[artinfo] Academy of the Arts of the World

[e-flux]

Ekaterina Degot elected Artistic Director

Elke Moltrecht appointed CEO 

Academy of the Arts of the World
Im Mediapark 7
50670 Cologne
Germany

<mailto:info at academycologne.org>info at academycologne.org

<http://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=116335&N=8573&L=9226&F=H>www.academycologne.org

The Academy of the Art of the World is a 
not-for-profit cultural organization initiated in 
2012 by the city of Cologne. It understands 
itself as a society of artists and scholars 
rather than as an educational institution in the 
traditional sense. Its members form an 
international network of cultural practitioners 
based in a variety of disciplines, intellectual 
backgrounds, and places, who interact virtually 
and convene locally on a biyearly basis with the 
goal of giving specific, critical meaning to the 
phrase "the arts of the world."

Based in Cologne, a city of migrants, the Academy 
seeks to move beyond euro-centrist doctrines of 
cultural history, while attending to the global 
conditions of post- and neo-colonialism, and 
avoiding the romance of multiculturalism, 
globalism, and identity politics. Facing a social 
and political environment deeply affected by the 
overwhelming logic of global finance and 
neoliberal force, the Academy enables and 
supports practices that address and challenge 
these very conditions. It supports processes of 
reflection, intervention, and collaboration that 
aim at a critical understanding and 
transformation of the conditions of contemporary 
cultural production. As a nomadic institution, 
the Academy initiates events and discussions at 
different locations in Cologne, and elsewhere. 

The Academy is pleased to announce that its 
members have elected Ekaterina Degot as the 
Artistic Director of the Academy of the Arts of 
the World for a two-year period. Ekaterina Degot 
is an art historian, writer, and curator. She 
teaches at the Rodchenko Moscow School of 
Photography and Multimedia. From 2008 to 2012, 
she was senior editor of the arts section of 
OpenSpace.ru, an independent culture portal. In 
2013 she curated (with David Riff) the 
internationally acclaimed first edition of the 
Bergen Assembly, a triennial in Norway. Degot 
lives and works in Moscow and Cologne. She has 
been a member of the Academy from its early 
beginnings; over the last three months she 
contributed as part of the interim artistic team, 
together with Academy members Tom Holert and Liza 
Lim. 

The Academy is also pleased to welcome Elke 
Moltrecht as its new CEO. Elke Moltrecht is a 
musicologist and co-founder of Bachhaus/Bosehaus 
Leipzig and Heinrich-Schütz-Haus Bad Köstritz. 
She was director of the Podewil - Center for 
Contemporary Arts and the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, 
both in Berlin. From 2008 to 2011 she served as 
Executive Director of the nationwide contemporary 
music network Musik 21 Niedersachsen, and of the 
Musik Sehen project of the Humboldt-Lab Dahlem, 
2012-2013. She is curator of international and 
interdisciplinary festivals and projects as well 
as annual programs, including contemporary music, 
sound art, electroacoustic and experimental 
electronic music, and club culture. She has 
published on experimental and new music and is a 
member of national and international juries and 
boards.