Event

A panel discussion with Kenneth Goldsmith (ubu.com), Emily Segal (K-HOLE), Aleksandra Wagner (The New School) and Brian Kuan Wood (e-flux), moderated by MA Curatorial Practice faculty member Chus Martinez, head of the Institute of Art of the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel. Presented by MA Curatorial Practice.

Martinez explains: “Too often confronted by words such as leadership or innovation, very seldom do we confront these notions with the social, institutional, and aesthetic imaginations they imply. If a decade ago the discourse was dominated by notions related to geo-politics and how post-colonial power entanglements were the drivers of neo-liberalism’s global social order, now the territorial metaphor has been replaced by a new individuated will-to-power. The future is being presented as composed by ‘forces’ not concentrated in ‘regions,’ but in the morphological individualism of networks and their actors. And so a new dominance of feelings has taken over our cultural and political arenas, demanding from us not ‘action,’ as in the late 1960s on, but ‘engagement.’

“And what, if not art, can provide today a reflection on feelings and how they affect and configure the way we are able to see the world? Living in a time capable of the greatest unreality, could we not claim we also need a new sense of innocence to reconsider our social and also cultural contract? A controversial notion, innocence implies a specified ignorance that may play a very productive role in the definition of new cultural structures.

“This is a first attempt, together with artists and thinkers, to grasp the importance of performing this feeling—innocence—inside the systems of knowledge in order to regain a narrative concerning the way art traces a path we can follow.”

Kenneth Goldsmith is a poet living in New York City. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb (ubu.com) and teaches poetry and poetic practice at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2013 he was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of The Museum of Modern Art.

Emily Segal is an artist and brand consultant based in New York and the creative director at Genius. She co-founded K-HOLE, the trend forecasting group and art collective, which is responsible for the ad campaign for the New Museum’s 2015 Triennial “Surround Audience.” She has lectured on branding and consumer culture at the DLD conference, MoMA/PS1, Serpentine Gallery, and TEDxVaduz, among others.

Aleksandra Wagneris an associate professor of sociology at the New School, where she currently teaches Sociology of Forgiveness and Social Dimensions of Shame. She is a licensed psychoanalyst and member of The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis.

Brian Kuan Wood is a writer and editor based in New York. In 2008 he initiated e-flux journal with Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda. His writing has appeared in Bidoun, CAD Interviu, Paletten, e-flux journal, and various artist-initiated platforms and publications.