Rethinking Spectacle

Rethinking Spectacle, Tate Modern, March 2007, co-organised with Mark Godfrey. (webcast)
This symposium aimed to address recent claims that contemporary art is 'spectacularised' and increasingly inseparable from the marketing of large-scale museums. But what do we really mean by 'spectacle' today? And how useful are Guy Debord's ideas (Society of the Spectacle, 1967) for analysing new conditions of the display of contemporary art? Organised to mark the end of Carsten Höller's Test Site (2006) in the Turbine Hall, the symposium sought to question whether this work is really comparable to other forms of mass entertainment. Speakers included: Ina Blom (University of Oslo), Andrea Fraser (UCLA), Frances Morris (Tate Modern), and Sven Lütticken (Free University, Amsterdam).
My lecture was geared towards my undergraduate students at Warwick University, with whom I was producing the research website Rethinking Spectacle (link).

The Social Turn

'The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents', Artforum, February 2006 (online). This essay that questions the current tendency to judge socially-engaged art by 'ethical' humanist criteria, and argues, via a discussion of the recent writing of Jacques Ranciere, for a more integrated mode of analysis for this work. (pdf available here)

Installation Art

Installation Art: A Critical History (London: Tate, 2005). This book argues that installation art can be can be categorised by the type of experience that it structures for the viewing subject; it is also a critique of installation art and its claims to both ‘activate’ and ‘decentre’ the viewer.

Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October, no. 110, Autumn 2004, is a critique of Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics (1998) and its claims to be a political and emancipatory mode of artistic practice.

Double Agent

Double Agent, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (+ tour), co-curated with Mark Sladen, 2008. Publication 2009. weblink
A group exhibition that took its lead from recent changes in performance art, in which artists are no longer the central performer in their work, but hire, persuade or collaborate with other people. The final show contained works in a variety of media, including video, photography, ceramics, installation and live performance. The artists shown were Pawel Althamer, Phil Collins, Dora García, Christoph Schlingensief, Barbara Visser, Donelle Woolford and Artur Zmijewski.

1968/1989

1968/1989, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, June 2008, co-organised with Joanna Mytkowska. Publication forthcoming (Summer 2009). weblink
This conference aimed to investigate the relationship between political change and artistic innovation in Eastern Europe during two transformative moments of political upheaval. How did local political contexts give rise to specific artistic innovations? How does the overlap between political form and artistic form make itself visible? Is it true to assume that 1968 was more important for Western Europe, and 1989 for Eastern Europe, or can we nuance this claim?

Directed Reality

'Directed Reality: From Live Installation to Constructed Situations', Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, November 2007. (webcast) This is an early version of the Double Agent catalogue essay.