In his two seminal lectures Foreigner Question and Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality, Jacques Derrida declared that to be hospitable it is first necessary that one must have the power to host. This means that guests can be under control: to the closing of boundaries, to nationalism, and even to the exclusion of particular groups. This is Derrida’s possible conception of hospitality, in which our best intended notions of hospitality render the ‘other others’.
Bridging theory and curatorial practice, this workshop aims to address the possibility for the international circulation of ideas in the art world, exploring how art practice and exhibition-making can be both complicit and resistant to facile notions of a ‘global’ art world.
The discussion will be informed through texts by Pierre Bourdieu, John Cheetham, Jacques Derrida, and Jens Kastner and will focus on the following questions: How can fungibility as a dominant value in the art world be critiqued through curatorial practice? What is the function and potential of critical cosmopolitanism in the art world? How can an exhibition critique the fact that the art world is not spontaneously international in that the circulation of ideas is often a result of nationalism and imperialism? Is the art world, as it exists today, still a projection of federal, regional, and municipal cultural policy founded on national and regional affiliations? Do curators function as gate-keepers or doormen who value global community over the dominant geo-political concerns?
This workshop is based off the concurrent exhibition of the same title curated by Maja Ciric, on view at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) starting June 15. The discussion will be led by Maja Ciric and moderated by Chelsea Haines, ICI’s Education & Public Programs Manager. For more information and to RSVP, contact Chelsea Haines at chelsea@curatorsintl.org.
