Here, There, and Elsewhere: Assembling Communities
November 28–December 10, 2012
At multiple locations
Information and tickets:
www.sfmoma.org
Two SFMOMA exhibitions—Six Lines of Flight: Shifting Geographies in Contemporary Art, currently on view, and South Africa in Apartheid and After, opening December 1—constitute a collection of stories from places under-recognized by the dominant global art economy. These are places where the questionable dynamics of center and periphery are in play, where collaborative, grassroots action sustains cultural communities, and where, in many cases, violent or repressive histories haunt collective memory. Here, There, and Elsewhere: Assembling Communities, a collaboration between SFMOMA and various other Bay Area art institutions, explores these themes through a series of discussions, encounters, performances, and screenings, as well as an online project commissioning and curating related media, available at Story Board.
November 28
Workshop: Helena Producciones
The festival begins at Kadist Art Foundation, with an event co-organized with the Colombian-based artist collective Helena Producciones and VISIBLE: an open call for proposals for live presentations—actions and performative gestures—that emphasize visual commentaries on urgent social issues. The winners will present their performances on December 2.
November 29
Artist Conversation: David Goldblatt
Photographer David Goldblatt joins SFMOMA Senior Curator of Photography Sandra S. Phillips for a conversation about the artist’s work and the exhibition South Africa in Apartheid and After. This event is presented in collaboration with California College of the Arts and Pier 24 Photography.
November 30
Curatorial Workshop: Exhibiting South Africa
This curator- and artist-led workshop—a collaboration between SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts—begins a process that will result in an exhibition in 2014 that explores visual activism and the representation of social space in South Africa.
December 1
Symposium: Creating the Periphery: Shifting Geographies in Contemporary Art
The centerpiece of Here, There, and Elsewhere, this symposium breaks from conventional symposium formats for a more fluid, less hierarchical, and more intimate exchange. It brings together artists, curators, and writers from around world and connects contemporary visual art to issues in literature, performance, and politics. It will be convened simultaneously onsite at SFMOMA and online, exploring how in recent years, the focal point of the art world has shifted from a few major centers to a multiplicity of artistic communities around the globe. Cultural power is still concentrated in some cities and regions more than others, but the affinities between so-called peripheral locations begin to describe a different geography of contemporary art. In what ways does it still make sense to speak of the periphery at all? What forces continue to create the periphery, and what it can mean to create at the periphery? What forms of self-organization, grassroots globalism, and interconnectedness does it generate?
December 3
Performance: Mapa Teatro, Witness to the Ruins
Mapa Teatro presents a lecture/performance about a series of art projects rooted in one of the most ambitious urban renewal developments in their hometown of Bogotá, Colombia: the demolition of the extremely impoverished Santa Inés district and its replacement with a monumental park.
December 5
Artist Talk: Tuan Andrew Nguyen
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, cofounder of Sàn Art, an artist-run exhibition space in Ho Chi Minh City, and a founding member of The Propeller Group, gives an artist talk at the Kadist Art Foundation.
December 6
Book Signing: A Variation on the Powers of Ten by Futurefamers
Film Screening: Shifting Geographies/Special Relativity: Deep State and Other WorksSan Francisco Cinematheque presents a selection of short films and videos examining transnational political networks, invisible flows of information, border issues, and the space between the individual and the state. The screening is preceded by a book signing and launch for A Variation on the Powers of Ten by San Francisco-based collective Futurefarmers, part of a multifaceted research project inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’s film Powers of Ten (1977).
December 7, 9, and 10
Performance: Carolina Caycedo, We Have All the Ingredients
Carolina Caycedo explores the inner and outer spaces of our bodies, our neighbors, and our locales to consider physical and social systems eluding our sight. She begins inside, examining with a microscope participants’ cheek cells, blood drops, saliva, skin, and hair. Moving outside, to a group of telescopes, we’ll explore landmarks and limits in three locales: the California Academy of Sciences, SFMOMA, and San Francisco Art Institute.
