Ahali Conversations with Can Altay Can Altay

Renowned curator, and a trailblazer of “usefulness” in art, Alistair Hudson is the forthcoming Artistic & Scientific Chairman of ZKM (Center for Art & Media in Karlsruhe.

Alistair Hudson grabbed everybody’s attention when - with Adam Sutherland - he turned Grizedale Arts, an art institution in Northwest England’s Lake District, into a hotspot of artistic discussion and production between 2004 and 2015. A directorship followed, at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. There he developed the idea of the useful museum, opening up questions on how the museum ‘can be used’ otherwise; simultaneously reflecting on a wide collection as well as new commissions and projects. In collaboration with the artist Tania Bruguera the Van Abbemuseum and Queens Museum, he got involved in the exhibition "Museum of Arte Util", later undertaking the role of co-directorship of the Association de Arte Útil that resulted from the exhibition. This project has become a repository of artistic activities that propose new uses for art, work on a 1:1 scale, and embrace artistic thinking to respond to urgencies, in short, all things dear to Ahali Conversations so far. 

We are hosting Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (artists and educators, born in Lithuania). They work together as Urbonas Studio, with an artistic practice that combines new media, urbanism, social science, ecology, and pedagogy to transform civic spaces and collective imaginaries. We’ll start off the conversation focusing on their work on Swamps, that disregarded wealth of organic complexity; and together unpack questions around ecology, technology, and artistic practice. You’ll also get to hear about their mode of operation within often contested social and political realities.

We are talking with Daniel Fernández Pascual from the London-based duo Cooking Sections. Together with Alon Schwabe, they use food as a lens and a tool to observe landscapes in transformation. In a broader sense, they examine the systems that organize the world, through food.
Their output manifest in a variety of media: using site-responsive installations, performance, and video. Cooking Sections offer a mode of cultural production that navigates the overlapping boundaries between art, architecture, ecology, and geopolitics.

We are hosting the curator, artist, writer and educator Paul O’Neill. We closed our last episode at a crucial and rather existential moment. This second part of our conversation extends to our small group of audience members. You will hear Paul responding to questions on the educational turn, auto-theory, and variations on how to work with artists.
Ahali Conversations are often recorded with an intimate group of audience members, so if you’d like to be in the loop, and join live sessions, please feel free to get in touch.

We are hosting the curator, artist, writer and educator Paul O’Neill. Paul is someone who is very attentive and elaborate in figuring out and shaping thought around the curatorial and artistic work. Together, we delve into his take on what publics mean and discuss the importance of opening up spaces of contact and sites for ‘working together’.

We also scrutinize the state of art institutions today and their future, along with hearing his take on the convergence of exhibition-making and programming. Along with insights on establishing and running an institution or an art space today.

Our guests are the legendary Raqs Media Collective, formed in New Delhi in 1992, by Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. I like to call them intellectuals-at-large, but their production ranges from artistic to curatorial projects, from theoretical to educational works. The collective also co-founded Sarai—the inter-disciplinary and incubatory space at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
You’ll hear their unique blend of thinking on technologies and media, from surveillance to bureaucratic interfaces as deeply embedded in societal dynamics; and we’ll get to explore together how they have been producing knowledge as artists. The tidal changes in image cultures; how digital technologies are intertwined with urban infrastructures; how the poetic is also the political; and ultimately the significance of languages are a few of the things that are lingering in my mind and provoking further thoughts after this conversation.