TIM Master Class: Mária Hlavajová

Learning to Be Together Otherwise

In this talk, Maria Hlavajova speculates about paths for the art world in the prospective age of pandemics. As a “new” political geography and a “new” political economy are beginning to take shape, both on- and offline, developing on a calculus that pits the value of human life against that of the economy, one can observe how these conditions open doors even wider to looming dangers of various totalitarianisms. Against this backdrop, Hlavajova inquires into how being together otherwise could be envisioned and practiced with, in, and through art, recognizing art as a public collective pedagogy and a site of anticipatory politics. The talk draws from BAK’s ongoing research itinerary Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017-ongoing), and in particular its 2019/2020 sequence Trainings for the Not-Yet, an “exhibition as a series of trainings for a future of being together otherwise,” co-convened with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk.

The lecture will be held in English.

Maria Hlavajova is founding General and Artistic Director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, since 2000. In 2008–2016, she was Research and Artistic Director of the collaborative research, exhibition, and education project FORMER WEST, which culminated in the publication Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 (which she co-edited with Simon Sheikh, 2016). Hlavajova has instigated and (co-)organized numerous projects at BAK and beyond, including the series Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–ongoing), Future Vocabularies (2014–2017), New World Academy (with Jonas Staal, 2013–2016), among many other international (research) projects. Her curatorial work includes Call the Witness, Roma Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, 2011; Citizens and Subjects, Dutch Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2007; and Borderline Syndrome: Energies of Defense, Manifesta 3, Ljubljana, 2000. Among publications she edited are Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (with Jeanne van Heeswijk and Rachael Rakes, forthcoming 2021); Deserting from the Culture Wars (with Sven Lütticken, 2020); Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent (with Wietske Maas, 2019); Posthuman Glossary (with Rosi Braidotti, 2018); and Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artists (with Tom Holert, 2017). She is Lecturer at HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht. In addition, Hlavajova is co-founder (with Kathrin Rhomberg) of the tranzit network. Hlavajova is a member of the Supervisory Board of the European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam, and of the Advisory Boards of Bergen Assembly, Bergen and IMAGINART Imagining Institutions Otherwise: Art, Politics, and State Transformation, University of Amsterdam. She lives and works in Amsterdam and Utrecht.

Web: https://www.bakonline.org/person/maria-hlavajova/

The lecture will take place online through the ZOOM platform (Meeting ID: 931 3062 1759).