- Instructor:
- Date:February 13th Wednesday, 2013
- Time:20:00-22:00
- Charge:¥500 including 1 drink
The first PICASOM event to follow the previous 50th anniversary gathering will be a guest discussion session.
In this PICASOM event, we will be welcoming the curators Vera Mey (Assistant Director of ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) and Sara Krajewski (Director of The Institute of Visual Arts / INOVA, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA), who have both expressed an interest in the Social Kitchen and the various activities that we have hosted. Instead of simply asking our guests to give conventional presentations about their past exhibitions and projects, we hope to hold a discussion centered on the questions below that we have presented to them through the Social Kitchen's "Survival" project and an open letter posted on e-flux. We are eager to hear their thoughts on our questions in relation to their own projects that they are undertaking within their respective contexts. Additionally, we hope to identify potential commonalities and connections between their projects and our activities at the Social Kitchen.
Questions:
- What are the possibilities for small cultural and arts centers to exist in today's world?
- Is there a way for them to exist without entering into the never-ending economic game of competition or selling them as social entrepreneurial enterprises?
- Besides entering much-hated grant competitions, what can you do?
- Instead of becoming a part of the cycle of "upgrading" constantly, and of selling your uniqueness (eg: human networking, creative skills, and even social consciousness!) what are the possibilities for your survival?
- Why should art and culture always be defeated by logics of the economy?
- What would it look like to create our own logics of economy?
Discussions will be held in English with Japanese translations.
Organizer / Host: Sakiko Sugawa
PICASOM
In recent years, the number of locally held art projects and art festivals in Japan has been increasing. There has been an expectation that this creative power of art will serve to stimulate rural culture. In the cities, creativity and ingenuity have also contributed to the development of new forms of social movements and activism. The seemingly opposing concepts of "rural areas and cities," "individuals and the group," "art and politics" are being eroded, redefined and transformed into something new. This may sound a bit too optimistic, and the current situation may simply represent a jumble. So let's try to sort it out and come to a deeper understanding. And then it would be crucial if we could bring a practice of individual freedom and collective social change into harmony.
This study group mainly read the text on "relational art" "project based art" and "art activism." As might be expected, people in Western countries discuss these issues intensely and sort them out swiftly. And while the reality of their approach may differ from the reality of ours, to measure this distance is also an aim of our study group.
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