Maria Hlavajova – Where to Begin? In This Time of Crises.
Studio vvv (Departement of Intermedia, AFAD) presents a series of lectures by the visiting scholar, theorist and curator Maria Hlavajova The World in Relation
Room No. 135, Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava
Hviezdoslavovo nám. 18, 814 37 Bratislava
If it is possible to think of ours as a time of interregnum—in political thinker Antonio Gramsci’s sense as one rife with a “great variety of morbid symptoms” in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born”—how can we, with and through art, trace prospective itineraries that point toward what we once called ”the future”? As we endlessly hover at the edge of one era unable to reach the not-yet, with extant hegemonies losing their grips and a parting with the legacies of the modern, in order to direct this “future” toward more just relations than we have known it is imperative to scrutinize the "building blocks" on which what we think of as contemporary art rests—the audience and public, art institution, and artistic production, along with notions of authorship, ownership, spectatorship, expertise, critique, and others. This introductory lecture to the 2022 summer semester programme in the framework of The World in Relation: Where to Begin? In This Time of Crises. outlines key contemporary conditions from which to examine art’s potentials for actively participating in the recompositionings underway, and employs critique-as-proposition to trace the space of art as a way of accessing political life.
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.
The initiator of the project is the head of Studio vvv, artist and teacher Martin Piaček.
The project was financially supported by the Academy of Fine Arts and the Slovak Arts Council.
The event will take place in VRT (vaccinated, recovered, tested) mode.