:
With the kind support of the Embassy of Romania in The Hague, Project Foundation Amsterdam