30 min
E1 DENIAL - Mick Wilson Bratislava BAK Summer School
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- Education
It is claimed that the subject about to die will begin in denial as a step along the path of dying. It is further claimed that death is also the object of collective disavowal. Mortality, some will say, is treated as a social embarrassment to be discreetly managed and politely put away. And yet, the giddy tally of the dead jostles for screen-time with all its graphic matter-of-fact-ness. The repetition of the body count courts a daily renewal of attention. What then is denied and avowed in these rhetorical forms? What death is spoken, what death evaded, in the claim that death is denied? If not subject to a disavowal, who or what shall come to speak for death, the dying and the dead?
Mick Wilson is an artist, educator and researcher based in Gothenburg and Dublin. He is currently professor of art and director of studies for doctoral education at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg. Current research interests include questions of: political community with the dead; contemporary art as public culture; exhibition-making as enquiry; and the rhetorical dynamics of knowledge conflict. Recent co-edited volumes include: Curating After the Global (MIT Press, 2019); Public Enquiries: PARK LEK & the Scandinavian Social Turn (BDP, 2018); and How Institutions Think (MIT Press, 2017). He was one of the (2018/2019) Fellows at BAK, basis voor aktuele kunst, Utrecht.
It is claimed that the subject about to die will begin in denial as a step along the path of dying. It is further claimed that death is also the object of collective disavowal. Mortality, some will say, is treated as a social embarrassment to be discreetly managed and politely put away. And yet, the giddy tally of the dead jostles for screen-time with all its graphic matter-of-fact-ness. The repetition of the body count courts a daily renewal of attention. What then is denied and avowed in these rhetorical forms? What death is spoken, what death evaded, in the claim that death is denied? If not subject to a disavowal, who or what shall come to speak for death, the dying and the dead?
Mick Wilson is an artist, educator and researcher based in Gothenburg and Dublin. He is currently professor of art and director of studies for doctoral education at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg. Current research interests include questions of: political community with the dead; contemporary art as public culture; exhibition-making as enquiry; and the rhetorical dynamics of knowledge conflict. Recent co-edited volumes include: Curating After the Global (MIT Press, 2019); Public Enquiries: PARK LEK & the Scandinavian Social Turn (BDP, 2018); and How Institutions Think (MIT Press, 2017). He was one of the (2018/2019) Fellows at BAK, basis voor aktuele kunst, Utrecht.
30 min