Art and Theory Today: launch of e-flux Index #9

For the past fifty years, theory has profoundly shaped the conditions of artistic production: how artists are educated and how many of them work, how curators are trained, how exhibitions are framed, how institutions articulate their missions, and how criticism confers aesthetic value. Yet theory is not a body of abstract ideas simply applied to art from the outside. Theory and artistic practice have historically developed together, each transforming the other within the material and institutional organization of the field. What position does theory occupy in art today?

We are living through a period marked by war, displacement, ecological collapse, and accelerating political reaction. What can theory do under these conditions? Does it still offer tools for understanding the present and acting within it? How does theory enter into artistic practice, and how is it altered in the process? Has it become a specialized language increasingly detached from lived experience? What forms of knowledge can art produce that theory alone cannot?

This conversation brings together artists, writers, and editors whose work approaches theory as something that is used, tested, contested, and transformed through artistic practice.

The event is organized on the occasion of the launch of e-flux Index #9, which reflects on the relationship between art and theory today.

With Hiwa K, Oraib Toukan, Elena Vogman, Ben Eastham, Hallie Ayres, George Macbeth, Sung Tieu, and Anton Vidokle.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.