Lecture

A new initiative co-organized with the School of Art, Media, and Technology and the Fine Arts Program Parsons, this lecture series captures the increasingly trans-disciplinary nature of scientific, academic, artistic, and cultural practices and, in particular, focuses on the complex cross-disciplinary settings for arts production in contemporary life.

In a double lecture and discussion Pascal Gielen and Michael Hardt discuss the role and the functioning of the art world from a philosophical and a sociological perspective. Gielen describes the art scene as a perfect production unit for economic exploitation in the contemporary network society as he searches for possibilities for artistic freedom in our Post-Fordist work contexts. Michael Hardt responds and argues that the Post-Fordist context offers the possibility of art as biopolitical production. He questions whether artistic skills and talents can be deployed in a democratic project of the defense, production, and distribution of the common.

This event is paired with a lecture by curator Okwui Enwezor, presented on November 2, 2010.

Pascal Gielen is Professor of Sociology of the Arts at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. The director of the research group and book series Arts in Society, Gielen has written and co-authored several books on contemporary art, cultural heritage and cultural politics. In 2009, he edited the book Being An Artist in Post-Fordist Times (with Paul De Bruyne) and published The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude. Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism (Valiz). In 2010, Community Art and Beyond. The Political Potency of Trespassing was published (Valiz), also edited by De Bruyne and Gielen.

Michael Hardt teaches in the Literature Program at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. With Antonio Negri he co-authored Empire (2000), Multitude (2004) and CommonWealth (2009).