Assembly of practice #4: Whose collection?
After ‘What does it mean to own?’, ‘Whose Artwork?’, and ‘Whose Institution’, a final Assembly of Practice brings us to art collections as potential places of shared interest, which increasingly rely on archives, reactivation protocols and complex contractual relationships.
03/03/2023, 17 – 19h
a.pass, Brussels
Today we have a seemingly endless amount of archives and collections, but their management and reactivation is often disconnected from the underlying practices and their ecology.
How could collections become places of shared interest, spaces for commoning that pay as much attention to the ecology of practices as to the material they produce?
In this Assembly of Practice, we examine collections as potential places of shared interest, zooming in on questions that come to the surface with the increased complexity of collecting contemporary art practices. They can be are immaterial, performative, situated, ongoing and collaborative in nature, being integrated in collections by means of documentation, reactivation protocols and complex contractual relationships.
These forms of materialisation and ownership often satisfy desires of collection(er)s but don’t seem to create change in terms of care attributed to the needs of a practice, its ecology and sustainability. Conservation and reactivation mainly stay disconnected from the driving forces, methodologies and contexts of the material elements which the collection contains, thus allowing the pieces nothing more than exposure in a curated frame.
During a day of closed collective reflection we will go into different practices researching and/or implementing strategies to own, activate and conserve differently.
The group opens up to the public at 17h with the intention to share concerns, questions, insights and ideas collected.
Emptor’s events are free of charge and everybody is welcome
Location:
a.pass
@Bottelarij/Brussels Event Brewery
Delaunoystraat 58/17
1080 Molenbeek Brussels
Read about this activity on the metadated research tool of caveat.be
