Online training: ‘A participatory impulse? How to Archive Relationships’
The meeting, -hosted by Mick Wilson, Director of Doctoral Studies and Professor of Art at HDK-Valand of University of Gothenburg-, will take place on Wednesday, 11 September, from 12 to 13.30hrs, and previous registration is required.
The archive has been a central figure and pre-occupation over several decades for both the organizational infrastructure and the practical production of contemporary art. Indeed, it might be argued that the archive has become the enabling and the limiting horizon of many cultural practices.
It often seems that all forms of collection, all forms of memory work, and all forms of programme are only conceivable through some appeal to the figure of the archive. Even the desire for alternative cultural politics, including decolonized and counter hegemonic practices, seem to predicate themselves on alternative archival models and archiving otherwise.
See for example:
https://www.decolonisingthearchive.com/
https://dpe.tools/resources/instituting-from-archives
In this online workshop: "A participatory impulse? How to Archive Relationships", Mick Wilson, Director of Doctoral Studies and Professor of Art at HDK-Valand at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), will explore the reasons for this ascendancy of the archive, the different ways in which it has been experimentally re-constructed, and the wider contexts of current archival impulses across contemporary art.
The session will also explore what might be at stake in translating this archival thinking into specifically "social" and "participatory" art practices. What might it mean for practices that give primacy to some idea of social relation to archive those relations? What might it mean to exercise custodianship of relations? How might this be framed as a meaningful task? What issues might be at stake?
Mick Wilson is guest professor at Latvian Academy of Art (since 2021) and Faculty-at-large for the Master of Arts Curatorial Practice, SVA, New York (since 2014). He is a co-researcher on several current research projects including: L’Internationale’s The Museum of the Commons (EACEA, 2023-2027); The Fountain: An art-technological-social drama (Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, 2020-2024); and The Research Dissensus Glossary (University of Gothenburg, 2024-2028), and has recent edited different volumes and publications.
This session is part of the European project ‘Art Living Lab for Sustainability’ -promoted by Concomitentes, De Nieuwe Opdrachtgevers, La Société des Nouveaux Commanditaires-, which aims to respond to three open participation processes in Spain, France and Belgium through an artistic solution committed to the environment, and nature.
We invite you to participate in this one-hour-and-a-half online workshop, which you can attend by filling in this form.