2019/15/11: Book Launch: Research/Practice 03: Larissa Sansour: Heirloom, Copenhagen Contemporary, December 12, 2019

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12.12.2019

Copenhagen Contemporary is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition Heirloom by the Danish-Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour. On the occasion of the opening, there will be free admission, and CC will be serving a glass of wine when the exhibition opens.

The evening starts with an Art Talk, where you can experience the artist in conversation with curator Nat Muller. We will also present the book Larissa Sansour: Heirloom edited by Anthony Downey, which focuses on the research and preparations for the exhibition.

Afterwards, the director of CC, Marie Nipper and chair of the Project Support Committee for Visual Arts, Lisette Vind Ebbesen, will give their welcome speeches, before we open the doors to the exhibition and DJ’s Atusa and Angel Wei will create the soundtrack of the evening. Vinhanen will serve you at the bar.

We look forward to welcoming you!

Program

17.00: Art Talk with Larissa Sansour and Nat Muller along with the book launch of Larissa Sansour: Heirloom
18.15: Welcome greeting by director of CC, Marie Nipper and chair of the Project Support Committee for Visual Arts, Lisette Vind Ebbesen
18.30: The exhibition opens & DJ’s Atusa and Angel Wei
21.00: Thank you for a great evening

For full details of show and book launch go to here.

For further details fo book, see here.

2019/09/30: Public Talk: “Performing Rights”, Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL, London, 14 November, 2019

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Performing Rights: Contemporary Art, the Refugee Condition, and the Alibi of Engagement  

To book tickets, see here.

Date And Time

Location

2019/08/22: Public Talk: Trevor Paglen in conversation with Anthony Downey, Barbican Centre, London, 26 September, 2019

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To coincide with the new Curve commission From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’, artist Trevor Paglen will be in conversation with writer and academic Anthony Downey.

To book tickets, see here.

2019/05/10: New Book Series: Research/Practice, ed. Anthony Downey (Sternberg Press/MIT, 2019)

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What is meant by artistic research and how does it contribute to the formation of experimental knowledge systems? Drawing on material not usually given precedence in relation to the finished artwork, including diaries, notebooks, digital and social media, informal communications, and other miscellany, Research/Practice examines the inter- and cross-disciplinary research methodologies that artists employ in the development of their practices. Expanding on the formal and informal components that were involved in the evolution of diverse methods and strategies, as this series develops it will offer an accessible and timely enquiry into a core question: in their often speculative and yet purposeful approach to generating research, what forms of critical knowledge do artists produce?

Published by Sternberg Press

ISBN: 9783956794766160

pp. | 4.75 in x 7 in

90 color illus., 30 b&w illus.

September 2019

Volume 01: Michael Rakowitz: I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, it’s in between I freeze

Editor: Anthony Downey

Essay: Anthony Downey

Volume 02: Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork

Editor: Anthony Downey

Interview: Laura Poitras and Heba Y Amin

Volume 03: Larissa Sansour: Heirloom (Published on the occasion of the 58th Venice Biennale)

Editor: Anthony Downey

Essay: Nat Muller

For more information on upcoming titles, see here.

2019/04/10: Keynote: “The Future of the Networked Image: Digital Archives in a ‘Post Truth’ Age”, IMMA Summer School, Dublin, June 11, 2019

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IMMA’s Summer School 2019 will feature talks and workshops by a range of national and international artists, theorists and critics who will focus on the connections between art and politics. Applications are invited from students of all ages and disciplines enrolled in an educational institution in Ireland in 2019. This week-long intensive programme, featuring talks and workshops by a range of national and international artists, theorists and critics, will focus on the connections between art and politics. Applications are invited from students of all ages and disciplines enrolled in an educational institution in Ireland in 2019.

Keynote 11 June, 2pm, IMMA

The Future of the Networked Image: Digital Archives in a “Post Truth” Age

Professor Anthony Downey

The extent to which the visual arts reflected upon and promoted social and political change during and after the Arab Spring increasingly gives rise to decisive questions regarding the future relationship between digital images and cultural activism. Throughout this time, digital archives — produced through video- and film-making, performances, and numerous media platforms — and their evidentiary contexts became closely associated with activist practices, leading to a number of prevailing assumptions about both cultural production in the region and the effectiveness of digital and social media as tools for enabling international political transformation. Taking into consideration recent revelations concerning the role of social media in surveillance technologies, political repression, and the proliferation of targeted disinformation, alongside the anxieties being expressed about the opaque power of algorithms, this keynote will explore critical frameworks for understanding the relationship between digitized media and cultural activism. The broader issue here concerns a perennial, indeed global, issue: how do cultural practices — through digital means — realign how we engage with the politics of historical events and images of revolutionary conflict?

For full details see here.

Public Talk: “Performing Rights”, TrAIN Open Lecture, UAL, London, April 24, 2019

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Karl Marx Allee, Berlin, January 2019 (image-copyright-ATPD)

Performing Rights: Contemporary Art, the Refugee Condition, and the Alibi of Engagement

Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, 1953

If the disavowal or absence of legal and political representation is a feature of being a refugee in an era of political exceptionalism, then what happens when artistic representation is inserted into this already compromised regime of visibility?  In an all too amenable substitution that can often reconfirm the apparent absence of legal accountability, is it possible that cultural forms of representation are compensating for — if not replacing — the very systems and procedures of political and legal responsibility that are being denied refugees in the first place?

Lecture Theatre, Chelsea College of Arts, Chelsea College of Arts 16 John Islip Street London, SW1P 4JU

6-8pm

For full details and registration, see here.

Public Talk: “Applied Futures”, The (Networked) Image in Conflict: Cultural Activism and Visual Culture, Modern Art Oxford, April 4, 2019

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The degree to which artists and cultural institutions utilised digital media to promote social and political change following the Arab Spring raises significant and timely questions about the relationship between global networked systems of communication and cultural activism. Since 2011, digital images have become closely associated with activist practices, which has in turn produced a number of prevailing assumptions about how effective digital and social media are as tools for embracing and enabling political transformation. Taking into consideration recent revelations concerning the role of social media in surveillance technologies, political repression, and the proliferation of targeted disinformation, and attendant anxieties about the opaque power of algorithms, this panel will explore critical frameworks for understanding the relationship between digitized media and cultural activism. The broader issue here concerns a perennial, indeed worldwide, issue: how do cultural practices — through digital means — realign how we engage with historical events and images of revolutionary conflict?

Speakers:
Nanna Bonde Thylstrup (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)
Donatella Della Ratta (John Cabot University, Rome, Italy)
Anthony Downey (Birmingham City University, UK)
Chair: Nat Muller (Birmingham City University, UK)

This event is co-organised by Professor Anthony Downey (Birmingham City University) and Modern Art Oxford.

For more information and tickets, see HERE.

Conference Paper: “Conditions of Possibility”, The Midlands Higher Education and Culture Forum, March 27, 2019

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Collaborative Research: Current Landscapes and New Directions, March 27, 2019

Collaborative Research panel explores the current landscape of collaboration between Higher Education and the Cultural sector and examines opportunities to promote experimental and creative research methods in both fields. Our speakers will articulate how these collaborative practices contribute to new modes of knowledge production and research methodologies in non-academic and academic contexts. This panel aims to engage with current debates around collaborative research across the HE and cultural sectors; advocating for a more collaborative dialogue where cultural partners also contribute to the development of research questions and advance methods to further new modes of research.

The panel comprises Maria Hlavajova, founding General and Artistic Director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and Anthony Downey, Professor of Visual Culture in North Africa and the Middle East, Birmingham City University. The panel will be introduced and moderated by Carolina Rito, Head of Public Programmes and Research at Nottingham Contemporary and Bill Balaskas, Associate Professor in Visual Communication & Research Coordinator at Nottingham Trent University.

For more information and booking, see HERE.

‘The Politics of Shame: Ai Weiwei in conversation with Anthony Downey’, Large Glass Journal, Skopje, and Third Text, London, January, 2019

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The Politics of Shame: Ai Weiwei in conversation with Anthony Downey

From October 2017 to February 2018, the Fotomuseum Antwerp (FOMU) presented the first photo exhibition of Chinese visual artist and political activist Ai Weiwei. Entitled ‘Ai Weiwei – Mirror’, the exhibition included seminal political statements such as Study of Perspective (1995–2011) and the artist’s daily stream of selfies and snapshots on social media. The show also addressed the years that the artist spent under constant surveillance by the Chinese government and his ongoing commitment to presenting work that engages with social and political issues, including the worldwide refugee condition.

In the following transcription of a conversation that was recorded as part of a public event in Antwerp on 25 October, 2017, the artist talked to Anthony Downey about his photographic work from the 1990s until today and how those earlier photographs, taken in New York City during the 1980s and early 1990s (but not developed until he returned to Beijing in 1993), in part signal later concerns with activism, image production and human rights. A central element in Ai Weiwei’s concerns is his use of the internet, specifically in his efforts to hold the Chinese authorities accountable for events surrounding the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. The interview also covered the artist’s more recent works regarding his subsequent imprisonment and constant harassment. The artist talks frankly about the extent to which shame played a part in his motivations, both his efforts to shame the government but also their attempts to shame him and, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, his father before him.

This interview is published in partnership with The Large Glass: Journal of Contemporary Art, Culture and Theory, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje (Macedonia), no 25/26, 2018, pp 28–42. ISSN: 1409 – 5823, and Third Text Online. 

A PDF of the interview can be downloaded here.

Photo Credit: Ai Weiwei, ‘Mirror’, exhibition at Fotomuseum Antwerpen (FOMU), October 2017–February 2018   © Guy Voet