Art and the Cultural Turn: Farewell to Committed, Autonomous Art? Irmgard Emmelhainz Nowadays, artists’ voices are thought to be important in giving shape to society, and art is considered to be useful. Moreover, the state, the private sector and society attribute to art a decisive political role as on the one hand, they invest in culture with the purpose generating political and economic surplus value. On the other hand, art and cultural practices are now part of the same network of strategies and questions as social movements are (this space is known as the “Infosphere”). In a context in which the creative, political, and mediatic fields are intrinsically linked, contemporary cultural practices point toward a new social order in which art has merged with life, privileging lived experience, collective communication and performative politics. In turn, the commodification of culture and its use as a resource—as well as the fusion of art, politics, and media—have had a significant impact in the way in which capitalist economies operate. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Conway and Young :: Home Merz Flaneuries Adam Nankervis and David Medalla have been commissed as the official MERZMAN artists in residence. Their brief? Basically, between 5th and 13th March, to re-MERZ Manchester and Liverpool. And, acting as latterday flâneurs, to set out to re-trace the footsteps of Kurt Schwitters and his peregrinations around Manchester, Bury, St Helens, Liverpool, etc. during 1946 - 47. Adam is an Australian artist, based in Liverpool and Berlin, Adam Nankervis has exhibited globally over the last 20 years. Adam Nankervis and David Medalla Copyright © 2011 by LITTORAL.
Islington Mill Art Academy: I.M.A.A Reading Group 12.02.13: Theodor Adorno - Punctuation Marks Adorno's Punctuation Marks was written in 1953, and playfully discusses the nature of punctuation in written language, with references to ancient usage and the personification of certain marks. I had come across this essay whilst conducting research into the work of Rosa Barba, an artist who is interested in gaps and breaks, and suggested it for the reading group. I thought it would be interesting to discuss a piece of writing about writing, and also to read writing about writing, then, with this particular reading group being punctuated by pancakes and late arrivals, we had some compelling, fun and anecdote-driven discussions. Present: Lauren Velvick, Marcelle Holt, Natalie Bradbury, Maurice Carlin, Sara Nesteruk and Hannah Leighton Boyce. The essay itself is much jollier, and more flowery than many of us expected from Adorno, poetically expressing the often subtle, yet indispensible function of punctuation for the written word.
C-PAL It’s all a bit too critical… | Not Too Critical Not Too Critical is a discussion group, born from a reading group. A reading group is a formal, critical and all too often academic environment; made up of people making assertions and observations on subjects they spend a lot of time excogitating. There’s also one major aspect of the reading group; it involves a lot of reading, or at least being well read on a subject. As a discussion group, Not Too Critical hopes to stand apart from the reading group format and create an open, diverse and fluid platform. We don’t have a ‘reading list’, but a series of departure points. Our first discussion on the 17th of April, the first since leaving Manchester School of Art and a more formal reading group structure, saw us reading Felicity Cole’s short essay in the photographic webzine Photomonitor. The paradoxical beauty with Not Too Critical is that we all come to the group with a question and leave without answering it. Like this: Like Loading... About Darren Murphy
ARTSPACE SYDNEY 3 July - 1 August 2009Guest Curator: Anneke Jaspers Imprint brought together works by three artists and one collective to examine the relationship of documentary and archival systems to performative, ephemeral and process-based practices. Through the interplay of performance, action-research, photography, video, installation and text, the exhibition explored a series of concerns embedded in the notion of an imprint: the character of a partial or secondary trace, the effects of repetition, contiguity and succession. The relationship between primary and secondary registers formed a key thread between works. In turn, Imprint considered the significant relationship these works bear to early conceptual and post-object practices. Imprint is supported by the Arts NSW Emerging Curator Initiative.