The China Experience
12pm, Thursday 16 October 2008
Carol Yinghua Lu (Writer, Curator and Contributing Editor, frieze) brought together three key players in Chinese contemporary art to discuss the impact of the country’s political, financial and creative conditions on its artists, critics, curators and gallerists. With so much attention focused on China, the panel examined the structures of its art scene and looks at how it compares to Western models.
- Chair: Carol Yinghua Lu (Writer, Curator and Contributing Editor, frieze)
- Weng Ling (curator and founder of the Beijing Center for the Arts)
- Zheng Shengtian (Yishu, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art)
- Karen Smith (Writer, Curator and Chinese Contemporary Art Specialist)
A Personal Grammar of Means
3pm, Thursday 16 October 2008
Artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz in conversation with writer and art historian Roger Cook.
The Aesthetic Responsibility
5pm, Thursday 16 October 2008
Writer, curator and philosopher Boris Groys gave a keynote lecture on how design today functions as a leading medium of self-revelation and self-positioning in public space. Arguing that design has acquired a new ethical dimension, he contended that where there was once religion, there is now design.
It’s About Time
12pm, Friday 17 October 2008
Chaired by Jennifer Allen (Writer and Critic), this discussion explored the recent emphasis on temporality in art exhibitions. While considering historical and philosophical precedents, the panel looked at how and why time has become a tool for curators, and questioned the political implications of such an approach.
- Chair: Jennifer Allen (Writer and Critic)
- Carsten Höller (Artist)
- Elena Filipovic (Writer and Independent Curator)
- Peter Osborne (Professor and Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London)
The First Pictures I Enjoyed
3pm, Friday 17 October 2008
Writer and artist Alasdair Gray in conversation with novelist and artist Tom McCarthy.
PASSAGES OF LIGHT
5pm, Friday 17 October 2008
Artist Yoko Ono presented a keynote lecture, demonstrating the continued importance of the performative practices and engagement with audiences that she has pursued since the 1960s.
In Memory of the Image
12pm, Saturday 18 October 2008
This panel chaired by Stuart Comer (Curator: Film, Tate Modern) looked at the proliferation, immediacy and increasing mobility of images. If we have reached the demise of representation, how do we talk about the image? What are the implications for rethinking terms such as documentary, form and abstraction?
- Chair: Stuart Comer (Curator: Film, Tate Modern)
- George Baker (Associate Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles and editor at October)
- Morgan Fisher (Artist and Filmmaker)
- Hito Steyerl (Filmmaker and Author)
Transhumance
3pm, Saturday 18 October 2008
Raqs Media Collective performed a selection of reports and conversations gathered from their nomadic practices as artists, curators and theorists.
Something for Everyone
5pm, Saturday 18 October 2008
Artist, writer, architect, educator, ecologist and radical gardener Fritz Haeg gave a keynote talk exploring populist projects, insular bohemia, activist art, passive entertainment, networked communication, broadcast media, social strategies of isolation, and potential roles for today’s artist in a fractured society.
SLIDESHOW - images from ‘Something for Everyone’
Is the Underground Over?
12pm, Sunday 19 October 2008
A conversation chaired by music critic Simon Reynolds examined how the notion of subculture has become outmoded through the overexposure afforded by the internet and the media’s rapid assimilation of the marginal. This panel also surveyed the past, present and future of unpopular culture and explores the possibility of alternatives to ‘alternative’.
- Chair: Simon Reynolds (Music critic)
- Cosey Fanni Tutti (Artist)
- Penny Martin (Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Fashion Imagery, London College of Fashion)
- Claire Titley (Music Promoter, ‘Upset the Rhythm’)
The Culture of Denial
4pm, Sunday 19 October 2008
Influential writer, broadcaster and lecturer Judith Williamson gave a keynote lecture on the skewed relationship between what we know and what we do, examining how the gulf between knowledge and behaviour shapes contemporary culture.
