12 May—7:00 pm
Talks
The School of Redistribution, the first chapter of platform Future Climates founded by curators Antonia Alampi & iLiana Fokianaki is happy to announce the second part of its public program with two presentations by critic and curator Nato Thompson and artist Tania Bruguera.
Tania Bruguera – Arte Util
Arte Util roughly translates into English as ‘useful art’ but it goes further suggesting art as a tool or device. Arte Útil draws on artistic thinking to imagine, create and implement tactics that change how we act in society.
Whether through self-organised groups, individual initiatives or the rise of user generated content, people are developing new methods and social formations to deal with issues that were once the domain of the state. Arte Util case studies show how these initiatives are not isolated incidents, but part of a larger historical trajectory that is now shaping our contemporary world. For the past ten years the artist Bruguera has been teaching and researching Arte Util through an academy in Havana; the Arte Útil lab at Queens Museum, residencies at Immigrant Movement International, New York and the Museum of Arte Útil, in the Old Building of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. The Arte Útil archive has been presented and activated through numerous workshops, exhibitions and seminars throughout the world organised by the Asociacion de Arte Util. Bruguera will be also presenting Instituto de Artivismo Hanna Arendt (INSTAR), a hub for civic literacy in Cuba.
TANIA BRUGUERA is an installation and performance artist whose works often expose the social effects of the power of political force. She participated in Documenta 11 and established the Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art) program at Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Her work has been shown in the 2015 Venice Biennale, at Tate Modern, London, Guggenheim and MoMA, New York, among others. Bruguera has recently opened the Hannah Arendt International Institute for Artivism, in Havana – a school, exhibition space and think thank for activist artists and Cubans. She lives and works in Havana, New York and Cambridge.