Our Literal Speed (symposium)

»OUR LITERAL SPEED« manifests the imperatives that materialize the theoretical and the pedagogical. No longer can we interpret forms of academic and artistic professionalism as neutral, abstract backgrounds to the aesthetic and performative. These activities have produced their own distinctive surfaces and materials: the »aesthetic« has become discursive and »discourse« has become aesthetic. Rather than a series of academic lectures, »OUR LITERAL SPEED« is imagined as a kind of »media pop opera« or a »pedagogical concept album,« implying fluid and/or jagged transitions among scholarly presentations, panel discussions, artist’s talks, performances, and an art exhibition within an academic conference. These emerging, hybrid forms demand a synthesis of collective activity (»OUR«), a self-reflexive examination of art history and its constitutive technologies (»LITERAL«), and an intense concern for the pace and texture of our movement through institutional mediation (»SPEED«). The project offers a temporary discursive laboratory in which artists and curators, art historians and media theorists can investigate non-formulaic, experientially vibrant and theoretically precise responses to the modes of distribution, consumption and circulation that drive contemporary art.

»OUR LITERAL SPEED« will be continued with further conference-events at the University of Chicago (2009), and at The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2010).

In cooperation with the University of Chicago and The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

With: Art & Language, Walter Benjamin, John Bock, Tania Bruguera & The Weather Underground, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Anthony Cokes, Darby English, Andrea Fraser, Rainer Ganahl, Boris Groys, Charles Harrison, Sharon Hayes, Christopher P. Heuer, Matthew Jesse Jackson, Jackson Pollock Bar, David Joselit, Juliet Koss, Miwon Kwon, Porter McCray, WJT Mitchell, Hila Peleg, Andrew Perchuk, The Project for the New American Century, Tino Sehgal, The Size Queens, Anton Vidokle, Anne M. Wagner, Peter Weibel
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The conference will be held in English

Friday, February 29

6pm
Opening at the ZKM_Foyer

6:30pm
Jackson Pollock Bar: »Utopia Station 2003«

7:30pm
video screening
Hila Peleg: »A Crime Against Art«, 2007 (based on »The Trial«, Anton Vidokle & Tirdad Zolghadr, unitednationsplazastudios) With an introduction by Hila Peleg

Saturday, March 1

10am
On the 'Gesamtkunstwerk'
Juliet Koss: »Total Utopia«
Anthony Cokes & Andrew Perchuk: »Shrinking Criticism: Reframing 'pause Coda: (Hidden Track)' 2004«
Porter McCray: »MoMA and International Program«, produced by the Museum of American Art
Christopher P. Heuer & Matthew Jesse Jackson: »OUR LITERAL SPEED«

lunch break

1:30pm
Art & Language: »NOT QUITE THE BELACQUA POSE - A Talk in Three Voices«

panel discussion with Art & Language, Juliet Koss, Anthony Cokes, Porter McCray, Christopher P. Heuer and Matthew Jesse Jackson

3pm
Tino Sehgal & Peter Weibel: »A Conversation on the Relationship of 'Art and Economy'«

4pm
Performativity and the Political
Peter Weibel: »Performativity and the Political«
Tania Bruguera & The Weather Underground: »I do not want to see that at my Breakfast Table«
Julia Bryan-Wilson: »Sincerely Yours, Sharon Hayes«
Anton Vidokle: »On 'unitednationsplaza' and 'A Crime Against Art'«
Sharon Hayes: »Sound-Image«