CAS Conference: On Radicalism (1 May 2025)
Swedenborg House, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH
Image credit: Edgar Calel, Ru k’ox k’ob’el jun ojer etemab’el (The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge), 2021. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Mark McNulty.
On this day, we will question what it means to be radical within the framework of art museums and curatorial practice. We will examine structures and ideologies embodied in cultural institutions and art collections, their narratives and politics of representation, while bringing to the fore strategies to reshape and transform them.
We are delighted to welcome wonderful speakers, who, through different entry points, will address their perspectives on radicalism. Katya García-Antón, Director and Chief Curator of Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, will address insights from her research on Sámi contemporary art and the Arctic, and discuss her ideas on practicing resistance. Sepake Anigiama, Artistic Director of Iniva, will share her ideas on radical pedagogies, unlearning processes and radical forms of re-imagination. Writer, researcher and curator Dr. Clare Carolin, King's College London, will present her research on museum archives as sites of radicalism that hold hidden or forgotten truths which, once uncovered, open up new realities and other potentialities for necessary change. Helen Legg, director of Tate Liverpool, will talk about the 13-year custodianship of a work by Maya-Kaqchikel artist Edgar Calel, which, in alignment with a sacred Mayan cycle, will end with a choice to pass the work on to another institution or return it to the earth. More speakers are to be confirmed.
For attendance to the event, please register via Eventbrite. The event is free for CAS Museum Members. General Public is required a £15 ticket or £10 concessions.
If a travel bursary for CAS Museum Members is required, please fill in this form. You can also email paula@contemporaryartsociety.org if any further questions.
