ACT X
ROTTERDAM DIALOGUES: MORALITY
Friday 19 &
Saturday 20 November, 2010
1-7 p.m.
Center for Contemporary Art
Witte de Withstraat 50
3012 BR Rotterdam
The Netherlands
+31 (0)10 411 0144
Since the Fall of 2009, the team at Witte de With has been developing a series of exhibitions and events that make visible the gray zones of contemporary morality. This was motivated by our perception that an exponential number of moral attitudes are emerging in the public sphere that reinforce rigid, binary frameworks for thought and action. With this in mind, our aim has been to shed some light on the workings of morality from a range of different perspectives, focusing on the areas where its application is elusive and unstable, culturally specific and politically ambivalent. Our sense is that the question of morality must remain in play but open and undefined. The purpose of Rotterdam Dialogues: Morality is to forge a constructive discussion around this increasingly ubiquitous but elusive term, transferring the explorations and speculations developed throughout this past year’s exhibitions and events to the discursive field.
With this symposium we wish to shed some light on the fraught encounter between the values that characterize the idea of an open, egalitarian society, and the intolerances articulated in the name of morality. Rather than specifying the meaning of morality, the symposium guests have been asked to introduce case studies through which to think constructively about spaces and instances where binary distinctions—good and evil; right and wrong—fall apart. From the figure of the zombie and its dubious status as an allegory of the contemporary capitalist subject, through the role of the museum’s architecture in the interpretation and re-interpretation of ethnographic objects, to the social organization of tent cities as forms of social protest; and the re-invention of architecture through such nomadic notions, each guest will share her or his intellectual experience to form a base for concrete discussion.
The participants represent a wide range of disciplines: philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, curating, criticism, art, anthropology and architecture.
Lars Bang Larsen (critic, Barcelona/Copenhagen)
Clémentine Deliss (director, Museum de Weltkulturen, Frankfurt)
Dessislava Dimova (art historian and freelance curator, Brussels)
Felix Ensslin (Professor for Aesthetics and Art Mediation, State Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart)
Joseph Grima (director, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York)
Nikolaus Hirsch (director, Städelschule, Frankfurt)
Candice Hopkins (curator, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa)
Koyo Kouoh (administrator, curator and critic, Dakar)
Mian Mian (author, Shanghai)
Matthias Mühling (Head of Department Collections /Exhibitions/ Research, Städtische Galerie im Lembachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich)
Wendelien van Oldenborgh (artist, Rotterdam)
Adriano Pedrosa (independent curator, editor and writer, Saõ Paulo)
Tariq Ramadan (Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University)
Aaron Schuster (philosopher, Berlin)
Tirdad Zolghadr (independent critic and curator, New York, teacher at Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College).
And with New-York-based artist, Rainar Ganahl, as a special respondent from the audience.
Practical information:
For tickets purchase, please refer to our website: www.wdw.nl or contact us via reservations@wdw.nl or call +31 (0)10 411 0144.
Language: English
Location: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art – (Auditorium), Rotterdam, The Netherlands
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