Kuba Szreder in conversation with Aria Spinelli and Reza Afisina
Rijksakademie Reading Room
Entrance free, RSVP here
In this gathering, Kuba Szreder, in conversation with Aria Spinelli and Reza Afisina, will discuss how mainstream definitions of art are currently challenged by alternative forms of “post-artistic practices” that blur the conventional distinction between what is considered ‘art’ and ‘non-art.’ In his illustrated lecture Szreder will unstitch this opposition by evoking duckrabbits. These mercurial species can be seen as ducks, rabbits or both at the same time, symbolizing the plethora of hybrid practices that shift between art and life, never settling in one.
The disputants will reflect on the complex, often precarious, conditions of contemporary artistic labor and production in various contexts, focusing on Poland, Italy, and Indonesia. They will discuss how these practices reflect broader cultural and political shifts, emphasizing the changing role of art in society and proposing alternative ways for artists to create together, share resources, and sustain their work amid shifting institutional landscapes.
Kuba Szreder combines practice-based research with curating interdisciplinary projects and political engagement. He is a lecturer at the department of art theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Graduate of sociology at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow), he received PhD from the Loughborough University School of the Arts. In 2009 he co-initiated Free / Slow University of Warsaw, with which he completed several inquiries into the political economy of contemporary artistic production, such as Joy Forever: Political Economy of Social Creativity (2011) and Art Factory. Division of labor and distribution of resources in the field of contemporary art in Poland (2014). In 2010 he started to cooperate with Critical Practice, a London-based research cluster, with which he conducted several research projects about the modes of being in public (2010-2011), and the social process of evaluation (2012-2016). Since 2012 he has worked with the Citizens Forum for Contemporary Art in Poland, with which he has campaigned for the betterment of conditions of work in the sector of contemporary art. In 2018 together with Kathrin Böhm he co-initiated the Centre for Plausible Economies, a research cluster devoted to reimagining economy by using artistic means. In 2020 he co-established the Office for Postartistic Services, the aim of which is to employ artistic competences in support of progressive social movements. He is editor and author of several catalogues, books, readers, chapters, essays and articles, devoted to social, economic, and theoretical aspects of the contemporary art. Current research interests include interdependent curating, new models of artistic institutions, postartistic theory and practice. His book The ABC of the Projectariat was published in 2021 by the Manchester University Press. (2021)
Aria Spinelli is an independent curator, a visiting scholar at ASCA Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, and a lecturer in the Global Arts, Politics, and Culture program of the Cultural Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam. Her main area of research investigates the relationships between contemporary artistic activism and political theory. A former postdoctoral research fellow at ASCA for NWO-funded research project IMAGINART Imagining Institutions Otherwise: Art, Politics, and State Transformation, she has investigated relations between artistic practice and cultural labor movements, right-to-housing movements, and transfeminist movements In Rome, centering on notions of experimental institutionalism. In her PhD (2021), she analyzed the relations of curatorial practice to social imagination and performativity, revisiting the work of Greek-French Philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis. A former associate researcher and curatorial team member at the MAXXI – Museum of the XXI Century for Art in Rome (2018-2020), she acted as an external collaborator of Pistoletto Foundation (Biella) and BOZAR, Center for Fine Arts (2015-2021). She authored academic papers on experimental art intuitionalism within the context of social movements in Rome, and she has contributed scholarly and artistic research to the field of artistic activism. She is the editor of Shaping Desired Futures (NERO, 2018), a publication on contemporary artistic activism in Eastern Europe. She is the curator of the upcoming retrospective exhibition by Arts For the Commons, Sensing Interdependence, taking place at De Appel in 2025 in collaboration with the Transnational Institute and Embassy of the North Sea, supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (13th edition, 2024), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.
Reza Afisina, a new media artist based in Depok, West Java (ID), currently a guest fellow at the Rijksakademie. He incorporates performance art into his creative endeavours. He served as ruangrupa's program coordinator from 2003 to 2007 and has been directing ruangrupa's ArtLab, since 2008.
Alongside ruangrupa, he acted as the artistic director of documenta fifteen 2022 in Kassel (DE). Two years prior, he co-activated ruruHaus, with Iswanto Hartono, also from ruangrupa, a living room space aimed at engaging with the ecosystem of Kassel.
Additionally, ruangrupa, SERRUM, and Grafis Huru Hara, forming the collective studies of contemporary art ecosystem known as Gudskul, in Jakarta (ID).
Onze agenda met events, presentaties en lezingen.