Second Lecture in the Series on "Politics and Depoliticization"
As part of our Public Seminar Series
What has been called art since the second part of the 19th century is deeply rooted in a complex relationship between market and state institutions, both legitimizing each other and producing valued artifacts. The concept of artistic avant-garde, very often associated with the notion of political avant-garde, contributed to the market consecration of the artist. Can art satisfy simultaneously the demand for artistic autonomy, and make a valuable social statement? In which ways does autonomy politicize or depoliticize art? Can art avoid being the “voice of the voiceless”? Or has creative art, on the contrary, turned back into a form of court art? What is political art today and how legitimate is it? What are the mechanisms through which artists and institutions intentionally de-politicize art? Artists, curators and scholars from Europe, the Middle East and the US will reflect on the dangerous liaisons between art, power and the political imagination.
Galit Eilat is an interdependent curator and writer based in Amsterdam. She developed her practice through a variety of platforms and roles as an institute director and editor of books and a magazine. Her current research trajectories are dealing with the Syndrome of the Present and Totalitarian Art vs Art under Totalitarianism. Eilat is the recipient of a Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism, Bard College, 2017-18 and she is the director of Meduza Foundation since 2018.
Róza El-Hassan, born in Budapest is a visual artist who creates objects, drawings and texts. She initiated collaborative projects, among others EXTRA-Territoria in Belgrade 1990 with Milica Tomic, KMKK with János Sugár, Dóra Hegyi and Emese Süvecz , Syrian Voices Mediation and Art (WordPress) and a project titled Nocorruption.hu.
Szabolcs KissPál is an artist and associate professor at the HUFA Budapest (Intermedia Dpt) whose work straddles new media, visual arts and social issues. Between 2012-15 he has been actively involved in various activist projects including museum occupations and civil disobedience actions.
Since 2008, artist, Kate Browne has been working on her performance installation series, Cocoon. She has created Cocoons in Paris, Mexico City, Greenwood and Jackson, Mississippi. Her most recent Cocoon was in The Bronx, New York. Previously, she wrote and directed her own plays, including MOTHS, Animal Within, reworkingCassandra, NEEDLES, and The Big Window all staged at various New York City theaters. Browne grew up in rural Pennsylvania, has a BA from Hampshire College, and is a Yaddo Fellow. She now lives in New York City.