con_textos @Oriol Fontdevila

Casón del Buen Retiro de Madrid, 1981

con_textos @Oriol Fontdevila. Performative mediation

Performative mediation

Mediation has become the central issue of artistic practice. A set of definitions and practices converge around it that points towards a generalised change of paradigm, which is affecting both the modes of producing and relating artistic objects, cultural agents and audiences, as well as institutions and the public sphere.

What makes mediation a challenge for contemporaneity is the possibility of generating critical knowledge from an empirical and material position, and not exclusively from a discursive and representational perspective, as has often been the case in artistic and curatorial practices.

Hence the need arises to rethink mediation in performative terms: as an infrastructural, relational and non-representational sub-space of art, mediation is found to be a crucial aspect because of what it does to the organisation of identities, meanings and agencies that are taken on by artistic practice itself.

Similarly, addressing mediation in performative terms should provide a better understanding of art as an active agent in processes of emergence and cultural change.

Practical information:

The workshop is aimed at all of those who, whatever their relation to creation, curatorship, education, criticism or other modes of artistic mediation and research, wish to rehearse new perspectives for developing and interrelating these fields of cultural work. Theoretical approaches and case studies will be introduced and experiments conducted on the basis of situations generated with the participants themselves. The workshop will conclude with an open work session and the presentation of possible conclusions.

Oriol Fontdevila is a curator, writer and researcher, who specialises in artistic practices and education. In order to develop his research on mediation and performativity, he benefited from a research stay at the MNCARS (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía) and a grant from the OSIC (Office of Support for Cultural Initiative of the Department of Culture of the Government of Catalonia). www.oriolfontdevila.net