www.kunstverein-muenchen.de
www.cascoprojects.org
Taking place at Kunstverein München between 1–14 August 2011
Organised by: Kunstverein München and Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory (Utrecht), funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation
We call for your participation in Group Affinity!
Group Affinity examines ‘affinity’ as a thesis for contemporary social movement and self-governed cultural production. Taking the form of a two-week summer school and a four-week exhibition, the project offers a diverse curriculum of five participatory faculties, run by the international groups: Chicago Boys, Grand Openings, Cinenova, Andreas Müller Susanne Pietsch and Slavs and Tatars. Working within a wide range of disciplines and in modalities of research and action—from participatory architecture to performative actions, and (incongruous) translation to enactments of historic archives—these collectives share a common goal of accommodating inter-subjective alliance as their public significance.
Over the past few decades the notion of ‘affinity’ has become exemplary for contemporary movements that take on nonhierarchical or democratic structures of organisation and grassroots political activism. While most examples that conceptualise affinity remain grounded in traditional anarchist thinking that opposes the logic of hegemony, Group Affinity finds greater resonance in working against the grain of today’s cultural politics: the rise of populist Europe, its impenetrable definitions of audience and public value and its aim to instrumentalise the fields of culture and education.
Group Affinity is premised on the understanding that self-organising practices of production and research do not serve an administered and neo-liberalist understanding of the public and the network: they, instead, constitute a culture of mutual recognition in affinity. Therefore, central to the investigation of Group Affinity is an exploration of how a critical and collective agency is formed and enacted.
See our websites for more information on the project. Send your application for one of the faculties to the below contact address. There’s no fee for enrollment. Housing and hospitality will be offered to 30 applicants. All applications should be in before 30 May 2011.
Contact person:
Julia Maier [email protected]
Kunstverein München Galeriestraße 4 80539 München, Germany
T + 49-(0)89-221 152 F + 49-(0)89-229 352