Broadcasting the Archive è un progetto che ha come scopo principale la diffusione dell’archivio di Arte Útil, al di fuori dell’istituzione che ne custodisce i materiali. Il concetto di Arte Útil è stato sviluppato dall’artista cubana Tania Bruguera in collaborazione con i curatori, curatrici e ricercatrici del Queens Museum di New York e del Van Abbemuseum di Eindhoven, in Olanda. L’archivio è stato composto da Gemma Medina Estupiñan e Alessandra Saviotti, che hanno quindi iniziato a pensare a come diffondere le potenzialità di questo strumento anche al di fuori dell’ambito artistico. Il progetto è stato pensato specificatamente per attivare e ...

This group exhibition brings together artworks and objects to trace various transformations of meaning, reception, and use over time. The titular metaphor of the whale’s belly—a mythic space separated from lived reality—plays on the residual legacy of the white cube as an allegedly bracketed space of reflection, contemplation and perceptual or political transformation. Just as Jonah, who in the biblical account was swallowed by a whale, and perhaps the visitor, are transformed through isolated meditation, In the Belly of the Whale plays content against its framing to question both how an artifact references a given historical moment and how different modes ...

This issue of ONCURATING.org brings together a range of interviews and essays, inspired by the symposium, “Why Artists Curate,” held by the Kunstbüro der Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg in cooperation with Columbus Art Foundation in July 2011. The feedback from this conference prompted a discussion on authorship in contemporary art, from artists, curators and artist-curators. Walter Benjamin’s well known essay, The Author as Producer, outlines that artists became producers when they shifted their labour from an independent creator relent on conventional artistic apparatus, to an operative, in which the skills and accomplishments of the artists are transformed by the advanced technical content of ...

A controversial figure working in installation and performance, Cuban artist Tania Bruguera (born 1968) has consistently blurred the lines between art and activism. Defining herself as an initiator rather than an author, she often invites spectator participation and works in a collaborative mode, working with various organizations, institutions and individuals to challenge political and economic power structures and the control they hold over society. She researches and executes the ways in which art can be applied to everyday life, and how its effects can translate into political action. From offering Cubans one minute of uncensored time in Havana’s Plaza de ...

Shifter’s 20th issue, What We Can Knot draws from George Bernard Shaw’s quip “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.” In this issue we would like to parse out and challenge what we see to be Shaw’s false binary, and to explore the value of negotiation and collaboration as important elements both in the studio and in the classroom. To this end we have invited several individuals who are both artist and educator, to consider the active relation between art practice and teaching in their life. We have invited them to do this through a conversation or correspondence with ...