Small- and medium- scale art organisations play an essential catalytic and progressive role in the field of contemporary art as producers, distributors and channels of support and it is this position we often try to emphasise to our public and supporters. From this starting point, and taking the opportunity of the Circular Facts collaboration, this gathering investigates the role of these types of organisations in their local scenes, the networks of collaborations in which they affiliate themselves, and how they define their mandates in relation to artistic practices.

Programme

Friday May 6

6pm – Introducing Circular Facts

7pm – “A SHORT STORY BASED ON A DISTANT MEMORY WITH A LONG MUSICAL INTERLUDE” by Hassan Khan (artist, Cairo)
A performance with multiple starting points: a suspenseful short story written in pulp literary Arabic for a cancelled exhibition; the ongoing attempt to discover the work; the direct and abstract power of music; childhood memories; the driving anger the artist depends upon when writing; and the elusive search for a simplicity that remains complex.

Saturday May 7

11am – “Assembly (Circular Facts)” by Agency (artist, Brussels)
Agency will call Thing 000884 (Catalogue of the Private Library of the Late Dr. I. T. Talbot of Boston) forth from the list. Thing 000884 concerns a 1912 controversy around an auction catalogue that reprinted letters written by Mary Baker G. Eddy to her cousin.

12pm – Break

1pm – Session One: How to work?
This session will focus on how artistic practices inform institutional methodologies and structures.
The session will begin with a ten-minute presentation from each of the participants situating their practice in relation to the panel’s specific topic.

Participants: Norma Jeane (artist), Natasa Petresin (Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris) and Francis McKee (Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow)
Moderator: Mai Abu ElDahab (Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp)

3pm – Break

3.30pm – Session Two: Who are we working with?
This session will look informal communities and the building of institutional affinities based on common goals rather than structured networks. The session will begin with a ten-minute presentation from each of the participants situating their practice in relation to the panel’s specific topic.

Participants: Frederique Bergholtz (If I Can’t Dance…, Amsterdam), David Reinfurt (Dexter Sinister, New York) and Mia Jankowicz (Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo)
Moderator: Binna Choi (Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht)

5.30pm – Break

6pm – “All Cats are Grey in the Dark” an event by Norma Jeane (artist)
Rationality is a weak tool when not sustained by a variety of physical and emotional information. Norma Jeane’s intervention takes the shape of a sensual invitation to dive deep into the very matter of things. Guests are invited to a diverse, colourless and unidentified aperitif. Each guest’s satisfaction and eventual inebriation will be fulfilled on the condition of letting themselves go at the risk of a full experience – and perhaps gaining insight into the complex web of relations and dynamics that constitute the art world.

Sunday May 8

11am – Session Three: What we do?
The session will look at possibilities of defining the authorial position of institutions, and the implications of this position of authority. The session will begin with a ten-minute presentation from each of the participants situating their practice in relation to the panel’s specific topic.

Participants: Dan Kidner (City Projects, London), Will Bradley (Kunsthalle Oslo) and Giovanni Carmine (Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen)
Moderator: Emily Pethick (The Showroom, London)

1pm – Break

2pm – “The weather, a building” a reading by Ruth Buchanan (artist, Berlin)
In her work, Ruth Buchanan seeks to address the condition of artistic agency today – both as a physical position and a material form – and does so by bringing various elements together in precisely choreographed spatial and temporal situations. “The weather, a building” continues this interest and explores the manifold ways in which we inhabit space.

3.30pm – The End