ARCHIVE

Artistic
Research
Week 2021

Panel Discussion

Care is omnipresent, even through the effects of its absence. Like a longing emanating from the troubles of neglect, it passes within, across, throughout things. Its lack undoes, allows unraveling. To care can feel good; it can also feel awful. It can do good; it can oppress.

María Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters Of Care

In a moment of multiple crises across the globe, the old feminist topic of care acquires a new sense of urgency not only in social activism, but also in the matters of art and art-making. As a response to the crises in which certain forms of life and even bare life are no longer sustainable, care itself – as an umbrella term for social reproductionand maintenance, attachments to concerns, repair andhealing, listening, attentionand precision– is under fire. Thus, the crisis of sustainability and public life in a broad sense is bound up with the crisis of care. It might seem too sticky a knot of questions (who gives and receives care), approaches and positions (what care can be differentially, according to the unevenly spread precarity, need, and passion), to even start a conversation. Yet we would like to take this panel as an opportunity to untangle the knot along the following questions: How do we care for others beyond the neoliberal imperatives to take care of oneself? How do we care when we speak truth and when we position our speech in the public sphere? What does it mean to take care of, rather than only produce, what one makes, does and works with: art, theory, institution, technology, and public? What are the transpositions of care into artistic research which is itself pledged to the care of art, the care of research, and the care of third parties? These questions are on our list for an artistic conversation given to the care of listening.

In this conversation, hosted by Bojana Cvejić and Theo Barth, four more artists will take part: Mette Edvardsen, Bjørn Jørund Blikstad, Petrine Vinje and Linda Gathu (tbc).

Time needed: 90’