Conference programme Thursday June 4, 2015 10.00 am Tea 10.30 am Welcome address: Christoph Schenker Introduction: Gitanjali Dang 11.00 am MEXICO CITY Public Art in the Time of Political Collapse The collaborative explores artistic interventions at a time when neoliberal and narco forces determine the political as a pure administration of time, space, life and death. Helena Chávez Mac Gregor Discusses actions in protests such as Yo Soy 132, Acción global por Ayotzinapa (Global Action for Ayotzinapa) and works such as Teatro Ojo’s Lo que viene and Nivel de confianza (Level of Confidence, 2015), by Rafael Lozano Hemmer. In doing so, Helena Chávez engages with artistic practices, which expand the possibilities of public space, in clear antagonism with the state practices of memorialisation. Teatro Ojo: Héctor Bourges Valles, Laura Furlan Magaril, Karla Rodríguez Lira, Patricio Villarreal Ávila Present Lo que viene (Whatever Comes, 2012), a project for which the collective invited participants to share stories that transpired during the six years of the former Mexican president Felipe Calderón’s “War against Narco”. Cuauhtémoc Medina Explores the political construction in neoliberalism and the disappearance of the public space in the form of the privatisation and collapse of politics. Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote 12.30 pm Lunch 2.00 pm PROLOGUE P. Sainath The Predicament of the Rural – and the ‘Inevitability’ of the Urban Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote 3.00 pm ST. PETERSBURG Chto Delat Counter-Publics at a Time of Eroded Publicness 1/7 This session questions the tradition of the House of Culture, a state supported infrastructure for leisure and education in the former Soviet Union. Reimagining this model, members of the collective speak about their planned experimental space called Rosa’s House of Culture. A counter-public sphere, to realise oppositional interpretations of contested notions such as community and engagement, the core activities of Rosa’s House of Culture will include pedagogy and activism. Dmitry Vilensky Presents the project outline Nikolay Oleynikov Focuses on the activism Tsaplya Olga Egorova Speaks about the importance of performativity in constructing collective practices Moderator: Lawrence Liang 4.30 pm Tea 5.00 pm ZURICH Christoph Schenker Insight and Intensification: Artistic Research in Social Entanglement Artistic research as a new academic discipline? Knowledge and science are not identical, and knowledge of art cannot be reduced to scholarly knowledge. Artists explore fields of competencies beyond the epistemic competence, especially if they deal with conflictual social issues. Christoph Schenker presents the method of a public art project in Zurich. knowbotiq: Christian Hübler, Yvonne Wilhelm Translocal Practices – The BlackBenz Race A semi-fictive car race across Kosovan-European migration spaces, the project spread rumours and eluded stagings as it oscillated between unpredictable encounters, pseudo-events and political fictions. Did it happen, or was the event a non-event? Rohit Jain Bollywood, Yoga – and IT Based on fragmentary ethnographic vignettes, the presentation is a glimpse into the multiple – and often incommensurable – production of subjects, experiences, images and cultural artefacts in transnational public spaces of postcoloniality between Switzerland and India. Moderator: Lawrence Liang 6.30 pm Welcome address: Rajeev Thakker, Studio X Mumbai 6.45 pm Break 2/7 7.00 pm FILM Chto Delat, The Excluded, In a Moment of Danger, 2014, demo version of a 4 channel video installation, colour, 56.46 min. 8.30 pm COLLATERAL EVENT Sound Reasons III Four sound installations presented by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council in collaboration with Clark House Initiative. Artists Marcus Maeder (Zurich), Trees: Pinus sylvestris Farah Mulla (Bombay), Aural Mirror Ish S (Delhi), Sitting Still Salomé Voegelin (London), Listening to Noise and Silence Venue Clark House Initiative, c/o RBT Group, Ground Floor, Clark House building, Colaba, 8 Nathalal Parekh Marg (Old Wodehouse Road), Bombay Friday June 5, 2015 10.00 am Tea 10.30 am Opening Remarks 10.45 am HONG KONG Cosmin Costinas, Para Site A Journal of the Plague Year Departing from Hong Kong’s SARS outbreak of 2003, which was followed by the tragic death of Pan-Asian pop icon Leslie Cheung, the talk introduces a touring exhibition, which first opened at Para Site in 2013. The project analyses historical and contemporary imaginations and politics of fear in the face of disease and the spectre of contamination in society and culture. Samson Young How Does One Resist the Demon Without Giving the Demon One's Thoughts? Orchestra-making as a community-based practice, and the reasons that led Samson Young there. Giorgio Biancorosso ‘We Can Call It Our Own’: Musings on European Art Music in Hong Kong The ‘Western canon’ is at the centre of arguably one of the largest transplants of the classical tradition ever recorded. The presence of European art music in centres like Hong Kong is headlined by a repertory 3/7 of sonatas, symphonies, and cantatas. Is this a symptom of lingering colonial oppression or post-colonial malaise? Or is it just another case of translation? Qinyi Lim, Para Site A Luxury We Cannot Afford Introduces an exhibition due to open at Para Site in September 2015. The project derives its title from a speech Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s former prime minister, gave not long after the country’s separation from Malaysia in 1965. Removing the term “luxury” from its consumerist underpinnings, this exhibition will read it in relation to the current state of civil liberties in a developed society such as Singapore. Moderator: Lawrence Liang 12.30 pm Lunch 1.45 pm FILM Ju Anqi, There’s a Strong Wind in Beijing, 1999, 16mm, colour, 48 min. 2.45 pm SHANGHAI Ju Anqi, Li Zhenhua, Iris Long Indian Square An online search for India Square (Little Bombay) leads us to enclaves in New York or New Jersey. Or at least, this is where Wikipedia leads us. We have never been to these ‘enclaves’ and yet we believe the information with ease. Media, mass media, social media and what have you are increasingly shaping the public sphere. Slavoj Žižek calls Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange our new heroes because their revelations are commentaries on ethics and hit on a different idea of truth. Why then are we still so quick to believe what is in circulation? We’re interested in the things we know exist but deny as unreal because they lie outside the surge of information engulfing us. Indian Square – a project undertaken by Ju Anqi, Li Zhenhua, Iris Long and Cedar Zhou – is a meditation on a spectrum of media, from film to big data. Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote 4.15 pm Tea 4.45 pm BOMBAY Gitanjali Dang, Khanabadosh An Unbearable Aboutness Or what happens when certain worlds are eliminated in favour of others. Gitanjali Dang reflects on the processes of elimination through the Khanabadosh project 'Love in the Time of Choleric Capitalism' (2014), Bombay, which travels to Delhi in 2016. The project questions the many legacies of the iconic Taj Mahal through the lenses of memory, translation and the unknown knowns. 4/7 CAMP: Zinnia Ambapardiwala, Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran What We Mean When We Say “Infrastructure” Since 2007 CAMP has been using the term "infrastructure" to describe a field of awareness and activity, possibility and sensuality for the arts. Rupali Gupte, Prasad Shetty Of Trips, Kicks and the City Lived City dwellers have absurd quests, unusual obsessions and bizarre interests. Often discarded as stray preoccupations, these ‘trips’ and ‘kicks’ are in many ways the making of cities like Bombay. Moderator: Lawrence Liang Saturday June 6, 2015 10.00 am Tea 10.30 am Opening Remarks 10.45 am CAPE TOWN Riason Naidoo 1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective Puts into relief a project that undertook the fraught task of revisioning a century of South African art. The exhibition was Naidoo’s first curatorial undertaking at the South African National Gallery as the recently appointed Director and courted much controversy with it. Jay Pather Dancing on a Volcano: Site, Spillage, Slippage and Overflow in Contemporary South African Performance Drawing from the context of a troubled, suspended South African present of dreams deferred, Pather considers some central performative ideas that wrestle with this context, with reference to his recent site-specific productions and from two festivals that he curates in Cape Town, Infecting the City Public Art Festival and the Live Art Festival. Richard Pithouse South Africa in the Wreckage of Liberalism Makes some remarks about reason, and the prospects for emancipatory politics, amidst the fracturing of liberal hegemony in South Africa. Moderator: Lawrence Liang 12.15 pm HAMBURG Sophie Goltz To be announced Alice Peragine 5/7 Enabling Cities The blurred boundaries between work and leisure affect urban spaces, dispersing the movement of our bodies. How then can artistic strategies create different forms of living, continuity, and exchange within the community? Christoph Schäfer Spatialise Your Desires Urban space is regaining importance as the site of production. We must now develop forms of political agency that don’t withhold the payoff until after an imaginary urban revolution. Projects and forms of action should already contain a utopian pulse. Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote 1.15 pm Lunch 2.30 pm FILM Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, to be announced 3.45 pm Tea 4.15 pm CAIRO Sarah Rifky and Jens Maier-Rothe, Beirut Fictitious Entities Reflects on the institution as fiction and how we can learn from artworks towards imagining what institutions (can) do in the context of Cairo, and the world. Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk Enacting Imaginaries Addresses the impasse of living in an age awash in exploitation. Key to Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk’s artistic argument is the practice of enactment, where the imaginary becomes central; overlaying the ‘real’ with the ‘fictional’ and/or performing the law to lay bare ritualised lies. Alia Mossallam Elusive Histories Sifts through songs and archives exploring how histories relegated to the margin of the Egyptian historical consciousness can be excavated, and through theatre and theory, retold. Asking all along: How can fiction become a driving force for the invisible truth? Moderator: Ranjit Hoskote 5.45 pm Closing Discussion 6.45 pm EPILOGUE Reza Negarestani 6/7 Researching Collective General Intelligence Moderator: Lawrence Liang 7/7