Conference: November 4–6, 2015
Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts
University of Gothenburg
Fågelsången 1
405 30 Gothenburg
Sweden
1st PARSE biennial research conference on “TIME”
The first PARSE biennial research conference at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, running November 4–6, takes as its point of departure the question of “TIME.” Speakers include Bruno Latour, Simon Critchley, Simonetta Carbonaro, Coco Fusco, Jalal Toufic, The Otolith Group, Flat Time House and Vermeir & Hieremans. Please follow these links for information about the conference structure and the draft timetable, featuring links to the presenters of the Conference.
PARSE Journal issue 2: “The Value of Contemporary Art”
Available online on November 3
Editors: Jason E. Bowman, University of Gothenburg; Suhail Malik, Goldsmiths, University of London; and Andrea Phillips, University of Gothenburg. Editor-in-Chief: Mick Wilson, University of Gothenburg. Contributors include Dave Beech, Richard Birkett, Alberto Lopez Cuenca, Goldin+Senneby, Victoria Ivanova, Hannah Newell, Andrea Phillips, Lisa Soskolne, Donna Yates, Vermeir & Heiremans.
It’s now a truism that the contemporary art market plays a fundamental role in the commissioning and display of contemporary art outside of the market (be it through patronage or in the informal subsidizing of the public sector). The privatisation of art’s financing is complex and cannot be separated from either the modes of speculation currently dominant in global economics, nor the ways in which artists, curators, and critics are educated and professionalised. Identification, analysis, and responses to such a condition are severely hampered by the lack of publicly available systemic and formal information.
This example of the centrality of art’s market to its public dissemination impacts not simply upon artists’ support structures, but also upon the ways in which their work is valued. Measurement of any value (cultural, aesthetic or monetary) in the arts has been at best occasional, anecdotal, and disparate. Indeed, proposals to introduce systemic analysis and measurement into contemporary art are often treated with suspicion by those who oppose art’s regulation as yet another infringement of accountability, deferring to metrics that, in turn, deny the idea that art’s value is unmeasurable. Production in other artistic disciplines—theatre, music, dance, design—have differently organised financial support systems, but all rely on the idea of intrinsic cultural value, and all are affected by the ongoing decreases in public funding in Europe and the US over the last four decades that previously upheld the non-measurability of artistic value. How does this economic and subjective transformation affect concepts of value in the arts? How might making transparent art’s financing change these concepts of value? Continue reading here.
We are calling for contributions to PARSE Journal issues:
“Speculation” / “Management” / “Utterance”
Please visit our website for more information.
PARSE Journal is one strand of activity hosted by the PARSE research platform of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. PARSE Journal publishes original artistic research, creating dialogues and promoting collaborations between researchers in the arts and in other disciplines by bringing together different modes of artistic enquiry within an open peer review framework.
PARSE Journal supports an innovative and multidisciplinary research culture in the arts, including music, performing arts, art, design, architecture, literature, film and media.
