Assembly of Practice #3: Whose institution?

In an encounter with the practices of the different engaged institutions in the project (Kunsthal Gent, Jester, a.pass and BUDA) Emptor explores how ownership plays out within their functioning and affects who has access, what is shown and how we valorise art.

After 'What does it mean to own?' and 'Whose Artwork?', Kunsthal hosts and participates in a third Assembly of Practice, a closed collective reflection on the question 'Whose institution?'.

In an encounter with the practices of the different engaged institutions in the project (Kunsthal Gent, Jester, a.pass and BUDA) Emptor explores how ownership plays out within their functioning and affects who has access, what is shown and how we valorise art.

Reflections also situate themselves on site in dialogue with Grace Ndiritu on the development trajectory Ghent: how to live together? and in time by responding to what happened at Documenta #15 / 'Lumbung 1'.

If we are the institution of art, what kind of institution are we? What kind of values do we institutionalize? What forms of practice do we reward? And to what kind of rewards do we aspire?

In an attempt to publish and perform the ongoing reflection we welcome the public for a shared moment:
16h30-17h30: Vijai Patchineelam, Adrijana Gvozdenović and Pia Louwerens. Book presentation The Artist Job Description, for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution
17h30-19h: food and discussions
19h: screening The Stranger of Collegno, Maïder Fortuné

Afterwards you're invited to join us to Radiator, a group exhibition at 019 (Ghent) with Jubilee associate artists Clémentine Vaultier and Ciel Grommen & Maximiliaan Royakkers

Biographies

Hanne Cottyn
Hanne Cottyn is research associate at the University of York. As a social historian she’s specialising in the study of land conflicts and rural transformations in the Andean region and is currently extending her expertise to Colombia. Her research interests are situated on the crossroads of rural history, critical global studies, and political ecology. Together with Raphaël Verbuyst (UGhent) she closely followed and wrote about Grace Ndiritu’s project Ghent: how to live together?.

Grace Ndiritu
Grace Ndiritu is a British-Kenyan artist whose artworks are concerned with the transformation of our contemporary world.
Ndiritu firmly believes 'healing' is a type of institutional critique. Currently, she is testing her hypothesis out further through an invitation by SMAK, Ghent to be their artist in residence for one year, as the institution works towards building a new museum in 2030. Last year she worked at Kunsthal in the framework of her development trajectory 'Ghent: how to live together?' examining how the site of the former Caermersklooster, where the interests of the different people and institutions who use or own the site are in conflict, can serve as a model for the practice of commoning.

Vijai Patchineelam (with collaborators Pia Louwerens and Adrijana Gvozdenović)
Vijai Maia Patchineelam’s artistic practice focuses on dialogue between the artist and the art institutions. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Vijai’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists—one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. Pia Louwerens works with spoken-word performances in which she performs an unreliable subject intra-acting with its institutional framework. Her book I'm Not Sad, The World Is Sad is an autotheoretical, semi-fictional account of a performance artist who lands a part-time job as an Embedded Artistic Researcher in an art institution.
Adrijana Gvozdenović employs artistic methods to create ambiguous distinctions between practice and theory, theory and confession, documentation and production, artistic and curatorial, oral exchange and artistic form.

Maïder Fortuné
Maïder Fortuné studied literature and theatre before entering Le Fresnoy National Studio for Contemporary Arts, where she developed a performance-related practice of the technological image. With a persistent formal rigor, Fortuné’s work commands all the viewer’s attention for a genuine experience of the image and its processes. Recently, her practice turned to more narrative preoccupations. Lecture performances and films deeply rooted in writing are the mediums she processes to open up new narrative strategies.

Danielle Van Zuijlen/Kunsthal
Danielle van Zuijlen is a cura­tor and advi­sor – or rather, a spar­ring part­ner for artists and orga­ni­sa­ti­ons, with a love for ini­ti­a­ting new artis­tic plat­forms. In 2018 she co-ini­ti­a­ted Kunsthal Gent, whe­re she is cur­rent­ly res­pon­si­ble for the coo­r­di­na­ti­on of the artis­tic pro­gram­me and for run­ning the Development pro­gram­me ('permanently practicing') For stu­dio orga­ni­sa­ti­on NUCLEO she recent­ly devel­o­ped an artist sup­port poli­cy and pro­gram­me. Her wide inte­rests inclu­de artis­tic devel­op­ment and streng­the­ning the posi­ti­on of the artist, public pro­gram­ming, horizontal/​collaborative atti­tu­des and new insti­tu­ti­o­nal models, and artis­tic stra­te­gies for the public domain.

Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg/Jester
Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg currently leads Jester, the amalgamation of FLACC and CIAP, which inhabits the territory of C-mine Genk. With improv acting as guideline for the organissation Gouwenberg has no clear-cut plan or fixed outcomes in mind. However, Jester's vision does start from three points: working, living and sharing. Taking from her former experience Deltaworkers, an international multidisciplinary residency program in New Orleans, Gouwen aims to start from practice with artists and let it happen.

Kristien Vandenbrande/a.pass
An ongoing interest in the (im)materiality, the image and performativity of writing has led Kristien Van den Brande to work in between the disciplines of urbanism, literature, performance, art criticism and expanded publishing. She alternates between writing, editing and web design, curating, performing, dramaturgy and mentoring at a.pass.

Reading rooms (in preparation of the assembly)
Reading Room #25: Lumbung
texts from the Handbook that accompanies Documenta 15/Lumbung 1 (2022)

Reading Room #24: To an Institution of Critique
'From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique' by Andrea Fraser (2005)