[artinfo] Call for contributions: "Considering Monoculture" conference

[e-flux]

Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA)

"Considering Monoculture"
Conference
February 27-28, 2020

Submission deadline: November 18, 6pm

<https://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=116335&N=27282&L=181137&F=H>www.muhka.be
<https://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=116335&N=27282&L=174814&F=H>www.vanabbemuseum.nl
<https://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=116335&N=27282&L=182812&F=H>www.deburen.eu
<https://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=116335&N=27282&L=175197&F=H>www.internationaleonline.org

M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp), Van 
Abbemuseum (Eindhoven) and deBuren (the 
Dutch-Flemish house for culture and debate) are 
seeking proposals for its forthcoming two-day 
conference "Considering Monoculture". Taking 
place at deBuren in Brussels, it will combine a 
lecture by political theorist Chantal Mouffe with 
papers, performances, presentations and 
discussion.

The aim of this two-day interdisciplinary 
programme is an urge to explore the current 
trends towards monoculture and its implications 
for art, culture and its institutions. Over the 
past few years, the combination of 
anti-globalisation sentiment, conflict, terror, 
mass-migration and the perceived counter-hegemony 
of identity politics, has created a perfect storm 
for new militant forms of identitarianism to 
emerge. Across Europe and much of the globe, a 
drive for national monoculture, in which 
societies are understood through adhering to 
homogenous racial, cultural, ideological or 
religious parameters, has entered the mainstream. 
Precedents for such positions, in the guise of 
20th century fascism in Europe, are alarming. For 
the cultural field, long considered as having a 
secular, elitist and socially-liberal basis, it 
is no longer enough simply to denounce the creep 
towards monoculture as an abhorrent form of 
neo-fascism. At the same time, the recent turn 
towards indigenous practices within contemporary 
art discourse, as well as the framings of art via 
race, ethnicity or other distinctions of identity 
or marginality, whether implicit or explicit, 
could itself be seen as contributing towards new 
forms of essentialism and reinforcing 
monocultural tendencies.

It therefore feels timely that we consider 
carefully different manifestations and 
implications of monoculture, keeping an open mind 
on its motivations and potential as well as its 
dangers. The programme seeks to explore the 
concept, and its possible alternatives from 
multiple perspectives, looking to the fields of 
art, philosophy, linguistics and politics. How 
real, it will ask, is the supposed essentialism 
of monoculture, and what might we identify as the 
positive qualities of its self-image? Might even 
historic emancipation movements such as Négritude 
be considered as monocultural? Given, the 
supposed "failure" of different forms of 
multicultural projects, many of which were born 
in the 1990s, that has been proclaimed across the 
political spectrum, what possible alternatives 
might serve us for the future? Is now the time to 
think more speculatively about concepts such as 
multiculture or pluriculture as options for being 
and living together? What are the ramifications 
of the turn towards monoculture for existing 
forms of democratic politics? Finally, the 
programme will ask how specific artistic and 
institutional practices can help us understand 
the position of the arts within these debates.

Organisers: Nick Aikens (Van Abbemuseum), Nav Haq 
(M HKA) and Nora Mahammed (deBuren).

Organised in the framework of "Our Many Europes", 
a four-year EU funded programme organised by the 
museum confederation L'Internationale.

Structure:
"Considering Monoculture" will take place in 
Brussels at deBuren, and will be structured over 
two days. It will include a lecture by Chantal 
Mouffe, three panels and a series of artistic 
presentations.

Submissions:
We invite proposals from artists, academics and 
curators in the form of written papers, 
performances, screenings or presentations to 
"Considering Monoculture".

Please submit proposals by email as a single Word 
document, comprising an abstract (max 500 words) 
and a short biography (300 words). Proposals 
should be sent to: 
<mailto:opencall at vanabbe.nl>opencall at vanabbe.nl 
using the subject header "Considering 
Monoculture".

Submit proposal by: November 18, 2019, 6pm CET
Successful applicants will be notified by: December 20, 2019
If you have any queries, please contact either 
<mailto:n.aikens at vanabbe.nl>n.aikens at vanabbe.nl 
or <mailto:nav.haq at muhka.be>nav.haq at muhka.be

The submissions will be assessed by:
Nick Aikens (Research Curator, Van Abbemuseum)
Pascal Gielen (Professor Cultural Sociology, ARIA 
- Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts)
Nav Haq (Associate Director, M HKA)
Nora Mahammed (Programmer, deBuren)
Yolande van der Heide (Deputy Director, Casco Art 
Institute: Working for the Commons)

About the L'Internationale Confederation:
L'Internationale is a confederation of seven 
modern and contemporary art institutions. 
L'Internationale proposes a space for art within 
a non-hierarchical and decentralised 
internationalism, based on the values of 
difference and horizontal exchange among a 
constellation of cultural agents, locally rooted 
and globally connected. It brings together seven 
major European art institutions: Moderna galerija 
(MG+MSUM, Ljubljana, Slovenia); Museo Nacional 
Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS, Madrid, 
Spain); Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona 
(MACBA, Barcelona, Spain); Muzeum Sztuki 
Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, (MSN, Warsaw, Poland); 
Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M HKA, 
Antwerp, Belgium); SALT (Istanbul and Ankara, 
Turkey) and Van Abbemuseum (VAM, Eindhoven, the 
Netherlands).

About "Our Many Europes"
"Our Many Europes" is a four-year programme 
(2018-22) comprising exhibitions, public 
programming, heritage exchange and institutional 
experimentation across the Internationale 
confederation. The programme takes the 1990s as a 
starting point when our current Europe was born. 
It aims to think speculatively about the role of 
culture as a driving force in showing who and how 
we are in the world.