Other Survivalisms
FORMER WEST public editorial meeting
16–17 May 2014
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst
Lange Nieuwstraat 4
NL–3512 PH Utrecht
The Netherlands
www.bakonline.org
www.formerwest.org
Under the title Other Survivalisms, on 16 and 17 May, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht hosts the second installment of its public editorial meetings geared towards the realization of the forthcoming FORMER WEST publication. These gatherings take the editorial meeting as their model for informal (re)negotiations of the living knowledge brought together through the course of the project. The public exchanges take place in cultural and geopolitical contexts both within and outside of the so-called “former West” and bring together a great number of collaborators from the project’s past and current investigations, including artists, writers, theorists, curators, activists, and students, as well as our various publics. The series is developed and curated by writer, cultural critic, and translator Boris Buden; curator, organizer, and artistic director of BAK, Maria Hlavajova; and curator and writer Simon Sheikh.
Following the initial Berlin public editorial meeting at FORMER WEST: Documents, Constellations, Prospects at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 2013, the Utrecht edition coincides with BAK’s current research inquiry into Future Vocabularies and its opening entry on conceptual itineraries of “survival.” One strand of inquiry explores the question of the commons as a mode of ensuring the survival of the notion of the public. Taking as its example the so-called “public” institution of art and culture, which seems to have lost its emancipatory potential at the present moment as state and private interests reveal themselves to be conditioned by the same (market) forces, this trajectory looks at modes of instituting-in-common, examining not only how they place pressure on dominant forms of ownership and governance, but how the art institution itself might be transformed into an agent of political action. The second current within this gathering tackles the prospects of survival through economic and environmental perspectives and catastrophes, asking, amidst the rupture within the present interregnum (much in the Gramscian sense of a period in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born”), how do we survive “otherwise?” The third trajectory deliberates upon survival through the notion of “afterlife,” which evokes a temporality different than the logic of “post-ism” that has long monopolized our historical imagination, be they concepts of the post-political, the post-utopian, or post-history. Beyond a perpetual repetition of “post-isms,” this last trajectory gestures towards a critique of the ideologies behind them.
Other Survivalisms consists of a number of moderated meetings with artists, theorists, and activists on Friday, 16 May at 13.30–20h and on Saturday, 17 May at 09.30–20h, at Het Utrechts Archief, located opposite from BAK on Hamburgerstraat 28, Utrecht.
Contributors to the project include Boris Buden, writer, cultural critic, and translator, Berlin; T.J. Demos, art historian and critic, London; Benjamin Fallon, writer and curator, Brussels; Mark Fisher, theorist, writer, and editor, London; Maja & Reuben Fowkes, art historians and curators, Budapest and London; Katherine Gibson, theorist and writer, Sydney; Maria Hlavajova, curator and cultural organizer, artistic director of BAK, Utrecht; Brigitta Kuster, artist and writer, Berlin; Laura McLean, curator and researcher, London; Massimiliano Mollona, theorist and writer, London; Alexei Penzin, philosopher and writer, London and Moscow; Andrea Phillips, theorist and writer, London; Poka-Yio, artist and curator, Athens; Simon Sheikh, curator and theorist, Berlin and London; Jonas Staal, artist, Rotterdam; and Marina Vishmidt, writer, editor, and critic, London.
The public editorial meeting can be followed via live streaming at www.formerwest.org.
The activities of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst have been made possible by financial support from the City Council of Utrecht and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science of the Netherlands, as well as generous support from Stichting DOEN, Amsterdam.
