Grazie alle competenze del team di vessel e alla sua fitta rete di partnership e collaborazioni con altri soggetti sia territoriali che internazionali, vessel è in grado di offrire un valido sostegno per il fund raising, il problem solving, il business planning, la comunicazione e la consulenza progettuale ed artistica a coloro che ne faranno richiesta.

In questa sezione del sito sarà data visibilità ai progetti culturali del territorio con cui vessel collabora in qualità di consulente.

Where: Flat Time House / online
210 Bellenden Road, London SE15 4BW

When: Saturday, the 19^th of May, 2012, 2 p.m.

http://www.giant-step.org
http://www.flattimeho.org.uk

Hosts: Corina L. Apostol, Viviana Checchia, Vlad Morariu, Anna Santomauro, Francesco Scasciamacchia, Claire Louise Staunton

Reading Group II belongs to a series of meetings (talks, reading groups, laboratories) unfolding within Giant Step, a project that investigates the current conditions of cultural and artistic production within institutions, as well as the possibilities of critical practice resulting in institutional change. Giant Step aims to articulate a collective reflection on the contemporary role of the art institution in the current economic, cultural and political climate. The project, initiated in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum | The Netherlands, MOSTYN | Wales and Galeria Labyrint | Poland, will culminate in a cycle of nomadic symposia set up by each institution involved. The first symposium “GS1: Enter the Artworld? Marginal Establishments, Cooptation and Resistance” takes place in Bari (12th-14^th of June 2012) followed immediately (15th-17^th of June 2012) by an International Curatorial Course on the same theme.

Reading Group II will be hosted at Flat Time House, the home and studio of the late British artist John Latham. From here we will engage via internet with our co-workers from Bari, Eindhoven, Lladudno and Lublin, and with those who are eager to join our exciting project.

Not by coincidence the location of this reading will be at the “Living sculpture” Flat Time House, an architectural body that functions at the point of junction between the theory and the practice of the British artist. The complexity of Time-Base or Flat Time theory in fact still leaves unexplored many conceptual and aesthetic elements affiliated to the artist’s work. But rather than seeking to fill these gaps, Latham’s work itself seems to intentionally or unintentionally offer ‘blind spots’ as conceptual spaces for imagination and exploration. It is because of these metaphorical spaces for experimenting and, because of the legacy of Latham’s engagement in the Theory married to Practice, that this institution articulates an appropriate environment in which to discuss Hito Steyerl‘s article “The Institution of Critique”.

The text can be found here:

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0106/steyerl/en

The text focuses both on the internal relationships between critique and institutions, and on the political and historical conditions which lead to what Steyerl refers to as “the institutionalization of critique”. By this the author understands the progressive depotentiation and cooptation of critique on the surface of cultural institutions, without it generating material change in their deeper structures and hierarchies. The text has the merit of tracing affiliations between historical strategies of critique, conceptions of the national state and the public sphere, the crisis of representation, and the reign of the neo-liberal order. By drawing these conceptual lines, it pays attention to the type of political subjects that critique produces in different historical and cultural contexts. The question that this reading group will raise follows Steyerl’s final reflections: given the escalating precarity of life, and the progressive dismantling of critical institutions, how would an institution that caters for the needs and desires of the newly created political subject look like?

For more information about vessel’s activities or about how to join the workgroup for Giant Step, contact Viviana Checchia (vivianachecchia@gmail.com), Vlad Morariu (vlad_morariu2003@yahoo.com), and Anna Santomauro (annasantomauro83@gmail.com)

Please confirm us your partecipation by sending an email to: selezionvessel@gmail.com

Italian food will be served!

Confirmed speakers: ArtLeaks, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Charles Esche, Viktor Misiano, Dan Perjovschi, Francesco Scasciamacchia, Dave Beech

Giant Step is a project organized for the purpose of discovering the place of the institution within contemporary culture. It involves two internationally established institutions, Van Abbemuseum | The Netherlands and MOSTYN | Wales, and two that are less connected to a rigid institutional structure, vessel | Italy and Galeria Labirynt | Poland. The main goal of this project is to establish possible roles that institutions could play in the cultural production of a specific area, in order to respond to the needs of the area itself. Taking into account the current political, economic, and social conditions, Giant Step aims to articulate institutional (ideal) types, which are put into a critical dialogue with existing institutions within the framework of four “nomad symposia”.

The context in which Giant Step 1: Enter the Artworld? Marginal Establishments, Cooptation and Resistance takes place is shaped by the city of Bari and the region of Apulia, Italy. Both have a very strong and well-defined identity connected with their history, traditions and geographic position. They are currently undergoing a process of deep transformation in the contemporary art infrastructure and consequently can be seen as a microcosmic example for the tensions between the sociocultural specificity of “marginal” places and the dominant ethos of contemporary art. In the last two decades, the latter has been increasingly shaped by the powerful neo-liberal economic order and inherited its contradictions and paradoxes. On the one hand, it gave birth to a globalised space for self-realisation, circulation and freedom, while on the other hand it reinforced rigid protocols, norms and principles of security and public control, which increasingly purged possibilities of collective and public resistance. We acknowledge that, when addressing the process of co-opting marginal geographic areas into the art world, a literal recuperation by contemporary artists of the anti-institutional, queer, anti-war artistic activism of the 60s and the 70s cannot produce a critique of the paradoxical and multifaceted ethos of the contemporary era. A pure critique, one that is confrontational and oppositional, is not effective anymore: there is a need to reframe the notion of critique. We ask, therefore, which tactics can be adopted by artists, curators and critics in order to simultaneously embrace and disclose the dichotomies operating in the global era? How is it possible to effect change rather than imposing internationally recognised models of criticism and protest? And given that the art field is structurally articulated by processes of institutionalisation, how is it possible to re-imagine the notion of the institution, since our minds and bodies are the places in which the institutionalisation imposes its pervasive necessity to produce economic values? How is it possible to configure the institution as a place of public encounter where citizens can deploy their desire to ‘react’ or  ‘revolt’? Our intention is to construct a forum in which different interests and positions are represented. We propose a sustained reflection about the potential of a rhizomatic realm articulated by transversal alliances of cultural and artistic energies stemming from geographical margins.

ALL ATTENDEES MUST PREREGISTER BY May 27th 2012
download the Registration Form

Partners: European Cultural Foundation, Van Abbemuseum, Galeria Labirynt, MOSTYN | Wales, vessel, Politicized Practice Research Group (Loughborough University)

With the support of The Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research of Venice

Maja Ciric, Benjamin Fallon, Sasha Gora, Michele Horrigan, Marianna Hovhannisyan, Samantha Jones, Valeria Mancinelli, Maya Mikelsone, Elisa Montesinos Pustkowska, Gean Moreno, Marina Noronha, Victoria Preston, Danielle Rago, Wilma Renfordt, Lisa Schmidt, Laura Simpson, Logan Sisley, Natalia Valencia, Suzanne Wallinga.

Biografie

Benjamin Fallon is an independent curator and designer based in Edinburgh. He served as co-director of Embassy Gallery between 2008 and 2010, was as a member of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s Artistic Programme Committee from 2006 to 2008. Benjamin has been a visiting lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art (CVCS) since 2010 and is a visiting lecturer at Edinburgh’s Telford College. Benjamin is currently developing a number of curatorial projects including the exhibition ‘Escape Velocity’ with the artist and writer John Beagles exploring the impact and role of digital technology on culture and society, The online journal ‘URS’ focussing on the intersections between art, politics and technology and the working group ‘Let’s get together and call ourselves an institute.’ researching the possibilities for new forms of institutional practice. More about Benjamin

Sasha Gora is currently finishing up her dissertation – “Art and Institution – From the Museum as Medium to Institutional Critique: the Development of the Exhibition of Contemporary Art in Historical Museums” – for a master’s degree in international museum studies from the University of Gothenburg. She has studied art history and international development studies at McGill University and the University of Copenhagen and has held internships at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (formerly the Victoria & Albert Bombay), Lothringer_13_Halle and Nature Morte Berlin. Her writing has appeared in Public and Museums of Ideas: Commitment and Conflict. She is a member of the collective Whose Museum.

Michele Horrigan is an artist and curator based in Limerick and Berlin. She studied fine art at the Stadelschule Frankfurt and the University of Ulster. She is visual arts curator in the Belltable arts centre in Limerick City. Since 2006, she is founder and curatorial director of Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Through an annual residency and production programme, the organisation has commissioned over forty artists projects in direct relationship to the town of Askeaton, County Limerick.

Valeria Mancinelli (1986) lives in Venice. She holds a MA in Visual Art from the IUAV University in Venice. Her research focus has been on the artist role in the post-Fordist society. Since 2008 she is an activist of the independent space for contemporary art S.a.L.E. Docks in Venice. In 2011 she co-founds the group Trial Version focused on temporary urban exhibitions.

Maya Mikelsone (born in 1982 in Riga, Latvia) is a curator based in Paris. She has studied Philosophy of Art at University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne followed by curatorial training program at École du Magasin. Currently she is collaborating with Latvian Center for Contemporary Art. More about Maya

Elisa Montesinos Pustkowska is a graduate of the Université La Sorbonne-Paris IV and the Universidad de Valencia with a double-degree in Art History. She has completed a Master in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has worked for the Museo Nacional Reina Sofía and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Victoria Preston is the founder of Cultural Capital Consultancy. Previously she created the not-for-profit art space, Wings Projects and was a director of the Contemporary Art Centre in Geneva. She has recently completed a PhD in Institutional Critique at the University of London. She holds an MFA in Curating, an INSEAD MBA and graduated in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University.

Danielle Rago is an architecture writer and curator based in NY City and Los Angeles. She is Co-Director and Curator of ASAP, a not-for-profit arts institution that advocates architecture and its value as part of a broader social, political, and aesthetic discourse. She is also a freelance contributor to a number of international publications on architecture and design. She has worked with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and published in Architectural Record, The Architect’s Newspaper, LOG: Observations on Contemporary Architecture and the City, and Domus. Danielle holds a Master’s degree in Architecture History and Critical Thinking from the Architectural Association, London where her focus was on the shifting role of the institution and media, and how contemporary architecture and its public is being produced and mediated through the institution and curator.

Wilma Renfordt, b. 1982, dramaturge, curator, performer and writer. Her work focusses on the exploration of and intervention into the spatial, discursive and fictional construction of societal interaction. Frequent collaborations include theatre company copy & waste, Projektbüro Friedrich von Borries and Theorie- und Praxisgemeinschaft Dr. Fahimi, with projects at (non-)institutions such as HAU (Berlin), Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg) and WestGermany (Berlin). Her texts have been published in Texte zur Kunst and Merve.

Lisa Schmidt (* 1982 in Starnberg, Germany) studied cultural sciences in Hildesheim. Since 2005 she has been member of the curatorial collective a7.ausstellungen, worked as curatorial assistant for Kunstverein München and as artistic director of Kunstverein Hildesheim. In her projects and research she often deals with the relations and intersections between production and presentation, process and product, artistic practice and theory. Currently she lives and works in Hamburg.

Laura Simpson is a curator based in Dundee, Scotland. As Chair of artist-led group Generator (2002 – 2005), she curated many projects with local and international artists and built links with other artist-groups throughout Europe. Since 2007, Laura has been Assistant Curator at Exhibitions, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, where she works on a diverse, critically engaged exhibition programme involving students, staff and invited artists across four galleries including the Cooper Gallery. Laura’s independent curation and writing projects are archieved at laurasimpson.wordpress.com

Logan Sisley studied art history at the University of Otago and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is a member of the studio team for the studio 468 residency programme, Dublin, Ireland, and is currently Exhibitions Curator at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane where he has recently curated Revolutionary States: Home Rule and Modern Ireland.

The first Reading Group within the Giant Step project was an important step for the work group based in Bari and for all the people involved in the project. The meeting, which took place at BLUorG gallery and was moderated by Vlad Morariu, was attended by Fabio Santacroce, Michele Spinelli, Bruno Barsanti, Alessandro Bucci, Roberta Fiorito, Giuseppe Bellini, and, via skype, Francesco Scasciamacchia, Alessandra Saviotti and Nicoletta Daldanise.

The starting point for the Giant Step project was a meeting held in January, when a group of cultural workers interested in issues linked to the conditions and possibilities of institutional critique approached the project for the first time. That occasion raised many questions that were left answered; now that the project has a more defined shape it is finally possible to build a dialogue with the people involved.

The first part of the group meeting was focused on defining Institutional Critique. Vlad succinctly described how the movement rose in the 1960s as an outgrowth of Minimalism and Conceptual Art and then highlighted its cultural and social background.

The Reading Group was supposed to focus on a text written by Brian Holmes, but sequentially took different paths. The attendants seemed to be more interested in understanding what Giant Step is and what are the project’s aims. “So, what does Giant Step want?” was a popular question.

First of all, the project doesn’t aim for institutions to disappear. We live alongside institutions and they rule our lives and society. Additionally, we have to consider that they are made up of people who build systems of real and symbolic values. Cultural institutions are often full of contradictions; their aim is to preserve valuable artworks, but who decides what to represent? Which criteria do the institutions choose?

The focus on Bari is due to the marginality of a place which is witnessing the birth of a new institution, which has the energy and potential to investigate this process from its very beginning. In this context, Giant Step is a perfect occasion to raise questions about the role of the BAC within the cultural and social scenario of the city, as well as to get acquainted with the values that the museum represents.

The heritage of Institutional Critique can help the work group to formulate new questions directed towards many different institutions in order to investigate their systems of relationships.

Why are the Reading Group and case studies so important? The objective is to create a community of art practitioners who share a base of common research combined with the will to cooperate and collaborate by developing a strong sense of responsibility and commitment.

The reflections were manifold: why, for instance, does a small city like Bari need such an ambitious museum? Another interesting point is the presence of important collectors in the city, even if this aspect is not blatantly evident.

“How can we define an institution? How can we create categories?” asked Fabio Santacroce.

The conversation was enriched by Francesco Scasciamacchia’s contribution. He introduced Brian Holmes’ article, highlighting the distinction between the interdisciplinary and the extra-disciplinary mentioned by the author; the former is conceived as a dialogue between different disciplines, the latter is a method to jump out of a specific sector while keeping its tools. In this context, can we consider the artist as a specialist?

Another interesting reflection came from Francesco: how do we criticize nowadays? In the current situation many artists tend to build rather than to criticize, and they are much more marginal than the artists involved in social practices. It seems that institutions are everywhere, even outside of the museum.

What we are witnessing in the Occupy movement is a sort of nostalgia of the 1960s and 1970s protests. It is interesting to note that those movements had lots of contradictions and became institutional themselves.

Is it really important to change the state of things or should we look back on the experiences of the past?

In Vlad’s opinion we should aim to modify our mental framework, as often it has a binomial approach; we should not look for a third way, but an “n position” that widens this way of thinking. After a brief mention to the last Venice Biennial and some reflections on the Romanian scenario, there are two words that emerged: context and power.

Francesco, Jerlyn and Viviana

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Confirmed speakers: ArtLeaks, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Charles Esche, Viktor Misiano, Dan Perjovschi, Francesco Scasciamacchia, Dave Beech

Bari, Italy, 12th – 14th of June 2012
Organizer of the conference: vessel

More information: http://www.giant-step.org

Partners: European Cultural Foundation, Van Abbemuseum, Galeria Labirynt, MOSTYN | Wales, vessel, Politicized Practice Research Group (Loughborough University), The Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research of Venice

Giant Step is a project organized for the purpose of discovering the place of the institution within contemporary culture. It involves two internationally established institutions, Van Abbemuseum | The Netherlands and MOSTYN | Wales, and two that are less connected to a rigid institutional structure, vessel | Italy and Galeria Labirynt | Poland. The main goal of this project is to establish possible roles that institutions could play in the cultural production of a specific area, in order to respond to the needs of the area itself. Taking into account the current political, economic, and social conditions, Giant Step aims to articulate institutional (ideal) types, which are put into a critical dialogue with existing institutions within the framework of four “nomad symposia”.

The context in which Giant Step 1: Enter the Artworld? Marginal Establishments, Cooptation and Resistance takes place is shaped by the city of Bari and the region of Apulia, Italy. Both have a very strong and well-defined identity connected with their history, traditions and geographic position. They are currently undergoing a process of deep transformation in the contemporary art infrastructure and consequently can be seen as a microcosmic example for the tensions between the sociocultural specificity of “marginal” places and the dominant ethos of contemporary art. In the last two decades, the latter has been increasingly shaped by the powerful neo-liberal economic order and inherited its contradictions and paradoxes. On the one hand, it gave birth to a globalised space for self-realisation, circulation and freedom, while on the other hand it reinforced rigid protocols, norms and principles of security and public control, which increasingly purged possibilities of collective and public resistance. We acknowledge that, when addressing the process of co-opting marginal geographic areas into the art world, a literal recuperation by contemporary artists of the anti-institutional, queer, anti-war artistic activism of the 60s and the 70s cannot produce a critique of the paradoxical and multifaceted ethos of the contemporary era. A pure critique, one that is confrontational and oppositional, is not effective anymore: there is a need to reframe the notion of critique. We ask, therefore, which tactics can be adopted by artists, curators and critics in order to simultaneously embrace and disclose the dichotomies operating in the global era? How is it possible to effect change rather than imposing internationally recognised models of criticism and protest? And given that the art field is structurally articulated by processes of institutionalisation, how is it possible to re-imagine the notion of the institution, since our minds and bodies are the places in which the institutionalisation imposes its pervasive necessity to produce economic values? How is it possible to configure the institution as a place of public encounter where citizens can deploy their desire to ‘react’ or  ‘revolt’? Our intention is to construct a forum in which different interests and positions are represented. We propose a sustained reflection about the potential of a rhizomatic realm articulated by transversal alliances of cultural and artistic energies stemming from geographical margins.

We invite proposals for papers of 20 minutes from academics, unaffiliated researchers, activists and artists, welcoming individual papers as well as group panels that respond to these and other conceptions that address the issue institutional criticism. The language of the conference is English. Possible research questions include, but are not limited to:

- What is the role and the function of the art institution today, given the deep social-economic and cultural changes which have occurred in the last 20 years?

- How does the legacy of institutional critique inform actual artistic and curatorial practices and how does it contribute to the re-location of critique within institutions?

- How is it possible for the art institution to imagine and preserve its autonomous space for critique under the pressures of the contradictory logic of late capitalism?

- What is an economic, cultural and social margin and what is the possible function of an art institution operating within?

- What political and artistic practices can such spaces propose as alternative to the logic of the art world?

- Are the notions of radicalism and dissent still applicable to artistic criticism?

- What are the means and methodologies for determining the success and viability of systems of critique within specific contexts? How could contextualisation, as a methodology, be a tool for opening up a space for a more effective response to the dominant cultural context?

- How is it possible to retrieve political value (rather than assumed moral good) from horizontal collaboration, when collaboration itself is precisely what post-Fordist capitalism seeks to valorise? How can ambiguity create a space for criticism?

Applications and enquiries: please send a short proposal (up to 300 words) with bio to Vlad Morariu (v.morariu@lboro.ac.uk) who will also respond to all other enquiries.

Deadline for submissions: 9^th of May 2012

The conference is free of charge.

More information: http://www.giant-step.org

Il 16 marzo vessel presenta la ricerca dell’artista Elke Roelant presso gli spazi di BLUorG. L’artista, in città per approfondire l’interesse per Giant Step e per muovere i primi passi verso una sperimentazione metodologica nell’ambito del progetto stesso, racconterà le tappe che l’hanno portata a riconoscere nella ricerca etnografica una definizione al suo metodo di lavoro. Elke sottolineerà come da un’indagine di carattere partecipante possano scaturire interventi che coniugano l’arte e l’antropologia a partire dal racconto di Catalogue Project at the V. Makharoblidze Museum of Lore and Ethnography, Tsageri: l’obiettivo del progetto è di identificare, collocare e visualizzare una particolare nozione della cultura georgiana, con una particolare attenzione alla consapevolezza storico-culturale e alle sue conseguenze nel contesto della trasformazione.

Elke Roelant si è laureata alla Rietveld Academy nel 2005, e vive e lavora ad Amsterdam.
È innanzi tutto un’artista che lavora con la fotografia, e occasionalmente con il video, interessata ad espandere il suo lavoro ad espressioni spaziali ed interventi nello spazio pubblico.
Ricerca e interpretazione sono importanti elementi e, di conseguenza, fasi diverse nel suo lavoro. Un periodo di impegno partecipativo è di solito seguito da un’intensa fase di editing: il risultato della ricerca, infatti, ha un’impronta artistica più che teorica o accademica, per la ricchezza e profondità comunicative che da essa scaturiscono.
Il suo lavoro artistico implica un’indagine diretta nella realtà – non solo la realtà del mercato e degli eventi, ma anche quella delle motivazioni, dei valori intrinsechi e delle dinamiche psicologiche.

16 marzo h 18:00
BLUorG culturecontemporanee
Via Marcello Celentano 92/94
70121 – Bari (IT)

Reading Group #1 è il primo di una serie di incontri (conferenze, gruppi di lettura, laboratori), che permetterà alle comunità di artisti e produttori culturali nelle città coinvolte di diventare partecipanti attivi nella articolazione di una conoscenza critica, piuttosto che essere meri destinatari. vessel sta coordinando un gruppo composto da artisti, curatori e operatori d’arte con sede in Puglia che realizzeranno un processo di ricerca basato sull’analisi di case studies e sull’indagine “etnografica” di varie istituzioni locali, nazionali e internazionali. I risultati della ricerca saranno disponibili sul sito di Giant Step.

Reading Group #1 si concentrerà sulle indagini di Brian Holmes contenute nell’articolo Extradisciplinary Investigations. Towards a New Critique of Institutions”

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0106/holmes/en

Il testo esamina le dimensioni storiche delle fasi specifiche di critica istituzionale, valutandone criticamente i loro successi e fallimenti. Contribuisce alla riflessione contemporanea sulle possibilità della critica (istituzionale) articolandone l’extradisciplinarietà, una posizione mobile e sovversiva del soggetto critico che è in grado di muoversi trasversalmente, in un andi-rivieni tra discipline eterogenee (dall’arte alla psichiatria , geografia urbana e biotecnologie) senza lasciarsi davvero cogliere in nessuna di esse.

Per ulteriori informazioni sul progetto Giant Step visita il sito www.giant-step.org

Reading Group #1
12 Marzo, ore 18
@ BLUorG
Via Marcello Celentano 92/94
70121 – Bari (IT)