[Academy Lectures 2015.03.11]
Abstract
«Qalqalah: The Subject of Language» is a fictional departure from «Delusions of Reference: From Language to Art», which grapples with the question ‘what is an institution?’ Through the fictional character Qalqalah, Sarah Rifky, follows a tangent to speak to art institutions and their futures through curatorial thinking and practice. Prior to asking about the future of art institutions, we must pose two questions: what is the future of art? And more importantly, what is the future of language?
The talk will be followed by a Q&A with the audience, expanding on Rifky’s practice on how to think about institution building curatorially, how her relationship to institutions has changed in relation to the failure of insurrection and her work with Beirut 2012-2105 as well as her tribulations with the historiography of art in the Arab world.
Sarah Rifky is a writer and curator based in Cairo, where she co-founded Beirut in 2012, an art space that thinks about institution building as a curatorial act. She is founder of CIRCA (Cairo International Resource Center for Art). She was a Curatorial Agent of dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany. In 2010 she was Adjunct Professor of Art History and Theory at the American University in Cairo. Rifky is author of «The Going Insurrection» (2011) and «Delusions of Reference: In Defense of Art» (forthcoming). She is co-editor of the artist book «Damascus: Tourists, Artists and Secret Agents» (2009).
Description
1 h 8 min