Press Release, November 2018
MOURNING MONEY is three symposiums organised by UKK – Organisation for Artists and Curators. The aim is to investigate questions around art and finance, as they relate to the role of the artist, the circulation of work and novel organisational forms in the field of art.
Each symposium will address specific questions in relation to the value of art and the labour of artists as it is configured between disparate, yet mutually dependent, systems. UKK has invited international artists, writers, and theorists to address, firstly, the role of the artist as subject to technology and feminisms; secondly, the operative powers of a (post-)contemporary art practice; and thirdly diverging functions of macro organisations in art. In strengthening the development of critical consciousness around systemic agencies in art and relationships between art and finance, UKK wishes to show how artists and curators are key constituents of these relationships, and have the capacity to directly affect them.
The programme is kindly supported by Bikubenfonden and Beckett Fonden. The symposiums are generously hosted by Kunsthal Aarhus and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
NEW ROLES FOR THE ARTIST
29th of November 2018, Kunsthal Aarhus
NEW ROLES FOR THE ARTIST looks at how technologies might develop new ways of thinking and understanding artistic production. The symposium aims to further locate and discuss the future role of technology in art, in relation to the agency of feminisms within an art context, and speculate how these together might be utilised in rethinking the production of art and the role of the artist.
What potentials and pitfalls do new technologies hold for future-oriented thinking around resistance and solidarity within art and feminisms under global capitalism? What happens to the role of embodiment and identity in the era of accelerating technology? Within the consistent pressure to produce, how might we rethink the question of cultural/social/sexual production and reproduction? With these questions the symposium seeks to probe historical, as well as future-oriented, alignments of technological perspectives alongside feminist agency in order to question how these might shed light on horizons of possibility.
Speakers: Jesse Darling, Angela Dimitrakaki, Nora N. Khan and Patricia Reed.
Moderator: Lotte Løvholm.
Location: Kunsthal Aarhus.
Date: November 29, 2018.
Time: 12.30pm – 18.30pm.
OPERATIVE POWERS OF ART PRACTICE
17th of january 2019, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
OPERATIVE POWERS OF ART PRACTICE considers the implications of control in relation to the operative powers of art practice. The symposium will discuss (post-)contemporary art practice as subject to arts financialization, asking what transitional role art may face. Reassessing the term ‘artistic agency’, we will ask what are the scales and implications necessary, to allow art to bend the means of control rather than causing it to block future potential. How may the artist step out of contemporary arts systemic agency, and, why and how to think this might be necessary? How could art as a practice influence the cultural financial sector, which it is currently both tokened by, supporting and upholding?
Speakers: João Enxuto & Erica Love, Alexandra Pirici and Tirdad Zolghadr.
Location: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts.
Date: January 17, 2019.
Time: 11.30am – 5pm.
MACRO
18th of january 2019, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
MACRO will discuss organisations operating at the macro scale of the field of art. Examples include unions, interest organisations (BKF, UKK, UKS), pension funds (Artist Pension Trust), mission-driven organisations (W.A.G.E.), global financial actors (Deloitte, Athena Art Finance), financial technology startups (Maecenas, Codex Protocol), blue-chip galleries (Gagosian), startups (Artsy), private foundations and national art foundations. We will explore what diverging functions and purposes such initiatives can have, why it is important to develop organisations at the macroscale right now, and what the criteria by which to assess their capabilities and limitations can be.
Speakers: Victoria Ivanova, Helen Hester and Kei Kreutler.
Location: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts.
Date: January 18, 2019.
Time: 12pm – 5pm.