Life experience is always generated as the intersection between the personal rhythm of one’s life and the larger societal perspective. How do we position ourselves in time? How do we weave the historical moment into our life-narratives? From Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street – we are witnessing a worldwide desire for transition, but its direction is still open.This momentum belongs to the youngest generation of artists who will contribute to it with their work and shape it with the way they form fleeting communities. The network condition we live in, offers unprecedented possibilities to have simultaneous and multiple perspectives on events with social and historical significance. This implies a very different mode of historicizing, of writing down our memories. It is in this vortex of eventfulness we have to find ourselves again.
Monday March 12
WORLD QUESTION CENTER REDUX
In 1969 the artist James Lee Byars (1932-1997) collected a list of questions through conversations with 100 artists, scientists, philosophers, and other prominent thinkers and practitioners. His World Question Center became a critical document of his time. For Byars, the perfect thought takes the form of a question. He believed that answers and explanations are not the way forward. For the conference kick-off the Rietveld Academie’s World Question Center Redux will merge an artwork past, with questions from the present for the future. Connections are produced live on stage, with sweeping interventions by Koen Brams, Jonathan Dronsfield, Adjiedj Bakas, Sam de Groot and many others.
Tuesday March 13
THE RESEARCH ON/OF PROTEST
Curator Aneta Szyłak asks how artists are implicated in the condition of the academy. Hiwa K speaks about modifying the academy from within. Franco Berardi explains why we have to reinvent autonomy. Irit Rogoff explores the role of self-education in global resistance movements. Miguel Robles-Duran contributes insider knowledge on spatial organization and circulation of speech in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The day ends with an open rehearsal of the Chicago Boys While We Were Singing They Were Dreaming - 1970s revival band and research group on the neoliberal concept that shaped the reality questioned today.
Wednesday March 14
HOW WE BEHAVE
Curator Grant Watson explores Foucault’s proposition that life can resemble a work of art. Couldn’t everyone’s life become a work of art? David Dibosa introduces Foucault’s epistemology. Foucault’s Vanity Fair interview "How We Behave" by If I Can’t Dance I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Revolution with Snejanka Mihaylova, Adva Zakai and Veridiana Zurita. Adrian Rifkin talks about the aesthetics of being a Maoist, drawing on aspects of his own biography. AA Bronson will discuss Foucault’s concept folding together professional and biographical categories. Yael Davids develops with the audience, ideas about listening, recording and speaking.
Thursday March 15
EXTREME MAKEOVER
Curator Jorinde Seijdel asks why radical forms of makeover are imagined and practiced so abundantly today. What kind of new ‘forms of life’ are produced? And how do these appear with art and artists? Miya Yoshida points at the amateur; Anneke Smelik at the ideal of the hairless body. Boris Groys expands about the transformation of oneself into an image of universality, while Camiel van Winkel considers the white cube as the proper structure for a reinvention of the figure of the artist. Heath Bunting and his Identity Bureau challenge the idea of personhood all together.
Friday March 16
I TOLD YOU SO
Curator Alfredo Cramerotti asks what the relationship between gossip and the history books is. Or between a general election and eternity. In response Cathy Haynes explores the improbabilities of temporal cartography; Tai Shani presents 'registers' of representation and an over-identifying actress. Sally O’Reilly demonstrates the alien nature of historical speeches and Fay Nicolson digs up un-archived legacies of art education. The day ends with a final concert of the Chicago Boys While We Were Singing They Were Dreaming at the F.I.R.E.I.N.C.A.I.R.O. radio station (in the Rietveld Academie's Glass Pavilion).
All Week
SHADOW CABINETS
In between lectures and performances we invite you to the shady places of the Rietveld Academie. The shadow is the night during the day. The space where alternatives can be nurtured until they are ready to step into the light. Here you will find the Pirate Cinema for Historical Contextualization, the F.I.R.E.I.N.C.A.I.R.O. radio station with daily broadcasts from the Rietveld Academie's Glass Pavilion, a Soul Rebel Movement poetry-workshop, a The Living Rooms discussion, a 3 hour lecture on film title design by Albert Wulffers, a search into the Metaphysics of Youth with Aynouk Tan , We Are Neighbors (of the Rietveld Academie), ‘Chicago Boys While We Were Singing They Were Dreaming, a study group and 70´s revival band’, a Create Your Legal Identity -workshop by Heath Bunting, a World Question Transmission Center, and a Magic Mauss Hunt.
Organization
Framework & concept WE ARE THE TIME: Gabriëlle Schleijpen in collaboration with Alena Alexandrova and Aneta Szylak, Grant Watson, Jorinde Seijdel, and Alfredo Cramerotti.
Production: Jort van der Laan, Anna Hoetjes (WORLD QUESTION CENTER REDUX)
Framework & concept SHADOW CABINETS: Arnisa Zeqo, Laurie Cluitmans, Clare Butcher, Natasha Ginwala, Simon Ferdinando, Renee Ridgway, Taf Hassam and their respective student work groups
Production: Joris Lindhout
Communication design: Jakub Straka, Daiva Tubutyte
Location
Rietveld Academie
Fred Roeskestraat 96
1076ED Amsterdam
READ MORE & RESERVATIONS at www.wearethetime.info
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/wearethetime