Exclusive Access: On the dynamics and vocabularies of co-option, care and the subaltern | A talk featuring Tristan Schultz of Relative Creative.

This event looks at questions of how certain modes of promoting ”access” can operate as de facto modes of exclusion. It brings artists, curators, researchers, and activists together to consider the following questions: What are the politics of access? Do strategies and infrastructures of inclusion simply replicate and reinforce individualised imaginaries within broadly hierarchical social structures, particularly as artistic habits of production are increasingly exported as economised knowledge production to other parts of the world? How are the terms of access and exclusion produced, rehearsed and (re-)enacted in contemporary artistic, educational, and social practice? What is the contribution of current artistic research to debates on access, exclusion, co-option, and care in global circuits of contemporary cultural production? How can we shape new communal epistemologies, terms, institutions and practices?

 

The first day focuses on institutional and epistemological exclusions; colonial and master paradigms, and institutional racism. It will also address communal and collective perspectives and strategies for a new arts and humanities through rejection of modernist claims of universality and progress and the embracing of epistemic and disciplinary disobedience, non-capitalist, pluri-national institutions and modes of aesthetic management. The second day centers on forms of exclusion produced through language as well as social, embodied and discursive practices. Focusing on the terms and conditions of artistic and social work in cross-disciplinary contexts, we will explore and interrogate languages of participation, separation, inclusion, and diversity as they are produced and enacted in the present moment, in the field of cultural production and in the social arena.

 

Listen here.

Participants:

  • Danah Abdulla, PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London, lecturer at the London College of Communication, University of Arts London, and member of the Decolonising Design Group
  • Erling Björgvinsson, Professor of Design, Academy of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg
  • Marina Cyrino, PhD candidate in musical performance, Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg
  • Abigail de Kosnik, Associate Professor, Berkeley Center for New Media & Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley
  • Ben de Kosnik, software engineer and artist
  • Allan deSouza, Associate Professor and Department Chair, Art Practice, UC Berkeley
  • Denise Ferreira da Silva, Director, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia
  • Suzanne Guerlac, Professor, French Department, UC Berkeley
  • Kristina Hagström-Ståhl, PARSE Professor of Performative Arts, Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg
  • Seth Holmes, Associate Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology, Chair of Medical Anthropology, and Founder and Co-Chair of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, UC Berkeley
  • Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts and Design; Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Chair in the Humanities; Professor, Departments of Rhetoric, and Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley
  • Onkar Kular, Professor of Design, Academy of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg
  • Khashayar Naderehvandi, PhD candidate in literary composition, Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg
  • Valérie Pihet, co-founder and President of Dingdingdong (Institute of Coproduction of Knowledge on Huntington’s Disease)
  • Andrea Phillips PARSE Professor of Art, Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg
  • Luiza Prado, PhD Candidate at the University of the Arts and member of the Decolonising Design Group
  • Tristan Schultz, Design Lecturer & Convenor of Visual Communication Design Major Design Futures Program and PhD Candidate, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Australia and member of the Decolonising Design Group
  • Jeremy Wade, performance artist
  • Arkadi Zaides, independent choreographer