Collection Collective. In the Future All Our Homes Will Be Museums

Seminar at Kunsthalle Bratislava

Presentations by
Dave Beech, Valeria Graziano, Alenka Gregorič, Rado Ištok, Mira Keratová
followed by discussion with the artists and the curators of the exhibition
Collection Collective. Template for a Future Model of Representation

11 October 2017 at 5pm
venue: Kunsthalle KLUB, Nám. SNP 12, Bratislava

If museums are homes where artworks can be safely collected, deposited and valued, then perhaps unfair hierarchies of cultural consumption can be de-structured when all our homes become museums. The seminar aims to be generative both of the labour of imagining the possibility of such a future and of devising concrete strategies for appropriating it. To initiate these dual processes, the seminar will revisit a range of themes such as resource sharing as autonomous organisation; instituting and organizing – artists as institutions; art’s economic exceptionalism and cultural practices of decommodification, and the often neglected but lengthy work of decolonizing art collecting.

Dave Beech is Professor of Art at Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts. He is an artist in the collective Freee (with Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan). He is a founding co-editor of the journal Art and the Public Sphere and author of Art and Value (Brill 2015). He is currently writing two books, The Dictionarium of Art's Social Turn and Art and Labour.

Valeria Graziano is a cultural theorist, practitioner and educator whose research is principally focused on the invention of post-work imaginaries, micro-political practices and radical pedagogies. Currently a Research Fellow at Middlesex University, Valeria has previously collaborated with art organizations such as the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven) and MACBA (Barcelona), and with festivals including Impulse Theatre Festival (Dusseldorf) and Steirischer Herbst (Graz). She is a member of the Micropolitics Research Group (2006-present) with whom she is researching techniques developed within institutional analysis. Valeria is co-editor of the special issue of ephemera, theory & politics in organization on “Repair Matters”. 

Alenka Gregorič is an art historian, curator and writer. Since 2009 Alenka has been the artistic director and curator at City Art Gallery Ljubljana and CC Tobacco 001 (both part of Museum and galleries of Ljubljana). Previously (2003-2009) she worked as artistic director of Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, curating, organizing and co-ordinating the program activities. In 2009 she was curator of the Slovenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale and co-curator of 28. Graphic biennial Ljubljana. In 2011, she was co-curator (with Galit Eilat) of the 52.October salon in Belgrade and one of the curators for Curated by Vienna in 2014. The responsibility of those producing contemporary art and that of cultural institutions, as well as their role in contemporary society, is the focal point of her interests.

Rado Ištok is a curator and editor, and currently participates in a post-MA course Decolonizing Architecture at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Recent exhibitions include I’m fine, on my way home now at Allkonstrummet, Stockholm (2017), In the Sky When On the Floor (2016, with Iliane Kiefer) at the Gallery Mejan, Stockholm, and Finding Neverland (2015, with Tereza Jindrová) for the Entrance Gallery, Prague. Rado’s editorial work includes the e-publication Decolonising Archives (2016) for L’Internationale Online, Queer Scandinavia (2015) for A2, and the forthcoming publication of Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn Crating the World: Displaced Myths, Desires and Meanings (2017).

Mira Keratová is an art historian and curator at the Central Slovakian Gallery in Banská Bystrica. Her recent curatorial projects include the research project Working Memory (tranzit, Bratislava 2009–2015); Stano Filko, (…) IN – 5. 4. 3. D.  – (…) (Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples 2014) and the retrospective of Ľubomír Ďurček, Situational Models of Communication (SNG, Bratislava 2013). In 2015 Mira completed her PhD thesis on performative art of the 1960s and 1970s and its documentation (AFAD, Bratislava). She is also a freelance curator.

The project is realized by tranzit.sk in partnership with tranzit.ro/Bucureşti and Middlesex University London.

ERSTE Foundation is main partner of tranzit.

We thank Kunsthalle Bratislava for the collaboration and support. We also thank to Slovak National Gallery and Ivan Gallery for their collaboration and help.