Reclaiming Criticality in Art and Digital Cultures

A thought-provoking conference 'Precarious Times: Reclaiming Criticality in Art and Digital Cultures' will take place at Royal William Yard (Plymouth), UK.

Speakers at this is an interesting event include Franco Berardi Bifo, Freee, Lars Bang Larsen and Malcolm Miles. An introductory note states: “In times of financial crisis, austerity measures, and the increased privatization of digital networks and public services, what are the conditions under which we produce art, ideas and concepts? If working as part of the arts has always been precarious, it now operates in exaggerated ways.”

The symposium will explore these issues in the context of the British Art Show (currently taking place in Plymouth), asserting that the future is largely conditioned through the reality of the political economy, leaving the art world ever more vulnerable but also at the same time a crucial site of struggle. In these precarious times, what does the art world have to offer?

British Art Show 7 after its launch in Nottingham has toured to London, Glasgow and Plymouth. It will be shown at five locations in Plymouth - Peninsula Arts, Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Royal William Yard and Plymouth College of Art (17 Sep to 4 Dec 2011).

The art symposium, taking place on 13-14 October 2011, is organized jointly by KURATOR and Culture–Theory-Space research groups, Plymouth University, UK, in collaboration with the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus University, Denmark. Dr. Joasia Krysa, founding director of KURATOR and dOCUMENTA (13) agent, co-organises and co-chairs the conference.

A curator, writer and academic, Joasia Krysa, is the founding director of KURATOR. It’s a combined curatorial and research project at the intersection of art, technology and society Among the participants, Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian at the University of Copenhagen. He has co-curated group exhibitions such as ‘A History of Irritated Material’, Raven Row, London (2010), and ‘Populism’, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2005).