Caveat Reading Room #10

Caveat Reading Room #10: Performing the Contractual

Collective reading and discussion of fragments from Contract & Contagion, from Biopolitics to Oikonomia (2012), a book by Angela Mitropoulos. The text is selected by Steyn Bergs.
27/09/2019, 18-20h
Street access: 17:45-18h

Location: Jubilee
Former Actiris building, 6th floor
Rue Paul Devauxstraat 3, Brussels

We will read and talk about parts of the chapter ‘Contingency, Necessity, Performativity’ from: Angela Mitropoulos, Contract & Contagion, from Biopolitics to Oikonomia, Minor Compositions, 2012.

In this excerpt, Mitropoulos argues that “contracts are preoccupied with the transformation of contingency into necessity as a specifically capitalist problem.” She discusses the contract as that which mediates between the exigencies of capital and the formation of subjectivities, focusing on how contracts are performed. For the tenth iteration of Caveat‘s Reading Rooms events, we will take Mitropoulos’ text as a starting point for a discussion of how we, as artists and art workers, perform the contractual. What does it mean to embody and interiorise the logic of the contract? And could we do so in a way that nurtures the emergence of different (art) worlds?

Steyn Bergs is a critic and a researcher in art history. His interests lie in the intersections of contemporary art, (new) media art, political economy, critical theory, media theory, and aesthetics. He is one of Caveat’s dramaturgs.

Copies will be available. Caveat‘s reading rooms are free of charge, and everybody is welcome.