Art Museums and Democracy
People's faith in democracy is crumbling. On one hand, political persuasions sway elections in ways that we have never seen before. On the other, communities have a real need for genuine dialogue within this splintering condition. There are multiple positions and histories from which a better understanding can be borne, before chasing solutions that politics give the illusion to provide. Museums play a vital role here, in enabling these positions to be understood and allowing them to be heard.
In this Dialogue, Bart De Baere (M HKA), Manuel Borja-Villel (Museo Reina Sofía) and Charles Esche (Van Abbemuseum) discussed the role the museum can play in allowing a new, perhaps more poetic way of navigating this terrain. Together, they asked what is the 'imaginative possibility' of art museums, which have a double responsibility for and to their publics.
Recorded at MACBA, Barcelona, December 2016
Video editor: Record produccions
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–Van Abbemuseum
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‘The Soils Project’ is part of an eponymous, long-term research initiative involving TarraWarra Museum of Art (Wurundjeri Country, Australia), the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Netherlands) and Struggles for Sovereignty, a collective based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It works through specific and situated practices that consider soil, as both metaphor and matter.
Seeking and facilitating opportunities to listen to diverse voices and perspectives around notions of caring for land, soil and sovereign territories, the project has been in development since 2018. An international collaboration between three organisations, and several artists, curators, writers and activists, it has manifested in various iterations over several years. The group exhibition ‘Soils’ at the Van Abbemuseum is part of Museum of the Commons. -
Museo Reina Sofia
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–Museo Reina Sofia
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M HKA
SUPERHOST | Club Antena. Intimate listening and dancing experience
with Nele Möller, Farida Amadou, Le Réalism, Céline Gillain, Roberta Miss, Elena Colombi
CLUB ANTENA is an intimate listening and dancing session with a lecture, concert, performance, catering and DJ sets, exploring what it means to listen with our bodies.