Reworking the Institution in Troubled Times
Join us for an evening lecture and discussion event led by Andrew Goffey from the Centre for Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham, and Katie Simpson, Senior Curator at Nottingham Contemporary, exploring how institutions can work with cultural practitioners and artists in longer term ways that imprint themselves within the organisation and influence structural change.
In this session we will be drawing on previous research and public programming around institutional analysis at Nottingham Contemporary, specifically work led by our former Head of Public Programmes, Janna Graham. We will start by revisiting work commissioned for the gallery in 2018, ‘The Building as a Body’ by Manual Labours (Sophie Hope and Jenny Richards). ‘The Building’ explored physical and emotional relationships to work and Richards will be on hand to discuss it with us and with Graham, who will also be telling us more about her own research, how it addresses institutions and opens up different – transversal – relations between art institutions, communities and politics.
To help contextualise this discussion in the contemporary context, we will also consider the connections between the kinds of creative ways of thinking about institutions that Manual Labours, Graham, and researchers into institutional analysis offer and eco-feminist perspectives on the reclaiming and radical regeneration of broader ecologies of artistic, curatorial, critical and political practices.
How do we navigate the challenges of re-creating institutions in the considerably changed post-Brexit, post-Covid social cultural and political landscape? The final part of session will introduce the recent research of Berlin-based scholar and cultural theorist Elena Vogman to explore – amongst other things – the idea of disalienation as a way to practice the processual, collective, imaginative work of reintegrating subjectivity into worlds otherwise fractured by psychiatric, colonial or institutional violence.
This is the first of two sessions that aim to build on Nottingham Contemporary’s ongoing interest and commitment to thinking with communities, and envisioning ways in which organisations can align their visible – public facing work - and invisible facets – their structural work, questioning the role of public institutions today in being sites of change, equity and freedom.
Give What You Can
Entry to our exhibitions, events, fairs and our family activities is free but we need your support. Your donations make it possible to keep doing everything we do: from our world-leading exhibitions to our activities for families, young people and schools. With your support we can continue making a difference to the cultural, educational and social life of Nottingham and the East Midlands.
Please support us with a donation and register for Gift Aid to add 25% at no extra cost to you.
Access
Find information about getting here and our building access and facilities here.
This event will be held in The Space.
Speakers will use microphones.
This event is wheelchair accessible.
If you have any questions around access or have specific access requirements we can accommodate, please get in touch with us by emailing info@nottinghamcontemporary.org or phoning 0115 948 9750.
Andrew Goffey is an associate professor in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies and the director of the Centre for Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is the author, with Matthew Fuller ofEvil Media, the editor, with Eric Alliez, of The Guattari Effect, and with Roland Faber, of The Allure of Things. He has also translated numerous books, including Lines of Flight and Schizoanalytic Cartographies, by Felix Guattari, and Capitalist Sorcery, In Catastrophic Times and Virgin Mary and the Neutrino, by Isabelle Stengers. He is currently doing research on ecology and aesthetics and has collaborated with Nottingham Contemporary for a number of years.