Tuesday 24 March 2015

Maria Hlavajova & Rael Artel | 18:00 | CCA, Clubroom

Maria Hlavajova :

Thinking Out Loud: Practices of Art in the Era of the Disenchanted

In her talk, Maria Hlavajova thinks through the intersection of two collective research projects she has initiated and guided: FORMER WEST (2008–2016) and Future Vocabularies (2014–2016). If the former aims at developing a critical understanding of the legacy of the radical resistance to power in 1989 in order to reevaluate the global present and speculate about global futures, the latter attempts to act out concrete propositions that explore the shifts in our existing conceptual vocabulary within artistic, intellectual, and activist work. Departing from the understanding of our time as that of an interregnum—in line with how political thinker Antonio Gramsci articulated the features of a historical moment that “consists precisely in the fact the old is dying and the new cannot be born”—she considers the ongoing class recompositionings throughout the world as an impetus behind the shifting terrain of the practices of art. In doing so, she asks: What are the prospective itineraries through which we can point towards what we once used to call the “future”?

Maria Hlavajova is the founder and artistic director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht since 2000 and artistic director of FORMER WEST (2008–2016), which she initiated and developed as an international collaborative research, education, publication, and exhibition undertaking.
Hlavajova has organized numerous projects at BAK and beyond, including the series Future Vocabularies (2014–2016), New World Academy (2013–ongoing) (with Jonas Staal), and the international research projects The Return of Religion and Other Myths (2008), On Knowledge Production: Practices in Contemporary Art (2006), Concerning War (2005), and Who if not we should at least imagine the future of all this? 7 episodes on (ex)changing Europe (2004), as well as exhibitions with artists such as Josef Dabernig, Sanja Iveković, Aernout Mik, Artur Żmijewski, Lawrence Weiner, and many others.
In 2011, Hlavajova organized the Roma Pavilion, titled Call the Witness, within the framework of the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, and in 2007 she curated the three-part project Citizens and Subjects, the Dutch contribution to the 52nd Venice Biennale. In 2000 she co-curated Manifesta 3: European Biennial of Contemporary Art, titled Borderline Syndrome: Energies of Defence in Ljubljana.
She also edits and contributes to numerous critical readers and catalogs, and lectures frequently on contemporary art. Together with Kathrin Rhomberg, she is a founding director of the tranzit network, a foundation that supports cultural exchange and contemporary art practices in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. She has served on numerous boards and juries, including the supervisory boards of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2004–2013) and the European Cultural Foundation (since 2013), as well as the Board of Advisors of the Bergen Assembly, Bergen. Hlavajova lives and works in Amsterdam and Utrecht.

Rael Artel :

IS THIS THE MUSEUM WE WANTED?

When I started working as the Director of Tartu Art Museum on April 1 last 3 year (no, it was not a joke!), I had a rather naive understanding of the work done by a state institution’s head. […] Since the whole of my time has been taken over by daily chores and problems – not issues important in terms of art history – I decided to take everyday questions out of the office and into the art hall, working with them inside the curatorial project I planned as the opening volley of my exhibition program.
Is This the Museum We Wanted? is certainly a site- and context-specific project. On the one hand, it is a very personal exhibition that reflects the experiences, thoughts and feelings of a head of an institution in relation to the institution of a museum and the most diverse aspects of its daily life. On the other, however, the exhibition that spans three floors and combines our museum’s collections with contemporary art also studies the operational logic of an art museum away from the centre, focusing on issues that are probably in the minds of many museum and art buffs. I wish to project my personal experiences as the head of an art institution in a small and isolated Eastern European town with a dwindling population on a wider surface and share them with my colleagues, cultural audience, art and museum professionals, financiers and the general public.

Flo Kasearu’s drawing Fears of a Museum Director. Godzilla
Room of Horrors. What Are We So Scared Of?, from Is This The Museum We Wanted?, Tartu Art Museum (Tartu, Estonia, 23.01-09.03.014)

Rael Artel is a contemporary art curator and has been Director of Tartu Art Museum since 2013. She graduated from the Institute of Art History at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2003, and participated in the De Appel Curatorial Training Programme, Amsterdam (2004–2005). Since 2000 she has curated art projects in Estonia, Warsaw, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and New York. Recent exhibitions: Let’s Talk about Nationalism! Between Ideology and Identity, Kumu Art Museum (2010); Lost in Transition, Contemporary Museum of Art, Tallinn (2011); Art Must Be Beautiful. Selected Works by Marina Abramović, Tartu Art Museum (2011); Life in the Forest, Arsenal Gallery, Białystok (2011); After Socialist Statues, KIM? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga (2011); Explosion in Pärnu and Old News as part of the exhibition Archeology and Future of Estonian Art Scenes, Kumu Art Museum (2012); and Marge Monko. How to Wear Red?, Tartu Art Museum (2013). Rael Artel is the artistic director of the contemporary art festival ART IST KUKU NU UT.

(As part of Framework: Curatorial development in Scotland, Rael Artel and Mother Tongue, in 2012, took part in discussion around cultural nationalism, remoteness and peripheries over 3 days amongst a small group of curators from across Scotland - the full programme is available here.)