Ekaterina Degot elected Artistic Director
Elke Moltrecht appointed CEO
Academy of the Arts of the World
Im Mediapark 7
50670 Cologne
Germany
info [at] academycologne.org
The Academy of the Art of the World is a not-for-profit cultural organization initiated in 2012 by the city of Cologne. It understands itself as a society of artists and scholars rather than as an educational institution in the traditional sense. Its members form an international network of cultural practitioners based in a variety of disciplines, intellectual backgrounds, and places, who interact virtually and convene locally on a biyearly basis with the goal of giving specific, critical meaning to the phrase “the arts of the world.”
Based in Cologne, a city of migrants, the Academy seeks to move beyond euro-centrist doctrines of cultural history, while attending to the global conditions of post- and neo-colonialism, and avoiding the romance of multiculturalism, globalism, and identity politics. Facing a social and political environment deeply affected by the overwhelming logic of global finance and neoliberal force, the Academy enables and supports practices that address and challenge these very conditions. It supports processes of reflection, intervention, and collaboration that aim at a critical understanding and transformation of the conditions of contemporary cultural production. As a nomadic institution, the Academy initiates events and discussions at different locations in Cologne, and elsewhere.
The Academy is pleased to announce that its members have elected Ekaterina Degot as the Artistic Director of the Academy of the Arts of the World for a two-year period. Ekaterina Degot is an art historian, writer, and curator. She teaches at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. From 2008 to 2012, she was senior editor of the arts section of OpenSpace.ru, an independent culture portal. In 2013 she curated (with David Riff) the internationally acclaimed first edition of the Bergen Assembly, a triennial in Norway. Degot lives and works in Moscow and Cologne. She has been a member of the Academy from its early beginnings; over the last three months she contributed as part of the interim artistic team, together with Academy members Tom Holert and Liza Lim.
The Academy is also pleased to welcome Elke Moltrecht as its new CEO. Elke Moltrecht is a musicologist and co-founder of Bachhaus/Bosehaus Leipzig and Heinrich-Schütz-Haus Bad Köstritz. She was director of the Podewil – Center for Contemporary Arts and the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, both in Berlin. From 2008 to 2011 she served as Executive Director of the nationwide contemporary music network Musik 21 Niedersachsen, and of the Musik Sehen project of the Humboldt-Lab Dahlem, 2012–2013. She is curator of international and interdisciplinary festivals and projects as well as annual programs, including contemporary music, sound art, electroacoustic and experimental electronic music, and club culture. She has published on experimental and new music and is a member of national and international juries and boards.
