The one day convention is linked to the launch and celebration of Myvillages’ ‘International Village Show’ publication. The book brings together the group’s collaborative and dispersed art practice over the last years. It features some of
the topics and questions that make Myvillages tick, and documents 12 projects from elsewhere which were shown at the GFZK Gartenhaus during a two-year long exhibition which will draw to a close this December.
We are inviting colleagues and collaborators to celebrate this last part of the International Village Show with us, and to use it as an opportunity to share and discuss some of issues and questions we see as relevant for making art today.
Where does art go?
Be it local or abroad, the village or the museum. Why do we leave familiar places and approach new ones? What do we hope to get from going elsewhere and moving on? Are there places where art is needed, what places does art need to stay relevant? Which direction do we want art to go?
Art’s departure from formalized exhibition spaces in the 1960s as part of a wider institutional and cultural critique has by now become widespread practice. Art can take place anywhere and take on any format. The context-specific and localized have become well-established criteria for developing and making art. Art has gone everywhere, and we want to ask ourselves and the group where we want to go next.
Fluidizing what we know
Myvillages has a clear focus on the rural as a particular space, quality, practice
and history – however interlinked and non-definable it is. This question is about where images in our head come from and who confirms them. It is also about rural production, about agriculture, about resources.
Contemporary art remains predominantly produced, disseminated and discussed within urban settings and contexts, be it the art college, the artist community, the array of exhibition spaces, magazines, conferences, fairs, etc. Myvillages has always criticized the assumption that the rest/the non-urban is a cultural desert. Existing and arising cultural monocultures need to be questioned.
Strange and strangers
The artist in the village, the farmer in the kunsthalle, the black face and the white hands. How much are we aware of who we are where and what tells us how to behave? About doubts, strategies and methods of working while creating cooperatively.
The artist has traditionally been perceived as a stranger and a rather unusual format per se. Blending artistic production and everyday practices in recent years makes this distinction less apparent, and artists’ work can seem undistinguishable from the work of a teacher, builder, political activist, planner, gardener, carer, etc.
Does this make artists less strange? What is gained from breaking down distinctions? What role allow others and what role do objects play in these relationships?
Programme Saturday 3rd December
10.00 Welcome and introduction
10.30 Maria Lind – from “what does art do” to “where does art go”
11.30 20 minute presentations /provokations: Kuba Szreder, Ronald van der Sompel, Franziska Zólyom
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Three breakout sessions, following the morning presentations
16.00 Coffee Break
16.30 “What are objects for” : Myvillages will use selected objects from the International Village Shop to kick start a discussion on the multiple roles and meanings of objects in process based and multi-authored art practices.
Discussion
18.00 Dinner together
(Subject to change)
Throughout: Booktable – with books and contributions from all guests
Confirmed participants:
Maria Lind, director Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm
Kuba Szreder, curator, sociologist, author, Warzaw
Ronald van der Sompel, curator, Antwerp (?)
Franziska Zólyom, Director GfZK, Leipzig
Antje Schiffers, artist, Myvillages, Berlin
Wapke Feenstra, artist, Myvillages, Rotterdam
Kathrin Böhm, artist, Myvillages, London
Miranda Pope, researcher and writer, London
Francien van Westerneen, curator, Stroom, Den Hague
Peter Mutscherl, artist and curator, PS2, Belfast
Anne Marie Dillon, artist activist, Ballykinlar
Miriam Wiesel, curator , Kreuzberger Salon, Berlin
Axel Schmidt, curator , Kreuzberger Salon, Berlin
Anne Kersten, curator, Berlin
Marjetica Portc, artist, Hamburg
Åsa Sonjadotter, artist, Berlin
Christiane Menicke, curator, Kunsthaus Dresden
Adam Sutherland, curator, Grizedale, UK