Spaces of contemporary art was the topic I was invited to speak about at Red Bull House of Art, at the invitation of the curators, Lucas Bambozzi e Maria Monteiro. I was there at a privileged moment in the project: between exhibitions (the new one opens on the 4th and looks promising).
Besides getting a privileged view of the process, visiting the resident artists’ studios and exploring the Hotel Central, I enjoyed an interesting and engaged audience that considerably expanded the questions I tried to raise in the talk.
Contemporary art’s spaces beyond the screen and beyond the wall
My initial idea was to discuss contemporary art’s spaces beyond the screen and beyond the wall through projects that engage critically with the art circuit, proposing alternative spaces for action and/or reinventing conventional uses of media and platforms.
An incident during an email exchange with Cassia Rossini, HOA’s producer, as we finalized the proposal ended up setting the tone of the presentation. Where Cassia wrote “contact,” I read “contract.” Once the confusion had cleared, bingo! That was what needed to be explored: strategies capable of moving from contract to contact.
From contract to contact
This sparked very interesting debate and reflections on the relationship between artistic production, marketing initiatives, and brands; tensions within circuits of creation, funding, and circulation; artivism; and the transformation of the public (a passive audience) into a multitude (in the qualitative rather than quantitative sense of the term: an intelligent collective, following Negri).
The lecture and the conversation that followed were recorded on video and are available on Vimeo, divided into short segments of no more than ten minutes.
The slides featuring the projects presented to stimulate the conversation are below.