Maria Hlavajova – What kind of public art and culture institutions do we want?

What kind of public art and culture institutions do we want? Why are they in short supply? Or do they exist at all?

Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava
Hviezdoslavovo nám. 18, Room no.135


In this third and last public lecture, Maria Hlavajova will think through the notion of “instituting otherwise” as an embodied, situated, and relational practice. Instituting otherwise builds on the legacy of institutional critique, which informed emergence of the so-called “new institutions” in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Moving beyond critique of and resistance to the institution, the lecture will rethink in a propositional modality a number of shifts that institutions have since undergone, including the rearticulation of the so-called “audience” into an active agency of the so-called “radical publics.” It is in the relation of radical publics and the institution where instituting otherwise takes place and where a possibility of building institutions we want could be located.


The series of lectures and workshops entitled The World in Relation is organised through the Institute of guest lecturers during the summer semester of 2022 by Studio vvv (Department of Intermedia, AFAD), which was prepared by an exceptional team consisting of curator and scholar, as well as artistic director and founder of BAK, basis voor actuele kunste Maria Hlavajova (Amsterdam, Utrecht), researcher and artist Kristína Országhová (Prague, Bratislava) and artist and AFAD teaching assistant Dávid Koronczi.


Photo: Carmen Papalia, Non-Visual Walk, 2019, organized by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht