Chapter Two: ASYMMETRY IN A PASSAGE

Pascal Gielen will speak in his lecture about what he calls a ‘flat wet world’. From the 1990s, we live increasingly in a flat wet world. The network society makes relationships and cultures horizontal, while the ruling neo-liberalization generates a hyper-relativism of cultural differences. Within the dictum of the number and the market, in the post-Fordist city cultures and creative commons are made liquid. What are the effects of these transformations on a macro-sociological level for artist and creative labor?

Entrance fee: €3,-
Spoken language: English

Pascal Gielen (1970) is Professor of Sociology of Art and Cultural Politics at the University of Groningen, and Director of the Research Centre Arts in Society. Additionally, Gielen is professor of the research group ‘Art Practice in Society’ at the Fontys School of the Arts in Tilburg. Gielen has written several books on contemporary art, cultural heritage and cultural politics. In his recent publications ‘Being an Artist in Post-Fordist Times’ (2009) and ‘The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude. Global Art, Memory and Post Fordism’ (2010) Gielen writes about how neoliberalization and capitalist production models have a grip on the global art world and cultural industries, and what this means for the work ethic of the artist.

Anna Tilroe (NL 1946) is an art critic and curator, and since 2010 Professor of Art and Culture at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. She was chief art critic for the Volkskrant from 1985 to 1994 and art critic for the NRC-Handelsblad from 1995 to 2007. Her writing has been published in numerous catalogues, national and international art journals, weeklies, and literary magazines, including De Revisor, Metropolis M, Parkett and Art in America. Tilroe has published several books, including ’Het Blinkende Stof’ (The Shiny Dust) (2001) and ’De Huid van de Kameleon’ (The Skin of the Chameleon) (1996). In the recently published pamphlet ’De Ja-Sprong – naar een nieuwe vitaliteit in de kunst’ (The Yes-Leap – Into a New Vitality in Art), (2010) she advocates for a new importance of art in society that cannot be measured solely in economic terms.

Three-part symposium as exhibition element
As part of by Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson’s Asymmetry solo exhibition at TENT is a three-part symposium. The symposium takes place in the exhibition space, decorated with bright red Wrong Furniture, and is set against a blinking neon background alternating the words ThE riGHt tO RighT and ThE riGHt tO WrOnG. The first symposium took place on February 9 and included the legal philosopher Nina Power. The third symposium takes place on April 17th.