As we write, people in Istanbul protest the demolition of Taksim Gezi park. L’Internationale, a new European Museum Confederation, makes its first statement in relation to the events. In Cairo, “cultural intellectuals” have claimed the Minister of Culture’s office, in a performance-filled sit-in for a fortnight – and ongoing; in Egypt, millions of copies of […]
Picture the sea (or take to it). If this proves to be difficult, then picture this: millions of Muslim pilgrims from all around the world flock to the same spot, at the same hour every year, to start a sequence of procession that lasts for days in perfect synchronicity, without any form of leadership or […]
What is it to inherit an institution, with all its history, and an identity that exists at a given moment, but that is just one in a longer life of histories – an organic event unfolding over time, both before and after us? How can it be re-imagined, how do we shift and reflect? What […]
Think of the difference between a knife and a 20-dollar bill. Now, think of the difference between a knife and a 20-dollar bill. Institutional reality increases power, and by increasing institutional reality, we increase human capacity for action. John suggests that presupposing the institution of language (and economy) is precisely what holds us back from […]
Less than a year ago, I found myself at an artist’s talk held in a well-respected, small institution in East London. I can see now how the expression ‘to find oneself’ might introduce an element of chance in the equation describing my ‘being there’ – an element, I have to admit, totally absent in the […]
We understand institutions (at large, not only art institutions) always in terms of the act of instituting. In that sense, institutions can be defined as sets of social (and, therefore, fundamentally subjective) protocols (rules) that prescribe and normalize not only behavior but also, and maybe more importantly, perception. We are obviously referring to a very […]
More than anything else my life, it is my interpersonal relationships, formal and informal, that are at the core of my being. Like anyone, my character and vocabulary change as I engage in a range of conversation: I use my most placating, understanding, and convincing voice when I speak to the people who pay me. […]
Emotional Architecture, text one I realized this morning, that with the hours, I was becoming the auditor of institutional ethics. The only silent attendant in the room. Listening out. ♦ The auditor listens in. To what is not said. Or listens out. For that which cannot be said. I am listening out for a soul. The […]
Artist Paul Chan wrote a text for e-flux in 2008 entitled What is art and where does it belong? He describes the first piece of art he ever bought and how he negotiated its presence in the home. There are multiple futures for a work of art, its context endlessly shifting with each placement, and yet […]
Featured in this edition of the Virtual Gallery, ArteEast’s major visual arts exhibition – Tarjama/Translation – maps an influential subset of recent work from the Middle East and Central Asia and its diasporas as a complex and dynamic translational undertaking. Rather than highlighting the region as its main thematic or providing a panoramic, and thus […]