[artinfo] THE ASSAULT ON CULTURE

[by way of Janos Sugar]

Sunday 3rd August, Publish And Be Damned Fair, London, E2

THE ASSAULT ON CULTURE: A Mute Magazine talk on privatisation and critical
artistic practice

Does private-public funding and management of culture mark the death of
institutional and critical autonomy? And is direct censorship an anomaly,
the most visible form of a wider constriction of cultural freedom, or the
shape of cultural policy to come?

Mute has invited a range of practitioners along to discuss the perils and
opportunities for critical cultural activity in neoliberalising institutions:

Leigh French, co-editor of Variant magazine and contributor Rebecca
Gordon-Nesbitt will discuss the recent censorship of Variant by Culture
and Sport Glasgow, the new private charitable trust that runs the city's
arts and leisure. They will be joined by Richard Birkett, assistant
curator of the ICA's current Nought to Sixty programme and David Garcia,
'tactical media' theorist and Dean of Chelsea College of Art and Design London.

The talk will raise some of the following questions:

Does commercialisation enhance or corrode 'critical' culture? Why does an
institutional turn to 'openness', collaborative and politicised art
practices coincide with privatisation? And how will capitalist crisis
impact on arts funding and cultural practice - a shift from radical
reformism to conservative reaction or revolutionary refusal?

Where: Upstairs at Publish And Be Damned self-publishing fair
Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, London E2.

When: 3-5pm, Sunday 3 August 2008.

Contact: anthony at metamute.org | http://metamute.org