'Who's Afraid of the Public?'

Despite all the yearning for new publics and the attempts to include ever wider and more diverse audiences, one has to suspect that these are mere gestures of inclusion driven by the desire to produce visitor numbers than constituting a public.

If participation is the new spectacle, as Diedrich Diedrichsen once provocatively stated, how are we then to go beyond the given proliferation of art communication, mediation and education? When participation has both become an apt strategy of governmentality falling in place with the discourse of the fear of the public and is constantly generated by communicating via social media and its constant flow of information and relations at a fast pace, what are then the potentials to open up a new discourse on what public and participation in its constitution means in the 21st century?

This symposium explores the social, cultural and political challenges surrounding public participation in relation to social media and examines the strategies and experiments that engage audiences within different rhythms and reflections in the public arena.

Speaker Schedule

11.30am – 12.15pm
Simon Sheik, Curator and Programme Director of the MFA Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London

12.15pm - 1pm
Marie Luise Angerer, Professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne

1pm – 1.30pm
Lunch

1.30pm - 2.15pm
Sergio Edelsztein, Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv and Curator of the Israel Pavillion at the Venice Biennial 2013

2.15pm - 3pm
Aria Spinelli, critic/curator based in Milan

3pm - 3.45pm
Liza Fior, muf architecture, London

3.45pm - 4.15pm
Break

4.15pm - 5.30pm
Film Screening curated by John Canciani, Director of Winterthur Short Film Festival. The Film Screening is included in the symposium, but if you'd like to attend the screening only, tickets are available to purchase separately.

Concept

Elke Krasny (moderator)
Curator, Senior Lecturer at The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, currently working on her PhD at the Research Platform for Curatorial and Cross-disciplinary Cultural Studies at the University of Reading.

Dorothee Richter
Curator and head of postgraduate programme in curating Zürich,; director with Susanne Clausen of the Research Platform for Curatorial and Cross-disciplinary Cultural Studies at the University of Reading and Postgraduate Programme in Curating, Zürich, Practice-Based Doctoral Programme.

Silvia Simoncelli
Lecturer at postgraduate programme in curating, Zürich.

In collaboration with Reading University (in association with University of the Arts Zurich)