Seminar 79 // 23, 24, 25 January 2020 // London
Curatorial/Knowledge Seminar, 23 – 25 January 2020
Thursday 23 January 11am - 5pm
Location: Deptford Town Hall, room G5
11am – 1.30pm Morning session
Practice Laboratory: What does it mean to build a case study?
Irit Rogoff
Introducing the proposal for the Practice Laboratory to work on the notion of ‘A Case Study’. First widely used in the Social Sciences, the notion of Case Study operates as "a typology for the case study following a definition wherein various layers of classificatory principle are disaggregated. First, a clear distinction is drawn between two parts: (1) the subject of the study, which is the case itself, and (2) the object, which is the analytical frame or theory through which the subject is viewed and which the subject explicates. Beyond this distinction the case study is presented as classifiable by its purposes and the approaches adopted – principally with a distinction drawn between theory-centered and illustrative study.”
This proposal, shadowing similar work that Nora Sternfeld is doing with her students in Kassel at the moment, is that the Practice Laboratory examines what it is to build a case study, what information and input might it involve, how do we avoid it becoming a form of exemplification, a an immutable body on inter referential facts that build a solid case for something. Nora Sternfeld suggested that we also look, as she is doing, at the case of the Johannesburg Biennial. It only took place once and instantiated a set of problems in bringing a set of continental concerns together with those of contemporary art. It seems like a great idea that will allow us to think about all the dimensions that need to be incorporated into the examination of an event.
1.30 – 2.30pm Lunch
2.30 – 5pm Afternoon session
A Passage Through Passages: On Roads in South Asia
Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumuran (CAMP)
Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumuran (CAMP) will talk about their project for the current exhibition at the SOAS gallery, “A Paasage Through Passages: On Roads in South Asia”. We can use this opportunity to also discuss their broader practice and approaches to research, relations, activism and practice. Here is a link to the exhibition and to the Roads Project at SOAS.
CAMP have for some year done large scale research projects that combine local and regional history with the impact of new technologies of tracking and surveillance. This is a combination that will be a helpful model for us in the Practice Laboratory.
Visual Cultures Public Programme 5.30 – 9.30 pm
Location: Professor Stuart Hall Building, room LG02
A Screening and Conversation with Film-Maker and Media Activist François Pain
François Pain is a film-maker who has documented key moments in the history of Institutional Analysis. He worked with Felix Guattari at the Clinique of La Borde and went on to develop projects with Guattari and others in the research groups FGERI (Fédération des groupes d’études et de recherches institutionnelles) and CERFI (Centre d’études, de recherches et de formation institutionnelles), where he founded the Imago Group. With psychiatrists Jean-Claude Polack and Danielle Sivadon he made the film François Tosquelles, Une politique de la folie, about the radical Catalan psychiatrist and founder of Institutional Psychotherapy. Other films include, Min à La Borde, and Monument à Félix Guattari, the latter of which featured in a large exhibition on Guattari in the Forum of the Centre Pompidou. Pain is the co-founder of the Federation of NonCommercial Free Radios and Radio Tomato, and co-producer of the Unchained Channel (1991) and Chaosmédia (1994). He will screen films and be in conversation with Rachel Wilson.
Rachel Wilson is a mental health recovery worker with the charity Single Homeless Project, an educator and an alumni of Goldsmiths Visual Cultures. Her research focuses on radical pedagogies, mental health activism and moving image. She is a member of the mental health collective Other Ways to Care.
"Reflections on La Borde" is part of the Visual Cultures Public Programme, Spring 2020 series "The Institution Overturned", organised by Anthony Faramelli and Janna Graham. In this ten part series, legacies of Institutional Analysis are read as offering possibilities beyond the neutralised gestures of institutional critique. In their direct address of micro political and micro-fascist dimensions of institutional articulation, they offer modes of social interrogation and change that undo and re-make the habitual fabric of institutions. The Institution Overturned is developed in conjunction with the Network for Institutional Analysis, an international group working to research and activate the legacies of Institutional Analysis. Many of the sessions will also be recorded and aired on the newly formed web radio station, Radio Chimeres. It is a precursor to the Goldsmiths Short Course On Institutional Analysis offered summer 2020
Friday 24 January 11am-5.30pm
Location: Deptford Town Hall, room G5
10.30am – 1.30pm Morning session
Complex Processes for Complex Problems: Transdisciplinary Research and Co-Curation across Art and Science
Adam Bencard, senior curator Medicine Museum Copenhagen and associate professor Copenhagen University
Readings:
- Kathleen Stewarts. 'Weak Theory in an Unfinished World’
- Adam Bencard, Louise Whiteley, and Caroline Heje Thon, 'Curating experimental entanglements’
1.30 – 2.30pm Lunch
2.30 – 5pm Afternoon session
Bridget Crone and Irit Rogoff in discussion on Bencard’s presentation and the text he proposed as background, Kathleen Stewarts' 'Weak Theory in an Unfinished World'.
Saturday 25 January December 12-4pm
Location: Chisenhale Gallery, 64 Chisenhale Road, London E3 5QZ
Adnan Madani will focus the discussion on Marilyn Strathern text 'Opening up Relations' in Marisol de Cadena, World of Many Worlds, Duke University Press, 2019.