MANUFACTURING TODAY,
17 april - 16 may 2010
Symposium "Dictionary of War" 17 april, 2pm - 10pm
Curator Cristina Ricupero
Kulturbunker Dora, Trondheim, Norway
'Manufacturing Today' has been conceived as a five year research project and exhibition based in Trondheim, Norway but created, this time, in collaboration between art academies in Norway, Finland, Lithuania and the UK. ‘Manufacturing Today’ addresses the question of how art and art education might resist instrumentalisation by the art market on one hand and the streamlining efforts of the state on the other. To resist this instrumentalisation means to support the idea of a potential within the institution of art for the imagination of an alternative social order. To focus on education is to engage with real political questions about how institutions shape society.
The title 'Manufacturing Today' is appropriated from a US and European industry journal. The title can both point to the coming industrialisation of European art education, and to the role of culture in making the social superstructure, in manufacturing society.
Are art schools today simply places that produce students as a product for the market?
Is there an alternative to this situation? Is there a social role for art students, for young artists, other than to succeed or fail as producers/products in the culture industry?
There has been a great deal of recent interest and critical attention given to the idea of radical education. Aside from the many self-organised initiatives and self-institutions, the institutional mainstream has taken up the theme in many high-profile ways. The art world has seen the revival of broadly anarchist ideas of autonomous institutions, a critique of capitalist or state-institutional modes of knowledge production and distribution, and the return of the ideals of the free universities of the 1960s. “Manufacturing Today” does not only intend to map out this situation, but to create a forum in which these ideas can be focused towards practice, a productive space, and to provide room for experiment and public encounter. ‘Manufacturing Today’ hopes to argue that art can play a vital role in exploring radical possibilities, not only for aesthetic experience but, in its expanded contemporary conception, for the formation of society in general.
‘Manufacturing Today’ includes new works and projects by around 18 international artists and artist groups, bringing together challenging works in a multitude of artistic strategies. ‘Manufacturing Today’ will feature many artist-teachers who have elaborated with a group of students specific projects for the occasion, individual artists, post-graduate artists as well as artists who function very much like activists and who have created their own self-organised structures.
This project has been conceived together with Will Bradley.
Participating artists are: Bik Van der Pol / Annika Eriksson / Free Class Frankfurt / Eva Grubinger and Jakob Neulinger with students from Sculpture Department Kunstuniversität Linz: Sarah Decristoforo, Richard Nikl, Christian Öhlinger / Jens Haaning / Simon Harvey with students from Art and Common Space from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art / Institute for Colour / Susan Kelly with students from Department of Art, Goldsmiths College: Emily Ballard, Leandro Cardoso, Tara Johnston-Comerford, Abigail Jones, Matt Lewis, Charles Mills, Lina Norell, Ana Noble, Andreas Pashias, Anna Sjogren, Marie Thams, Sarah Walters / Annette Krauss / Martin Le Chevallier / Malmö Free University for Women, MFK / Regina Möller with
students from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art: Kerstin Juhlin, Tian Miller, Tore Reisch, Cathrine Ruud, Karen Sørensen, Marte Tidslevold / Florian Schneider / Sille Storihle & Kristin Tårnes / Superflex / Milica Tomic with students from Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki:
Tatu Engeström, Bonnie Fan, Marina Lucena, Bita Razavi, Jarkko Räsänen, Hermanni Saarinen, Elina Tuhkanen, Filippo Zambon / UKK - Young Art Workers / Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas with Guggenheim Visibility Study
and Slow TV
The symposium : Instead of a conventional panel structure the symposium at the opening of "Manufacturing today" will take the form of a dictionary. That means that every guest and contributor is invited to create one concept that is then going to be presented at the opening weekend in a half hour time slot and in alphabetical order. The symposium will bring together recognised theorists, artists, educators and activists from around northern Europe. ‘Dictionary of War’ is an ongoing project by Florian Schneider.
Organised by Trondheim Academy of Fine Art in collaboration withFinnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Goldsmiths College, London University, Department of Art.