/The Autonomy Project Symposium

07.10.2011 /6:30 p.m.
Van Abbemuseum’s auditorium, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
organized by Charles Esche and Nikos Papastergiadis
Lecture

Photo credit ©Emilio Moreno

.  Access TANIA’S PRESENTATION

Autonomy Project Symposium

With contributions by a.o. Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Peter Osborne and Jacques Rancière. 

The Autonomy Project Symposium addresses the position of art in society today. The notion of autonomy, once designed to specify art’s place within society, has become a means of occluding its public relevance. This has become very clear when recently Dutch neoliberals and populists proposed large cuts on culture, arguing that art is primarily a private affair and has no real public function. The inability of the Dutch art world to mount an effective counter campaign has thereby made explicit the fact that the confusion   concerning the public nature of an autonomous art comes not only from without but also from within.

The symposium wishes to address the current situation through the work of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. He has been committed to describing the function of art’s autonomy within public life today. Through a mixture of lectures and workshops the symposium explores Rancière’s valuable contribution both from theoretical and practical perspectives.

Webcasting: Those who are unable to join the programme in the Van Abbemuseum can follow the auditorium lectures via the internet (stream.vanabbemuseum.nl). To follow events beyond the auditorium, it is necessary to be in the Van Abbemuseum.