#56: Take a lunch break.|#120: The new type of art institute cannot merely be an art museum as it has been until now, but no museum at all. The new type will be more like a power station, a producer of new energy.|#59: Always protect the floor when painting (or pouring concrete)|#5: Kunsthal Gent is a city where different identities collide in an ongoing exhibition without end date. New exhibitions are always a new layer in this ongoing story.|#91: Embrace doubt.|#4: Pay what you can.|#23: That’s a very interesting piece, but how would it behave in a pizza joint?|#37: Operate with radical transparency.|#39: Be the early stepping stone in an artist’s career|#58: Kunsthal Gent is a monument. If you plan to drill a hole, contact Tomas first.|#65: No excuses: Thursday morning, team meeting.|#70: Have the office space inside the exhibition space, it reminds of you what you are doing.|#111: Do it together.|#124: Do less, do it better.|#112: Spaces today don’t need to be curated, but occupied.|#47: Artists need to be supported more than ever in the development of their practice due to the gaps that have been created in the field of fine art|#119: Be a space of production.|#14: Can you also remain a toddler institution?|#28: Make Contracts.|#20: Are exhibitions the most suitable form for the art that we present?|#92: We’re a learning organisation.|#137: Use the publication as programming space|#68: Once in a while we need to get out of utopia and get something done.|#107: Build a community / scene.|#84: The White Cube is a lie.|#56: Take a lunch break.|#120: The new type of art institute cannot merely be an art museum as it has been until now, but no museum at all. The new type will be more like a power station, a producer of new energy.|#59: Always protect the floor when painting (or pouring concrete)|#5: Kunsthal Gent is a city where different identities collide in an ongoing exhibition without end date. New exhibitions are always a new layer in this ongoing story.|#91: Embrace doubt.|#4: Pay what you can.|#23: That’s a very interesting piece, but how would it behave in a pizza joint?|#37: Operate with radical transparency.|#39: Be the early stepping stone in an artist’s career|#58: Kunsthal Gent is a monument. If you plan to drill a hole, contact Tomas first.|#65: No excuses: Thursday morning, team meeting.|#70: Have the office space inside the exhibition space, it reminds of you what you are doing.|#111: Do it together.|#124: Do less, do it better.|#112: Spaces today don’t need to be curated, but occupied.|#47: Artists need to be supported more than ever in the development of their practice due to the gaps that have been created in the field of fine art|#119: Be a space of production.|#14: Can you also remain a toddler institution?|#28: Make Contracts.|#20: Are exhibitions the most suitable form for the art that we present?|#92: We’re a learning organisation.|#137: Use the publication as programming space|#68: Once in a while we need to get out of utopia and get something done.|#107: Build a community / scene.|#84: The White Cube is a lie.|
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11.12.2020 20:00

Online reading group / dinner

Pay what you can

Syllabus Reading Group #6:
Hope In The Dark

Friday, 11 December 2020, 20.00 - 21.30 Brussels time

Join us online for an informal reading group dinner, marking year one of the Syllabus reading group. We will read text fragments by Rebecca Solnit, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Silvia Federici - and we invite you to bring a text or a poem that reminds us poetry can be a political act. Of course you can also just join and listen in. Don’t forget to serve yourself with food and drinks. Welcome!

In her recent lecture in Ghent, Silvia Federici reminded us of the necessity to ‘reconnect with those who struggled before us’, to reconnect with the body, with nature, with history. Therefore, while sharing a dinner, we will start the night with a fragment from Rebecca Solnit’s essay Hope in the Dark. Through ‘untold histories’ of protesters, writers and workers from the mid 20th century to the present, Solnit looks back at the past and argues that hope is a catalyst for action. Connecting political action to poetics, she ends the essay with the metaphor of rowing:

“You row forward looking back, and telling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant for our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future.”

PRACTICAL

The reading group takes place online via ZOOM. REGISTER HERE and the zoom link will be sent via e-mail. Contact: danielle@kunsthal.gent


BACKGROUND

The Syllabus Reading Group is organized by Kunsthal Gent around the work 'Syllabus' by the Irish artist Jesse Jones: a monumental curtain with the left arm of Silvia Federici, creating a space for (activist) gathering. In collaboration with Jesse Jones, Carla Besora, Elien Ronse and Sigrid Vertommen.

Silvia Federici is a feminist, writer, teacher, and activist. Her research and political organizing accompany a long list of publications on philosophy and feminist theory, women’s history, education, culture, international politics, and the worldwide struggle against capitalist globalisation and for a feminist reconstruction of the commons.

Jesse Jones is a Dublin-based artist and teaches visual arts at the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts. Her practice crosses the media of film, performance and installation. She often works in collaborative structures and investigates how historical examples of shared culture can play a role in our current social and political experiences.

Until the summer of 2020, Carla Besora organised Other Women’s Flowers: a beehive, a book-club and an artistic playground. It was born out of the wish to share, discover and discuss the written work of women, and to do so in a celebratory, playful way. Our dinner gatherings are a moment to share literary enthusiasm, debate contemporary challenges and rethink solidarity, one book at a time. Everyone is welcome to join the gatherings.

Sigrid Vertommen is conducting postdoctoral research on the political economy of global fertility chains at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at Ghent University. She is particularly interested in understanding women's role and participation in the bio-economy as egg vendors and surrogates through the lens of reproductive labour.

Syllabus: In January 2020, Jesse Jones’ work Syllabus opened in Kunsthal Gent: a monumental curtain that when pulled, fills the space with an image of Silvia Federici’s left arm. As agreed in a contract signed on the opening, the work is to stay in the exhibition space for 5 years, on the condition that Kunsthal Gent will host a monthly reading group or related event inside the circle that is created by the work. The contract foresees that ‘Events may be postponed where necessary due to unforeseen circumstances including, but not limited to, acts of God or enemy, earthquake, fire, or flood, riot, war or civil commotion, trials, examinations, pestilence, epidemic or accusations of demonic possession.’ A facsimile of the contract is available from Kunsthal Gent.

Image: Jesse Jones, Syllabus

MDC KH jessejones 017 HR

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