Conference – The Biennial Condition: On Contemporaneity and the Episodic

Organised by Liverpool Biennial and Aarhus University, in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University’s Exhibition Research Lab and International Curators Forum (ICF).

This conference gathers researchers, curators, artists and writers to explore the Biennial form as the site for the production of contemporaneity in art and exhibition making. How does the transnational Biennial format organise the world as an amalgamation of different cultures, operating episodically across times and places, in the dynamic relation between the local and the universal?

Friday October 7

15.00 – 16.00 Cains Brewery, Stanhope St, Liverpool L8 5XJ

Welcome by Sally Tallant, Director of Liverpool Biennial.

INTRODUCTION – On Simultaneity in the Episodic, with Francesco Manacorda and Raimundas Mala?auskas, Curatorial Faculty of Liverpool Biennial 2016.

The talk will explore the notion of simultaneity as opposed to linear narration as the grounding principle of the episodic structure of Liverpool Biennial 2016. They will expand on how the exhibition was designed using polyphony, multiverses, contingency, time travel and repetition as display mechanisms and narratological tools.

17.00 – 18.00 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA

Welcome and Introduction by Joasia Krysa, Curatorial Faculty of Liverpool Biennial 2016.

KEYNOTE – Biennials in the Contemporary Composition, Terry Smith, University of Pittsburgh and the European Graduate School. Introduced and moderated by Jacob Lund, Aarhus University.

18.00 – 19.00 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA

Drinks reception and launch of book series, The Contemporary Condition, published by Sternberg Press.

Saturday October 8

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee at LJMU, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA

11.00 – 12.30 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA

PANEL ONE – The Contemporary Condition: Key Concepts

Geoff Cox, Jacob Lund, Anne Kølbæk Iversen, Verina Gfader, Aarhus University. Introduced and moderated by Geoff Cox.

In a form that reflects the object of study of their research project The Contemporary Condition, speakers will introduce 12 key concepts: contemporary contemporary; chronophobia; random access memory; real-time; presentism; arrested movement; migration; algo-rhythm; pre-acceleration; iconomy; time stamp; loop.

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch Break

13.30 – 14.30 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA

KEYNOTE – Elmgreen & Dragset, Curators of the 15th Istanbul Biennial 2017. Introduced and moderated by Joasia Krysa.

15.00 – 16.30 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA

PANEL TWO – Biennialisation

Marina Fokidis, Head of Artistic Office, Documenta 14, Athens; Juliana Engberg, Artistic Director of European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017; Elise Atangana, Curator, Kampala Art Biennale 2016.

Introduced and moderated by Sally Tallant, Director of Liverpool Biennial.

The panel includes speakers who have been or who are involved in a diverse range of biennials and similar periodic exhibition events discuss the specific conditions of their production/reception to register their distinctive spatio-temporal characteristics.

16.30 – 17.00 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA

General discussion moderated by Geoff Cox, Joasia Krysa, Jacob Lund, Sally Tallant.

17.00 Close of conference.

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