Now is the time #3: Globalisation

Lectures by Julian Stallabrass & Hou Hanru

11 Nov 2008

Today’s world is being constantly redefined by the process of globalisation in politics, world economy, media and communication, as well as in the realm of culture and the visual arts. Curators, art critics and artists travel around the world non-stop. Nourished by art galleries and museums which operate internationally, as well as by numerous biennial and triennial exhibitions, an increasingly global art world has emerged.
What is the effect of these developments on art itself? Do increased mobility and intercultural exchange lead to a ‘global art vernacular’, a new mainstream in which differences in aesthetic appearance or thematic content have been reduced to a minimum, regardless of the geographical or cultural provenance of a work of art? Furthermore, what is the significance of global and local contexts, of such concepts as national and international, particularly in the curatorial lay-out of biennials where international artists are creating site-specific works? And what about critical counter-movements: can art provide an effective platform for these alternative voices?

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Now is the Time! -

With:
Julian Stallabrass, Hou Hanru, Margriet Schavemaker

Speakers

Julian Stallabrass (UK) is Reader in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. He is the author of Art Incorporated (2004), Internet Art: The Online Clash Between Culture and Commerce (2003); High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s (1999), and regularly writes for publications such as Tate Etc., Art Monthly and New Statesman.
Hou Hanru (CHN/US) is a curator and art critic, best known for exhibitions that critically engage with migration, urbanisation and modernisation in the era of globalisation, including Cities on the Move (travelling exhibition 1997-1999), Utopia Station (2003), Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, 2007) and The Trans(ient) City and Global Multitude (Luxembourg, 2007).

Moderator

Deborah Cherry (UK) is Chair of the Modern Art Department at the University of Amsterdam and editor of Art History magazine.

Now is the Time: Art and Theory in the 21st Century is a series of seven lecture evenings dedicated to seven themes that encircle the complex arena in which the arts of the new millennium are situated. Socially engaged themes like 9/11, globalisation and the turn to religion of our contemporary society are juxta­posed with subjects that are more directly related to art, such as the return of Romanticism, the primacy of design and the status of the artwork in what is referred to as ‘the postmedium condition’.

Now is the Time is a collaboration between:
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam,
University of Amsterdam, W139,
SMBA and METROPOLIS M

Location:
Oude Lutherse Kerk, Auditorium of the University of Amsterdam
Singel 411 (Corner Spui)
1012 WN Amsterdam

Lecture Hours:
8 p.m. – 10.30 p.m.
doors open at 7.30 p.m.

Go to the Now is the Time website for reservations