11/01/2012
13-01-2012 Symposium Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen | 1:1 Hans van Houwelingen & Jonas Staal
1:1 Symposium, Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen | 13 January 2012 | 06 - 11pm
A public guided tour, lectures and discussions in relation to the exhibition 1:1 by Hans van Houwelingen and Jonas Staal
Program:
6 pm - Guided tour through the exhibition by Wouter Davidts (Professor of Modern Art History, VU University Amsterdam) and Wouter van Besien (Groen! Party leader).
7 pm - Lectures by Gideon Boie (architecture activist, member of BAVO, Brussels), Sven Lütticken (Lecturer, VU University Amsterdam, art critic and curator), Bart Verschaffel (Professor of Architecture Theory, Ghent University) and Marina Vishmidt (researcher and writer, London)
Followed by an open discussion moderated by Mihnea Mircan
In a symposium that concludes the exhibition 1:1 - Hans van Houwelingen & Jonas Staal, speakers will contextualize the works of Hans van Houwelingen and Jonas Staal, as well as the question – central to both practices – of a new monumentality, firmly implanted in the 'here and now' of politics yet also mapping new routes for artistic autonomy.
The monument will be inspected as a philosophical notion, allowing for the distinction between cultural and political markers, as instrument in declaring and enacting states of exception, transition or crisis, in marking and defending fault lines between ideological constituencies, in demarcating the sides of political combat.
In particular, Van Houwelingen's National Monument to the Guest Workers and Staal's Art, Property of Politics III: Closed Architecture will be set against the current demise of multiculturalism and of its rhetoric of inclusion, a threshold beyond which no paradigm of consensus awaits.
These and other works, unraveling the political desires and anxieties
that monuments thread together and 'set in stone', will be examined as
questions about artistic responsibility and agency, modes of
commemoration or of imagining a collective destination.
If there is a vanishing point where such critical perspectives converge,
it might be 'an understanding of the new role assigned to contemporary
art in an age of shrinking asset values, an of shrinking asset values, and of the 'monuments' required by an age where art is no longer considered the first or best mediation of those values.' (Marina Vishmidt)
Together with this exhibition the publication Hans van Houwelingen: Undone
was made. The volume contains contributions by Mark Jarzombek, David
Riff, Jonathan Dronsfield, Gerald Raunig, Marina Vishmidt, Julia
Bryan-Wilson, Brian Dillon, Jonas Staal, among others. It is designed by
Metahaven and published by Jap Sam Books. The publication has been made
possible by the financial support of Stroom Den Haag, Extra City
Kunsthal Antwerpen, Fonds BKVB and Stichting
Stokroos.