We’d love to hear your feedback on our lecture series via this short survey to help us understand what we’re doing well and what can be improved. The survey takes about 2 minutes to complete and all responses are anonymous.
Exchange: Reciprocity and institutional collaboration
Speakers: Nikos Papastergiadis and Laura Raicovich
ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
On the Museums of the Commons
Lecture by Nikos Papastergiadis
Museums of the Commons is a recent 2020 publication by Papastergiadis that examines L’Internationale, an ongoing confederation between six museums and contemporary art institutions in Europe. Chronicling the challenges faced by the museums, Papastergiadis goes on to situate their responses within the wider political and cultural context that is shaping the future of all contemporary art museums. Five key domains of research are explored within the book: the genealogy of the museum; the need for alternative models of trans- institutional governance; examples of innovation in the spaces of aesthetic production; experimentation in the forms of partnership and engagement with constituents; and finally, examination of the impact of a collaborative and collective regime of artistic practices. Museums of the Commons provides a multi- perspectival account of a trans-institutional and transnational collaboration.
Nikos Papastergiadis is Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures and Professor at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne and Visiting Professor in the School of Art, Design and Media, at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Chair of the International Advisory Board for the Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore. Co-chair of the Cultural Advisory Board for the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture, Melbourne. His current research focuses on the investigation of the historical transformation of contemporary art and cultural institutions by digital technology. His publications include Modernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012), Ambient Perspectives (2014), On Art and Friendship (2020), The Museums of the Commons (2020) as well as being the author of numerous essays which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the Biennales of Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul, Gwanju, Taipei, Lyon, Thessaloniki and Documenta 13.
On Interconnection, Culture, and Care
Lecture by Laura Raicovich
The activism of 2020 was a bright call for liberation. Indeed, this is the first moment in my lifetime when I feel there is truly an opportunity to make the radical change our society so desperately needs. Can it lead to an excising of the beliefs and behaviours that are poison to a culture that is killing itself by perpetrating such egregious harm? Can society recover from the delirium of individualism to recognize the fundamental interconnectivity of humanity? Can cultural spaces be undone and redone to accommodate and support this transformation, and even provide models for its manifestation in society at large? Through an examination of recent transnational events and their impact on perceptions of what is possible, I will consider how we might use cultural spaces as sites of societal transformation and civic life. Discussions of the myth of institutional neutrality as a gatekeeping device that supports the status quo, alongside unpacking protest and unionization efforts as acts of radical care, point to specific ideas and suggestions towards moving forward collectively and more equitably.
Laura Raicovich is a New York-based writer and curator who is completing a new book, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest (Verso 2021). She recently served as Interim Director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art; was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Bellagio Center; and was awarded the inaugural Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators at Hyperallergic. While Director of the Queens Museum from 2015 to 2018, Raicovich co-curated Mel Chin: All Over the Place (2018), a multi-borough survey of the artist’s work. She lectures internationally and in 2019-20 co-curated a seminar series titled Freedom of Speech: A Curriculum for Studies into Darkness at the New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics, from which she is co-editing an anthology of writings on the subject. She also is the author of At the Lightning Field (CHP 2017) and co-editor of Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (OR 2017).