Workshop

REALTY:
Ethics as Authorship –
A Preliminary Study of Institutional Power Structures

Dates

Tue, 18.12.18

Time

10:00

Venue

KW Studio

A workshop with Penny Rafferty

In 2018 we assume ethical conduct in the arts should come as naturally as breathing. But at closer inspection, our ethical powerhouses seem more like a new breed of stratified value systems than anything else. At this point, a new battle is been waged that goes beyond tastemaking. A struggle over competing notions of agency and autonomy, and of gender, race, subcultural currency, dirty money and other dark spots.

Is the art world ready to derail its elite foundations in favour of genuine autonomy, or some other moral horizon? Or would this exercise, even in the best case, be just another new facade on an old building… More

In this workshop, we ask how an institution can maintain a sense of ethics, but also what „Ethical Authorship“ might possibly mean, beyond artwashing. It will act as an open table for horizontal discussions and potential future plans as a working group. The event is preceded by KW discussions along comparable premises, with urban sociologist Friederike Landau and with artists Daniela Brahm & Les Schliesser (ExRotaprint).

Penny Rafferty is a writer and visual theorist based in Berlin. Her theoretical essays and creative texts have been commissioned for Cura, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Keen on, taz.de, NRW Dusseldorf, Status Effect, Websafe2k16 and The Internet is Present amongst others.

Part of project: REALTY

The project REALTY focused on the role of contemporary art in recent histories of gentrification. These days, it seems one artist, one venue, one model after another is being unmasked as being part of the problem. But we will not be discussing art’s shortcomings yet again. Instead, REALTY asked how art’s international playing field can be put to better use. It insisted on moving beyond critique, and towards an attempt at productive models, however vague or naive. The KW leg of REALTY kicked off in October 2017, with a series of public lectures, workshops, and screenings. The project was conceived by Tirdad Zolghadr, KW’s Associate Curator, and commissioned by KW and Sommerakademie Paul Klee Bern.

Curator: Tirdad Zolghadr
Curatorial Assistance: Sabrina Herrmann

REALTY was funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin.