November 25–27, 2017
Humans of the Institution is an international three-day gathering created to look closely at who “makes the present” by foregrounding the freelancer in the arts and within globalising dynamics more broadly. The symposium is organised by curators, based on experience, and encourages the participation of artists, writers, journalists, designers among other “content producers” and freelance workers.
Humans of the Institution opens with a weekend programme November 25 and 26 that foregrounds freelance experiences in the arts, taking in to account transforming institutional structures, formations of non/employment at global scales, and emerging regimes of networked governance.
Building on the weekend’s dialogues, Humans of the Institution culminates Monday, November 27 with a series of six working groups: Archives & Individuals, Biennials & Guest Work, Boycott & Mobilisation, Censorship & Strategy, Critical Regionalism, and Fees & Conditions. These groups will each produce a Working Group Statement which will be made available online, co-published with L’Internationale Online, and that will be delivered to Mondriaan Fund for its program development.
Humans of the Institution is co-organised by Curatorial Practice (UiB) and Frontier Imaginaries. It takes place as part of, and supported by, the DAI Roaming Assembly and Amsterdam Art Weekend. It is hosted at Veem House for Performance, and in partnership with De Appel. International participation is supported through a Delegate Partners network with Artspace NZ, La Biennale de Lyon, Blind Carbon Copy, Chapter Thirteen, Creative Scotland in partnership with Scottish Contemporary Art Network, Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem, KORO/Public Art Norway, L’Appartement 22, Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Netwerk Aalst, OCA, and SAHA. The project is also made possible through the support of the Mondriaan Fund, the Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst and the University of Bergen.
Humans of the Institution weekend programme will stream live on humansoftheinstitution.works.
Tickets for the weekend can be booked here.
Programme
Saturday, November 25: Whose Global, Whose Local?
10am–1pm
Position papers & keynote
Rachel O’Reilly collaborating with Danny Butt, will present the talk “Desedimentation, Delamination, Deconstruction: Boycotts Unseen or that Never Eventalise” where they discuss the question: How do humans constituted in today’s market navigate the “freedom” in their “freelancing”?
Despina Zefkili will follow with a talk entitled “Energy and Sustainability—’The Southern Perspective’”. Zefkili will share experiences of working in the arts in Athens, problematising the image of the city as a southern experiment of creative energy and sustainability in times of crisis.
Ahmed Veriava’s keynote is titled “Provincialising Work.” Taking struggles in the city of Johannesburg as a starting point, he will describe how work is increasingly less a central point of reference in the emergence of new political subjects or the expression of antagonistic judgments. He also suggests that we need to go beyond a work-centred political and practical imagination in order to grasp the heterogeneous strategies through which value is produced and appropriated under conditions of contemporary capitalism
3–6pm
Plenum session
A large-scale conversation engaging speakers and audience alike will address the figure of the freelancer and the curator within the double-edged dynamic of post 1989 globalisation. With invited contributions by Club Solo (Thomas Bakker & Iris Bouwmeester), Charles Esche, Natasha Ginwala, Lara Khaldi, Carol Yinghua Lu, Alan Michelson, and Sabina Sabolović, moderated by Anne Szefer Karlsen and Vivian Ziherl.
8–9pm
Evening program
A visit to the opening of Black & Revolutionary: The Story of Hermina and Otto Huiswoud at Vereniging ons Suriname; initiated by the Black Archive and New Urban Collective as part of the Amsterdam Art Weekend, curated by Imara Limon, and featuring works by artists Raul Balai, Brian Elstak and Iris Kensmil.
Sunday, November 26: Precarious Practices
10am–1pm
Position papers & keynote
In her talk “Against Curating as Endorsing,” Antonia Majaca will consider the role that the “independent curator”—as the emblematic “confidence man”—has played in the slow “death of the intellectual” and will suggest a schizo-analytical spell for both the curator and the art institution which might help us conjure up the image of curator anew.
In his talk “The Post-Agonistic Institution: Art, Democracy, and the Curatorial,” Dr Bassam El Baroni will address what is often referred to as the “crisis of democracy” under neoliberalism, and how the extended field of art has responded.
Tiziana Terranova’s keynote is titled “Competition and Cooperation in Social Cybernetics,” interrogating whether social computing today, as a departure from early sociocybernetics, can help to understand how institutions instigate and mobilize cooperation and competition; and whether social network theory can be of any use for oppositional politics.
3–6pm
Plenum session
A large-scale conversation engaging speakers and audience alike will address how both freelancers and institutions negotiate their interdependence within shifting terrains, with contributions by Matthijs de Bruijne, Maria Hlavajova, Heejin Kim, Imara Limon, Manuela Moscoso, Nana Oforiatta-Ayim, and Natalia Valencia, moderated by Anne Szefer Karlsen and Vivian Ziherl.
8–9pm
Evening program
Sobredosis de amor is a danceable lecture by Ericka Florez & Hernán Barón that analyses, through its soundtrack, Columbia’s drug conflict over its most difficult decade of the 1980s.
Monday, November 27: Working Groups
11am–5pm
Archives & Individuals, convened by Michelle Wong (Asia Art Archive), with the Van Abbemuseum (Christiane Berndes and Steven Ten Thije), hosted by New Urban Collective. Biennials & Guest Work, convened by Natasha Ginwala, with Marieke van Hal and Sabina Sabolović, hosted by Manifesta Foundation. Boycott & Mobilisation, convened by Joanna Warsza, with Lara Khaldi and Rachel O’Reilly, hosted by De Appel. Censorship & Strategy, convened by Ekaterina Degot, with Katia Krupennikova and Heejin Kim, hosted by Framer Framed. Critical Regionalism, convened by Annie Fletcher, with Club Solo (Iris Bouwmeester and Thomas Bakker) and Sharelly Emmanuelson, hosted by Stedelijk Museum. Fees & Conditions, convened by Platform BK (Rune Peiterson and Joram Kraaijveld) and The Norwegian Association of Curators (Martin Braathen and Silja Leifsdottir), with W.A.G.E. (Lise Soskolne), hosted by Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem.
7pm
Working Groups dinner & report in
Working Groups dinner hosted by De Appel and the University of Bergen with viewing of exhibition: Hiwa K. To remember sometimes you need different archaeological tools.
