Welcome to a panel discussion about the exhibition Culture in Action in 1993, an exhibition that was transformative to the curatorial discourse in public art. The panel discussion will be broadcast live on facebook.
Culture in Action, a city-wide exhibition held in Chicago in 1993, was an attempt by its curator Mary Jane Jacob to incorporate community-based and temporal projects within the context of “new genre public art,” while at the same time curators Yves Aupetitallot and Valerie Smith were reluctant to define their exhibitions Project Unité, in Firminy, and Sonsbeek 93, in Arnhem, as “social art.” Transformative to curatorial discourse, these exhibitions during the summer of 1993 were animated by a desire to reinvent relations between art, culture, politics.
Relating to the past while looking to the future, Zippora Elder and Krista Jantowski, curators of sonsbeek20→24, alongside artists Mark Dion and Mel Ziegler (of Ericson & Ziegler), who participated in all three exhibitions, and Christian Phillippe Müller, who co-ideated Project Unité, will critically reflect on the asymmetries of these challenging exhibitions whose legacy is regenerated largely by their curators.
Panelists: Mark Dion and Mel Ziegler (Project Unité, Sonsbeek 93, Culture in Action), Christian Philipp Müller (Project Unité), Zippora Elders and Krista Jantowski (sonsbeek20→24).
Moderators: Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, Giulia Floris and Julius Lehmann (CuratorLab 2020/21).
Public Panel co-hosted by CuratorLab and sonsbeek20→24, in collaboration with Public Art Agency Sweden, and the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm.
Media partner: Cultbytes