18:00

Guided tour through the exhibition by Wouter Davidts (Professor of Modern Art History, VU University Amsterdam) and Wouter Van Besien (Groen! Party leader).

19:00

Lectures by Gideon Boie (architecture activist, member of BAVO, Brussels), Sven Lütticken (Lecturer, VU University Amsterdam, art critic and curator), Bart Verschaffel (Professor of Architecture Theory, Ghent University) and Marina Vishmidt (researcher and writer, London)

Followed by an open discussion moderated by Mihnea Mircan.

In a symposium that concludes the exhibition '1:1 - Hans van Houwelingen & Jonas Staal', speakers will contextualize the works of Hans van Houwelingen and Jonas Staal, as well as the question – central to both practices – of a new monumentality, firmly implanted in the ‘here and now’ of politics yet also mapping new routes for artistic autonomy.

The monument will be inspected as a philosophical notion, allowing for the distinction between cultural and political markers, as instrument in declaring and enacting states of exception, transition or crisis, in marking and defending fault lines between ideological constituencies, in demarcating the sides of political combat.

In particular, Van Houwelingen’s 'National Monument to the Guest Workers' and Staal’s 'Art, Property of Politics III: Closed Architecture' will be set against the current demise of multiculturalism and of its rhetoric of inclusion, a threshold beyond which no paradigm of consensus awaits.

These and other works, unraveling the political desires and anxieties that monuments thread together and ‘set in stone’, will be examined as questions about artistic responsibility and agency, modes of commemoration or of imagining a collective destination.

If there is a vanishing point where such critical perspectives converge, it might be “an understanding of the new role assigned to contemporary art in an age of shrinking asset values, and of the ‘monuments’ required by an age where art is no longer considered the first or best mediation of those values.” (Marina Vishmidt)

Your registration through [email protected] is appreciated.

Short CVs

Gideon Boie is architect-philosopher and, together with Matthias Pauwels, initiator of BAVO, an independent research office for culture and mediation, that focusses on the political dimension of art, architecture and planning. Both Gideon Boie and Matthias Pauwels studied architecture (Sint Lucas Gent) and philosophy (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam). For several years they conducted research at the Theory Department of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Recent research focussed on creative city development and practices of embedded cultural activism. BAVO's explicit mission is to enhance public debate by means of publications, symposia and interventions. Recent publications include: 'Cultural Activism Today. The Art of Over-identification' (Episode Publishers, 2007) and 'Urban Politics Now. Re-imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City' (NAi Publishers, 2007). In 2008, within the framework of '35m2', BAVO presented the critical project 'De Janssens Werken' at Singel (Antwerp).

BAVO resides in Rotterdam, Brussels and Pretoria. www.bavo.biz

Wouter Davidts is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the VU University in Amsterdam. In 2003 he obtained a PhD on museum architecture at University of Ghent in 2003. He is the author of 'Bouwen voor de kunst? Museumarchitectuur van Centre Pompidou tot Tate Modern' (A&S/books, 2006) and has published widely on the museum, contemporary art and architecture. He recently edited 'The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work' (Valiz, 2009; with Kim Paice) and 'CRACK: Koen van den Broek' (Valiz, 2010).? He curated the exhibition 'Philippe Van Snick. Undisclosed Recipients' at BK SM in Mechelen, BE (2006, together with Hilde Van Gelder), 'Beginners & Begetters' at Extra City in Antwerp (2007) and 'Abstract USA 1958-68: In the Galleries' at Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, NL (2010). Davidts lives and works in Antwerp and Amsterdam.

Sven Lütticken is an art critic and art historian. Lütticken studied art history at the VU University Amsterdam and the Freie Universität, Berlin. In 2004, he was granted the Prize for Art Criticism of the BKVB fund, Amsterdam. Lütticken teaches at the VU University. He is the author of 'Secret Publicity: Essays on Contemporary Art' (2006) and 'Idols of the Market: Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle' (2009). He publishes regularly in (inter)national art magazines such as Artforum, New Left Review, Afterimage, and Texte zur Kunst. Lütticken lives in Utrecht (NL).

Wouter Van Besien is a Belgian politician and chairman of the ecologist party Groen!. Van Besien has Master's degrees in Sociology and Developing Area Studies. In 2001 he started working as a member the Agalev party in Antwerp. He has been municipal civic office worker in Borgerhout (Antwerp) since 2006 and succeeded Mieke Vogels as president of the Flemish green party Groen!. In 2006, he became a member of the district council of Borgerhout. Since 2009, Van Besien is chairman of Groen!. In 2010, he was re-elected as only candidate in a statute congress. Van Besien lives and works in Antwerp.

Bart Verschaffel studied Philosophy and Medieval Studies at the University of Louvain and teaches Theory of Architecture and Architectural Criticism at Ghent University. He has numerous publications in the fields of architectural theory, aesthetics and art criticism, and philosophy of culture. He is the author of 'Figuren/Essays' (1995), 'Architecture is (as) a Gesture' (2001) and 'Van Hermes en Hestia. Teksten over architectuur' (2006). He also published on genres in painting and on various individual artists.

Marina Vishmidt is a writer, researcher and editor. She is interested in materialist aesthetics and the political economics of cultural production. She has published on information-based art and situated technologies, urbanism, feminist media arts, conceptual art, Marxian theory, artists’ moving image and errant modernisms. Vishmidt is the editor of 'NODE.London Reader: surveying art, technologies and politics' (2006) and is a frequent contributor to Mute magazine, MetaMute website and Untitled magazine. She also contributed to publications like 'Art and Social Change' (Tate and AfterAll Publishing, 2007). Vishmidt lives and works in London.

Language English