The Sixth Symposium Visual Cultures/Global Designs will explore new areas of contact between research, education and artistic practices. Based on the need to rethink the politics of knowledge as well as collective pedagogies, the speakers who accompany us this year operate in frontier fields, either as theoretical-artists, researchers-pedagogues or academic-curators.

During the day, the emergence of concepts such as ‘artistic research’ or ‘art as research’ will be analyzed and the pertinence of the following two pretensions will be questioned: on the one hand, the pretension of granting to the artistic practices a ‘legitimately’, that is, of equal social and institutional value enjoyed by disciplines such as sociology or anthropology or interdisciplinary studies such as postcolonial or visual culture; on the other, the pretension to democratize the social sciences and scientific methodologies from infusing them with a sort of artistic aura and expression. Finally, this symposium will analyze the way in which artistic-research creativity operates as an economic resource and as aesthetic-political force.

Opening Speech:
Tom Holert

Tom Holert is an art historian, writer, curator and artist. A former editor of Texte zur Kunst and Spex, he currently lives and works in Berlin. Holert is honorary professor of art theory and cultural studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Between 2012 and 2017 he was a founding member of the Academy of the Arts of the World, Cologne. In 2015 he (co-)founded the Harun Farocki Institut (HaFI) in Berlin (harun-farocki-institut.org). In 2016 Holert served as visiting professor at the Institute for Art History at Freie Universität Berlin. At BAK – basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, he conceptualized the research exhibition Learning Laboratories: Architecture, Instructional Technology, and the Social Production of Pedagogical Space Around 1970 (December 2016 to February 2017). Currently his research focuses on questions of art and knowledge, and the genealogies of contemporary art’s ventures into knowledge production and pedagogy.

Speaker: Juan Vicente Aliaga

Juan Vicente Aliaga is a Spanish art critic who has written widely on contemporary conceptual art as well as on gender and queer theory. He is correspondent for Artforum (New York) and art critic, Exit (Madrid) and a member of the Research Group City Space and Gender Technologies at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Publications: Orden fálico. Androcentrismo y violencia de género en las prácticas artísticas del siglo XX (Madrid, Akal, 2007); Arte y cuestiones de género (San Sebastián, Nerea, 2004); Bajo vientre. Representaciones de la sexualidad en la cultura y el arte contemporáneos (Valencia, Direcció cultural de Promoció Cultural, Museus i Belles Arts, 1997).

Speaker: Joaquín Barriendos

Joaquín Barriendos teaches Latin American Art Studies and Visual Culture at Columbia University. Before joining the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures in 2011, he taught at the University of Barcelona. He has been fellow-researcher at the Institute National d’Histoire de l’Art, and visiting-researcher in the Program in Museum Studies (New York University). His graduate dissertation was awarded the Marcos & Celia Maus Prize (UNAM best dissertation in History) and his doctoral dissertation obtained Honors Degree-Cum Laude in Theory, History, and Art Criticism. He is a member of the International Association of Art Critics, serves as a member of ILAS’ Executive Committee, collaborates with the Visual Culture in Europe Network, and is Chief Academic Curator of the Juan Acha Archive. He serves as well in the Editorial Board of Journal of Visual Culture (SAGE), Revista Hispánica Moderna (Columbia University, N.Y.), Shift: Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture, and Journal of Global Studies and Contemporary Art (University of Barcelona). His book “Geoestética y transculturalidad” was awarded in 2007 the annual prize on art theory, conferred by the Fundació Espais d’Art Contemporani. In 2010 he was commissioned to edit a multi-authored book, “Global Circuits: The Geography of Art and the New Configurations of Critical Thought”.

Speaker: Anna Maria Guasch

Anna Maria Guasch is Professor of History of Art at the University of Barcelona and an art critic, having also taught at the Universities of Seville (1979-1983) and Complutense de Madrid (1983-1986). From 1976 to 1993 his line of research focused on the study of Spanish art from the period 1940-1990, giving rise, apart from numerous critical essays, to two publications of a territorial nature: 40 Years of Painting in Seville 1940-1980 (Sevilla, 1981), and Art and ideology in the Basque Country 1940-1980 (Madrid, 1985). From 1994 to the present his research and teaching have focused on the analysis of the creative processes of international art of the second half of the twentieth century.

Speaker: Martí Peran

Martí Peran is Full Professor of Theory of Art at the University of Barcelona. He has participated in numerous books and catalogs of contemporary art. He usually collaborates in the press and in specialized magazines. He was a member of the editorial board of Transversal. Magazine of Contemporary Culture (1996-2002). Co-editor of the magazine Roulotte. He collaborates regularly in Exit Express y Artforum International. He has conducted workshops and seminars on criticism and curatorial practices in different centers. He has lectured in several museums and institutions (MACBA, Barcelona, ​​MNP, Madrid, USP, Sao Paulo, Trienale, Milano, CCEBA, Buenos Aires, Townhouse, Cairo, Contemporary Art Center, Larissa, NYU, New York, Art Beijing, China , Jeu de Paume, Paris, etc.). As a curator of exhibitions, his latest projects include Post-it city. Occasional Cities (CCCB, Barcelona, ​​2008; MAC Santiago de Chile, Centro Cultural Sao Paulo, 2009); After Architecture (Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona, ​​2009).

Speaker: Javier Rodrigo Montero

Javier Rodrigo Montero, Researcher and art educator. Coordinator of conferences and seminars on critical pedagogies, museums and collaboration policies such as Pràcticas dialógicas (3 ediciones), Acciones Reversibles (AcVic). He currently co-coordinates the educational / cultural project Transductores with Antonio Collados, and is part of the Aula a la deriva platform. Collaborator of Art Centers such as Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, Es baluard, La Virreina Center of the Image, Museo Nacional Reina Sofía and MACBA, among others.
www.transductores.net

Speaker: José M. Santa Cruz Grau

José M. Santa Cruz Grau, Santiago de Chile, 1983. Degree in Film from the ARCIS University (2005) and Master in History and Theory of Art from the University of Chile (2008). He is the author of Imagen-Simulacro: Estudios de cine contemporáneo, Editorial Metales Pesados (2010) and co-editor of El cine que fue: 100 años de cine chileno, Ediciones ARCIS (2011). He was creator and coordinator of the Research Area of the Film School of the ARCIS University (2009-2011). Currently, he is part of the doctoral program of History of Art at the University of Barcelona (2011-2015) with his thesis, Extremo cinematográfico: from postmodern cinema to postcine (1980-2010).

Speaker: Conrado Uribe

Conrado Uribe, Medellín, Colombia, 1976. Magister in History of Art of the University of Antioquia. He was curator of the Museum of Antioquia between 2008 and 2011, an institution to which he has been linked professionally since 2001. He has been a curator of projects such as Teofanías, José Alejandro Restrepo’s first exhibition in Medellín at the Antioquia Museum (2008); Ante tus ojos. Francisco Antonio Cano, Antioquia Museum (2009) and El río. Exposición de Luis Fernando Pelaéz, Antioquia Museum (2010). He was co-curator of projects like Medellin International Encounter. Teaching and learning-Places of knowledge in art, Museo de Antioquia (2011); Regional Image VI, Banco de la República (2007-2009) and Exile and Reparation, Museo de Antioquia (2008) and Colombias 200 years. Stories, images and citizenships, Museo de Antioquia (2010). He was one of the co-curators of the Medellín: transformación de una ciudad, an exhibition developed in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín in 2009. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Director of the radio program El Citófono, which was issued weekly by the Medellín Chamber of Commerce. He has taught at the Yurupary Institute and the Department of Extension at the University of Antioquia. In addition, he has participated in research projects Leonel Estrada, Gestor Cultural y Promotor de la Educación a través de las Artes en Antioquia (2003), Estéticas de lo contemporáneo en Colombia, a member of the Group in theory and History of Art (2006-2009) and currently co-investigator of the project Gestores y eventos del arte moderno en Antioquia”. He is a frequent contributor to the newspaper Arteria (Colombia).