<nettime-ann> Least Common Multiples: opportunism and pragmatism in cont

LEAST COMMON MULTIPLES

a conference about opportunism and pragmatism in contemporary art production,

within the frame of the 3rd Young Artists' Biennial of Bucharest.

October 3rd, 2008
13:00 > 20:00
International Advertising Association
Calea Victoriei, 126, 3rd floor, Bucharest.

Free entrance.

Least common multiples, to be held during the 3rd Young Artists’ Biennial of Bucharest at the International Advertising Association, intends to interrogate contemporary key-issues of artistic and cultural production in the plurality of European contexts.

At a moment when the art economy is more and more integrated into global strategies, what are the development perspectives for the production of research-oriented art, enterprising and experimental projects, international collaborations intending to sprout new energies? The symposium will be riveted to a methodic approach of the subject: what common strategies can be found in conditions as various as Bucharest's, London's, Vilnius' or Rome's ones?

How is it possible to collectively discuss and devise production tactics out of precise cases, by taking advantage of any set of circumstances (opportunism) and by methodically assessing economical situations through matter-of-fact and straightforward means (pragmatism)? Are opportunistic and pragmatic techniques contradictory with independence? Does a conditioned environment for artistic viability and visibility (economy) overdetermine content?

This meeting will first discuss the relationship between cultural politics and political societies. When public financial backing of art is conducted by a certain state of "cultural politics", how to dodge the contingency of governmental orientations in order to bridge artistic production to a civil society demanding for cultural and political assets? Then, Least common multiples will debate how new features can answer the requisites of potential fundings. Such a division as public versus private domains in terms of cultural production is irrelevant considering the current European context. What does it imply in terms of representation and how is it possible, to take advantages from these two sides by initiating new kinds of working "machines"? Consequently, if one accepts that the cultural production is more than ever integrated into global politico-economical strategies, what are the new edges of this "system"? What are the hedges through which their use is possibly productive?

Participants: Anthony Auerbach (London), Iara Boubnova (Sofia), Gabriele Gaspari (Rome), Bogdan Ghiu (Bucharest), Erwin Kessler (Bucharest), Mirjana Peitler (Graz), Dan Perjovschi (Bucharest) and Gediminias Urbonas (Vilnius).

Moderation: Société Réaliste (Paris).

A project initiated by Ami Barak (Paris).

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13:30
Opening of Least Common Multiples and introduction by Société Réaliste (Paris).

14:00

Gediminas Urbonas (artist, Vilnius) will contribute to the meeting with a paper that is charting construction of a pro-test lab through the events of artistic production staged as a campaign of reclaiming public space, as their method of protest against the privatization of Lietuva (Lithuania) - the largest cinema theater in Vilnius. He will analyses the debates that unfold in the conflict between privatization and publicness, art and ethics, activism and production. Presentation scrutinizes an art project that employ energies of the productive side of protest, archiving all possibilities of impossible protest that rally against the specific situation of the privatization of public space.

The artist Dan Perjovschi (Bucharest), in its presentation entitled What's up is going down, will talk about "integrated world, endless art fairs, endless biennials, art price rising, artmaket expanding, more galleries, more museums,
hot and hip, lifestyle and life cool. Sothebies auctioning graffiti, Tate decorated with graffiti. Whats wrong with this picture? Time to rethinking the system. Finding space for thinking and acting. The new edge may be claiming back the center."

Debate and break.

16:00

Iara Boubnova, freelance curator (Sofia), will talk about new strategies to produce differently in the art system, between the global market and regional nostalgia. When history becomes geography, she will consider artistic gestures
in relation to public opinions, in a range of practices going from site-specific to the language of mass media.

Gabriele Gaspari, freelance curator and co-founder of 26cc space for contemporary arts (Rome), will argue about potential subsistence models for independent and non-profit art spaces, as well as how such organizations can
have their way through the structure of public institutions without giving up their autonomy in insight and practice.

Considering that most of the engaged art initiatives live in a permanent balance between critical discourse and partnership with various money-giving institutions, leading them to subtle forms of "self-censorship", Mirjana Peitler, curator in MedienKunstLabor (Graz), will examine what could be done to keep spaces for critical discourses.

Debate and break.

18:00

The poet, theoretician and translator Bogdan Ghiu (Bucharest) in its lecture Art as research, an affaire of durability will develop his views about strategic pragmatism and tactical opportunism of art.

Erwin Kessler, researcher and art critic (Bucharest), will approach the relationship between cultural politics and political societies through a contribution on pragmatic misfits and self-exclusion as art politics.

Anthony Auerbach, artist and researcher (London), will discuss success and how to avoid it. He will throw into relation with the proposed tension between pragmatic and opportunistic, between product and event, between collective and collaborative modes of working.

Final debate.

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for more information, please write to [email protected]

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