Summer Seminars for Art Curators, 6-th Edition
July 25–August 4, 2011
Yerevan, Armenia
Summer Seminars for Art Curators in Yerevan are run from 2006 by Armenian Association of Art Critics (NAAC). The program brings together practicing curators from former Soviet Republics, Eastern European and EU countries and the Middle East in a series of lectures, seminars and practical workshops that aim towards critical knowledge production, networking and cooperation. The program also seeks to research and develop alternative methods and models for contemporary art education in the respective contexts of partner institutions.
World of Art, School for Contemporary Arts actively shape the content and format of the Summer Seminars for Art Curators from the beginning, when World of art as unique in the wider region, based on years of experience in the field of education in contemporary art was invited to attend.
Among the invited lecturers and tutors are among the other Miško Šuvaković, theoretician, curator, artist and writer from Belgrade, Beatrice von Bismarck, curator and professor of art history and visual studies in Leipzig, Sarah Rifky, curator from Egypt, curatorial collective WHW from Zagreb, Bassem el Baroni, curator and writer from Alexandria and many others.
Saša Nabergoj, assistant director of SCCA-Ljubljana, and head of school World of Art,
will in a lecture try to defend the right to leisure in contemporary hyper-productive society. She will examine the 18th century, when our obsession with work and productivity began. The capitalist economic system was formed in the Enlightenment, and within this system rational discourse on work and economy emerged. At the same time, however, an alternative discourse celebrating laziness was established. In this discourse lie the roots of resistance to participation in a social project based on the work ethic, and the beginning of scepticism about the belief that productivity and the production of goods are the ultimate goals in life. The generally accepted circle of supply and demand fuelling the consumer society of the 21st century will be questioned with reference to artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Marcel Duchamp and Mladen Stilinović. Laziness will be presented as an alternative which can turn the need for (multi)production into freedom for production.
SUMMER SEMINARS FOR ART CURATORS, PROGRAM
Summer Seminars for Art Curators in Yerevan are the result of collaboration of Armenian Association of Art Critics (NAAC) with SCCA-Ljubljana, Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Almatyja (Kazakhstan) and BM Contemporary Art Centre, Istanbul.