We are very happy to announce a collaboration with ...ment

....ment is an initiative run by Federica Bueti, Benoit Loiseau, Clara Meister.

http://journalment.org/

Welfare State...ment
Wednesday 29th June from 6pm 
BDP Büro 
Emserstrasse 43 in Neukölln, Berlin
(nearest Ubahn: Hermannstrasse)


To further discuss and investigate the complexity of Welfare State …ment will expand its usual editorial format to take the form of a public discussion.  The event invites artists, curators and cultural practitioners to answer the following question:

How does society produce artists?

The Statement will give the opportunity to articulate further reflections on the role of educational, cultural and social institutions in current cultural and artistic production. The same question has been previously answered by artist and theorist Liam Gillick in a 5m 26s audio piece included in the audio-collection Liam Gillick. An Idea Just Out of Reach.

Gillick’s audio piece reflects and problematizes the role of art institutions and centres of power in the formation of individual and collective artist’s subjectivity. In a related text the artist pointed out:  

The challenge is the supposition that artists today—whether they like it or not—have fallen into a trap that is pre-determined by their existence within a regime that is centred on a rampant capitalization of the mind. The accusation inherent in the question is that artists are at best the ultimate freelance knowledge workers and at worst barely capable of distinguishing themselves from the consuming desire to work at all times, neurotic people who deploy a series of practices that coincide quite neatly with the requirements of the neoliberal, predatory, continually mutating capitalism of the every moment.

Artists are people who behave, communicate, and innovate in the same manner as those who spend their days trying to capitalize every moment and exchange of daily life. They offer no alternative to this. (Excerpt from The Good of Work, edited by Brian Kuan Wood and published online by e-flux journal, NY, 2010).

 We want to propose again the same question with the aim to start a fruitful debate on this and other relevant issues in the form of 5m 26s public statements. The statement is generally required when an artist or cultural worker wants to apply for schools, residences, jobs, awards and other forms of institutional support. However, the statement resembles and derives in part from avant-garde manifestos, where it was an expression of criticism and dissensus.  

We would like to use the Statement as a form of individual participation and of collective responsibility. The event will be realised in collaboration with Broken Dimanche Press, an independent publishing initiative founded and directed by John Holten and Line Madsen Simenstad and it will be accompanied by the sound piece by Liam Gillick and a spatial intervention by Riccardo Benassi. The event will take place on June 29th 2011 6pm at  Büro BDP Broken Dimanche Press' office.

Emserstrasse 43 in Neukoelln,

U&Sbahn: Hermannstrasse