“Both the production and the reception of art will be transformed if a work of art is to be considered as a common good rather than a good that supports acts of distinction and is connected to symbolic or economic capital accumulation. Actually, communing the arts will contribute to the blurring of boundaries that separate art’s production and reception. Artists-as-commoners and commoners-as-artists: creativity may possibly overspill the boundaries of art through communing.”

- Stavros Stavrides, “Emancipatory Commoning?,” part of the Common Conflict series (an offshoot of Commonist Aesthetics), Open! Platform for Art, Culture & the Public Domain, 2016

With only a couple of weeks left to visit our project exhibition We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning (WTM) we are delighted to announce that the finale in our WTM Commoning Forum Series takes up the subject “Commoning Aesthetics: Which Art, What For?” Having so far addressed commoning economy, art organizations, and governance this forum circles back to the fundamental questions of the WTM exhibition, as well as Casco and Open!’s joint essay series Commonist Aesthetics, asking: Could we take “commonism” as the contemporary afterlife of the idea of communism, after the party, after the proletariat as revolutionary subject, after the “statist” model of the revolution? If so, what of its aesthetics—pertaining to the world of the senses—within and beyond institutionally defined artistic practice?

We consider what “commoning aesthetics” means from the place of art (as institutionally defined), but also put the deliberation to other contexts, namely social movements and cultural space. To this end we invite Athens-based architect and theorist Stavros Stavrides and London-based art theorist and Dutch Art Institute faculty member Marina Vishmidt to expound on their contributions to Commonist Aesthetics through position statements on “which” art can be a site and tool for commoning and “how” that might work. Moderated by Commonist Aesthetics co-editor and theorist Sven Lütticken and Open! editor-in-chief Jorinde Seijdel.

Afterward we take a close look at how “museums” as canonizing institutions of art expand, diversify, or transform different kinds of aesthetics and familiar languages of art according to their social and political positions. With Tensta konsthall director Maria Lind, Van Abbemuseum curator and Museum of Art Útil (2013–2014) co-curator Annie Fletcher, and artist and writer Arseny Zhilyaev, who recently edited the volume Avant-Garde Museology (2015). Moderated by Casco’s Binna Choi and Steyn Bergs.

Following sessions please join us for WTM festivities in a dinner with our beloved fellow “commoners.” We extend a limited number of seats to the public, so please let us know ASAP if you would like to join!

On the day of the forum, come earlier and make your own time to read through and see the project exhibition We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning  open from 12:00 hrs. 

The forum starts at 14:00 hrs. Admission is free, but reservations are required for the forum by sending an e-mail to Steyn Bergs at steyn@cascoprojects.org, and for the festivities, to Ying Que at ying@cascoprojects.org.

*The forum will be live-streamed at this link and the recording will be available afterward!

Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory

Lange Nieuwstraat 7,
3512 PA Utrecht,
The Netherlands

www.cascoprojects.org