During the upcoming Cairo Biennale, AGM will coordinate a recorded conversation between curators, artists and cultural producers.on the 16th December 2010. This one day session will focus on social and geo-political topics relevant to the Mediterranean region, opening up to some tactics for producers and audiences to employ via modes of aesthetic journalism, ficto-criticism and political fictions. Having recently interrogated the nature of collective production and collaboration as part of Chamber of Public Secrets’ contribution to Manifesta 8, AGM wishes to expand on this to address the term “dialogue”. If, as in the realm of cultural diplomacy, dialogue is to be understood as a reciprocal act and as a prelude to collaboration/cultural understanding, then the session asks: who sets the terms of dialogue, where is it enacted, how does it function and what are its inherent asymmetries? More specifically, we hope to delve into the realm of questioning the instrumentalisation of “dialogue” in contemporary art and institutional practices as well as on the geo-political scale. This session will be disseminated through attendee’s networks and on agmculture.org.
The AGM Conversation Series brings together, in different configurations and venues, artists, curators, thinkers and contributors variously involved in processes of "knowledge production" via art, media, research or other forms of critical engagement. Adopting AGM’s itinerant format, these sessions seek not only to assess the “state-of-play” at various moments in the lead up to the exhibition or research process in which they are involved at that time, but to continue discussions around thematic that are central to their approach and productions.
A significant feature of the Conversation Series is that they have taken place in semi formal settings, requiring no audience but a camera and an amassed group of participants. They sit somewhere between the formal setting of the commonly used artists talk /seminar format and the informal nature of social/networked conversations between arts practitioners and producers. The sessions provide an open forum for sharing and exchange with no underlying pretext but to consider the current state of affairs.
The edited versions of the AGM Conversation series are distributed online through open networked communities such as Facebook, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter and also on agmculture.org.
Participants
Khaled Ramadan (Lebanon, Finland & Denmark) Alfredo Cramerotti (Italy & UK) Hannah Conroy (UK) Yesomi Umolu (UK), Khaled Hafez (Egypt), Aida Eltorie (Egypt & USA), (Dermis Leon (Spain), Achilleas Kentonis (Cyprus) Patrizio Travagli (Italy) Giuseppe Moscatello (UAE), Alexandre Gurita (France), Michael Thoss (Germany), Heike Mertens (Germany)
Sponsors/Supporters
Allianz Stiftung
European Union House of Delegation Cairo-Egypt
ABOUT AGM CUTURE
AGM Culture is a curatorial project with some of the inbuilt features of a parasite. Each time, by changing partner, location, form and content, its primary focus is to explore the peculiarity of the hosting body – be it a site, an institution or a theme. Previously, AGM has explored new modes of knowledge production within art and the media in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K. and in the Web space.
Image credit
Nottingham Contemporary, 15 July 2010
"On Translation"
"On Translation" saw the participation of Michael Takeo Magruder, Fay Nicolson, Nada Prlja, Alfredo Cramerotti, Yesomi Umolu, Hannah Conroy, Jeffery Baker
