From November 2013 to March 2014 Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art is hosting The LCCA Evening School, a series of readings of art texts presented by art historian and curator Ieva Astahovska and philosopher Kārlis Vērpe.
The LCCA Evening School series is comprised of ten reading workshops and guest lectures by local and international professionals. Each reading workshop is focused on a specific subject or issue – institutionalism of art and its critique, post-colonialism, feminism, socio-political strategies in art etc. Each topic is explored by reading and discussing texts pertaining to art history, philosophy, anthropology and other fields, including essays by such renowned authors as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Claire Bishop, Lucy Lippard, Hans Belting, Boris Groys and others. The series is based on examining current contemporary art processes and texts with a view to strengthening the development of critical thinking and debate within the art environment of Latvia.
Curated by Ieva Astahovska and Kārlis Vērpe.
# 1 Contemporaneity and art
Texts:
• Alain Badiou, “Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art” // lacanian ink. Vol. 23, Spring 2004.
• Boris Groys, “Comrades of Time” // E-flux magazine, 2009.
• Terry Smith, “Agamben and Nancy on Contemporaneity and Art”, 2012.
# 2 Criticality and critical art
Texts:
• Jacques Ranciere, “Problems and Transformations in Critical Art” // Aesthetics and Its Discontents, 2009.
• Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967.
# 3 Appropriation strategies
The ‘recycling’ of images and pictures has been an important means of expression in contemporary art since 1980s, when it manifested the topical issues of so-called critical postmodernism (‘We are not in search of sources or origins, but of structures of signification’ – Douglas Crimp). It is still a widely employed strategy in art today; however, now the interests of this approach lie elsewhere. Artists today use existing works and materials to create active negotiations between various points of timespace. Art critic Jan Verwoert, who explores the relationship between contemporary art history and topical art, addresses this issue by proposing the use of the term ‘invocation’: post-1990s, artists have been living amidst multiple rotating historical axes
Texts:
• Jan Verwoert, “Apropos Appropriation: Why stealing images today feels different” // Art & Research. A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods, 2007.
• Nicolas Bourriaud. “The Use of Forms” // Postproduction, 2002.
# 4 Eastern Europe
Texts:
• Boris Groys, “Europe and Its Others” // Art Power, 2008.
• Igor Zabel, „We” and „Others” // Moscow Art Magazine N°22, 1998.
• Boris Buden, “Children of Post-Communism” // Radical Philosophy, 2010.
• Katherine Verdery, Sharad Chardi, “Thinking between the Posts: Postcolonialism, Postsocialism, and Ethnography after the Cold War” // Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2009.
# 5 Strategies of participation and socio-political art
Texts:
• Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents” // Artforum, Feb., 2006.
• Nilolā Burjo, Attiecību estētika, 2009.
• Maria Lind, “Complications; On Collaboration, Agency and Contemporary Art” // Participation, Documents in Contemporary Art, 2006.
# 6 Global art, postcolonialism
Texts:
• Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism. 2003.
# 7 Art and creative writing strategies
Texts:
• Della Pollock, “Performing Writing” // The Ends of Performance. Eds. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
• Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing. Columbia University Press, 2011.
# 8 Feminism
Texts:
• Lucy Lippard, “From the Center: Feminist Essays on Art, Get the Message?” // A Decade of Art for Social Change, 1984.
# 9 Art criticism versus aesthetics
Texts:
• James Elkins, “What Happened to Art Criticism?” // The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2009.