Rencontre – The Creative Time Summit

Building on five successful Summits in New York City, Creative Time is collaborating with the Public Art Agency Sweden to bring this year’s Summit on art and social justice to Stockholm. The Vera List Center is serving as a local hub for screenings of the Summit and additional programming; including a special response panel crossing Summit themes with The New School conference DIGITAL LABOR: SWEATSHOPS, PICKET LINES, AND BARRICADES.
The Creative Time Summit is an annual forum for socially engaged artists and public intellectuals addressing the most pressing political, economic, environmental, and social issues of the time. Locating the conference in Stockholm focuses a regional spotlight on Europe, with panels addressing the rise of new nationalisms and shifting patterns of migration. These issues are situated in a wider discussion of public practice and art in the public sphere. What are the potentialities of creating, displaying, and performing art in the city? How can we inspire people beyond the appreciation of art to mobilize and engage communities to combat injustice? In what ways can the digital serve as an alternative to, or an extension of, the public sphere?

In addition to streaming the Summit events from Sweden, the Vera List Center provide s live programming with local artists and academics that responds to the Creative Time sections. Following the Summit panel « Art in the Age of Surveillance, » a special event at the intersection of the Summit and the concurrent conference Digital Labor: Sweatshops, Picket Lines, and Barricades brings together local artists and participants to expand on the discussion in Stockholm.

Every year, the Summit recognizes the achievement of one artist with the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. This year’s recipient, Amar Kanwar, discusses the intersection of crime, politics, human rights, and ecology in the context of his award-winning multimedia project The Sovereign Forest (2012- ). The presentation will summarize discussions with experts in various fields, culminating in actionable steps for achieving social justice. Following the streaming of the Prize section, local artists will convene to further discuss Kanwar’s work and how the proposed steps may be realized in other artistic practices.

Friday, November 14
Summit, Day 1
10:00 am-7:30 pm
66 W 12th Street, Room 510

10-10:30 am
Greeting + Introduction (video documentation)
Magdalena Malm, Nato Thompson, and Anne Pasternak

10:30-12:10 pm
Section 1: Nationalisms (video documentation)
Counter-movements against identification with the nation-state, particularly through lines of ethnic and racial identification, serve as a rallying cry across the international arena to combat the ever increasing presence of nationalism and xenophobia in Europe, as demonstrated by recent elections.
With Jonas Khemiri, Elisa Santos of Temporary Occupations, Propeller Group, Jonas Dahlberg, Tomas Rafa, and Jonas Staal

1:30-2 pm
Keynote (video documentation)
Saskia Sassen

2-3:40 pm
Section 2: Performing the City (video documentation)
Cities are active playgrounds for creatives, serving not only as a backdrop to public art, but as a source of both inspiration and opposition, as a site for artwork, and a stage for expression. The rich possibilities of the city – both physical and metaphorical – are under constant negotiation by artists. Like the city, the expressions of the artist and city relationship range from the grandiose to the quietly intimate.
With Andrea Phillips, Nuria Guell, Poste Restante, Nastio Mosquito, Myriam Lefkowitz, Jeremy Deller, and Nato Thompson

3:40-4:30 pm
Discussion: LIVE
Marisa Jahn, artist, writer, activist, and founder of Studio REV-
Gianni Jetzer, Curator at Large, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

5-6:25 pm
Section 3: Activating public Space (video documentation)
Public art today seeks not only to adorn, but also to move beyond aesthetics and activate civic engagement. Speakers in this section work with alternative modes of art production to redefine the role of culture in urban landscapes. Through their talks, they will tease out the ways in which underlying structures effect the possibilities of artistic production, how collaborations with state institutions change in moments of conflict, the fields in which a private foundation can act, and what role can art centers play in the development of local culture and politics beyond its own walls.
With Magdalena Malm, Nina Montmann, Joanna Warsza, Roberta Uno, and Maria Lind in conversation with Stockholm Kunsthalles

6:25-7:15 pm
Discussion: LIVE
Andrianna T. Campbell, PhD Candidate in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center
Andria Hickey, Associate Curator, Public Art Fund

7:15-7:30 pm
Closing Remarks (video documentation)

Saturday, November 15
Summit, Day 2
10:00 am-5:40 pm
Orozco Room, 66 West 12th Street

10:00-10:30
Keynote (video documentation)
Edi Rama

10:30-11:35
Prize Section (video documentation)
Amar Kanwar

11:35-12:25
Discussion: LIVE

1:15-1:30
Welcome (video documentation)
Laura Raicovich

1:30-2:50
Section 4: Art in the Age of Surveillance (video documentation)
In this section, we explore « the age of surveillance » and its impact today, particularly the recent revelations of NSA surveillance in the United States and the self-surveilling that has been woven into the global fabric of contemporary living. As private and public become deeply intertwined, their political and personal implications grow increasingly conflated.
With Birgitta Jonsdottir, Dora Garcia, Katia Samutsevich, Jill Magid, Metahaven, and Anders Thornbern

2:50-3:40
Discussion: LIVE
Carl DiSalvo, Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology
Christiane Paul, Associate Professor at the School of Media Studies, The New School, and Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Alessandra Renzi, Assistant Professor in Emergent Media for the Program in Media and Screen Studies and for the Department of Art + Design
Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, artist, founder of The Art Law Office
Elliot Vredenburg, artist
Moderated by Carin Kuoni

Presented in collaboration with Trebor Scholz and DIGITAL LABOR: SWEATSHOPS, PICKETLINES, AND BARRICADES.
The third in The New School’s Politics of Digital Culture Conference Series, #DL14 looks at the ways the arts and artists, activists and hacktivists, designers, labor organizers, theorists and workers are both challenging and implicated in current labor practices in the digital realm.

4:00-5:40
Section 5: Migrations (video documentation)
Migrants straddle the boundaries of nation states, directly under influence of the reality of international economics. These conditions paradoxically place them at both the center of global politics and on the periphery of international human rights. How are artists navigating and producing works at the heart of this paradox?

Presented by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics in partnership with Creative Time. Special thanks to Trebor Scholz for facilitating the collaboration with #DL14.

www.veralistcenter.org/engage/events/1932/creative-time-summit-x-digital-labor/