Representation, Contestation and Power: The Artist as Public Intellectual
Sunday 10 of October
A central issue for critical artists today is the question of interactions with the apparatus surrounding art production: the parameters for reception (institutions, audiences, communities, constituencies, etc.) and the potentials and limitations for communication in different spheres (the art world, the media, public spaces, the political field etc.). How connections are made and how they are, indeed, broken. This can be discussed in a number of ways, ranging from the practical and methodological, that is, discussions regarding the use of signs and spaces in installation, about conceptions of tools and politics of representation, the role or function of the artist/author in the construction of other spaces and subjectivities, that is alternative networks or even counter-publics. Such discussions must focus not only on the interface between the institution of art and the individual artist, both politically and artistically, but also on bodily relations in political spaces, the advent and usage of technologies, and finally the establishment of networks, communication lines and escape attempts.
[...]It requires an ongoing negotiation, translation and articulation between interested agents and groups. It is necessary to establish networks, to compare and mediate practices as well as theories. Art matters, certainly, but art is not enough.
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Simon Sheikh is a curator and critic. Publisher of oe~ critical readers series, b.books, berlín. He is an Assistant Professor of Art Theory and a Coordinator of the Critical Studies Program, Malmö Art Academy in Sweden. He was director of Overgaden – Institute for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, 1999-2002 and Curator at NIFCA, Helsinki, 2003-2004. Editor of the magazine Øjeblikket 1996-2000, and a member of the project group GLOBE 1993-2000. Recent publications include the anthologies "We are all Normal" (with Katya Sander), Black Dog Publishing, London 2001, "Knut Åsdam" (monograph), Fine Arts Unternehmen, Zug, 2004," In the Place of the Public Sphere?", b_books, Berlin, 2005 and "Capital (It Fails Us Now)", b_books, Berlin, 2006. His writings can also be found in such periodicals as Afterall, AnArchitectur, Springerin and Texte zur Kunst. Lives in Berlin and Copenhagen.
