[artinfo] Least Common Multiples: opportunism and pragmatism in contemporary art production, October 3rd.

[Societe Realiste]

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).

--- PROGRAM ---

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.

---

for more information, please write to 
<mailto:intelligence at societerealiste.net>intelligence at societerealiste.net

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