Slovenian intellectual Gal Kirn introduces some provocations in our thinking of the political economy that surrounds the ‘artist residency’ : “For me, this popularization and normalization of residence seems rather as a negative utopia – a dystopia. One could name it as a managerial commune, where you manage the space to an optimum efficacy: to have various artists coming from everywhere for certain periods of time and to get the most out of them. Certainly, for the time being, artists are safe in their paradise. They can realize their potentials, but at the same time, they become isolated from society on the little parallel islands of residence. But this parallel island is neatly connected to a global network of art residencies, nomadism of precarious cultural workers becomes an imperative rather than a ‘free’ choice for everyone, and it can be as repressive as staying in one gallery one’s whole life. The choice was already made and certainly not by them.”
To read Kirn’s full article in Reartikulacija, click here.
Gal Kirn
Courtesy of http://www.ici-berlin.org/profile/kirn/
Gal Kirn’s Biography:
Gal Kirn is a former fellow of ICI Berlin. He currently works at the Scientific Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Ljubljana (2011-present) and is finishing up dissertation on the topic of contemporary French philosophy (especially on Louis Althusser) with the history of the emergence of revolutionary Yugoslavia and its tragic break-up. He collaborates with the Centre of Cultural Studies (FDV, Ljubljana) on the topic of xenofobia. He was an editor of the journal Agregat (2005-2008) and a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (2008-10), where he organized a series of international conferences on Yugoslavia and self-management urbanism, Yugoslavian black wave cinema and on Althusser. In his hometown Ljubljana he participates in the Workers’-Punks’ University, which sets up a platform of events: lectures, film seminars and reading groups. He is a correspondent editor for the international journal Historical Materialism, an editor of the book ‘Postfordism and its discontents’ (JvE Academie, B-Books and Mirovni Inštitut) and a co-editor of ‘New public spaces. Dissensual political and artistic practices in the post-Yugoslav context’ (JvE Academie and Moderna Galerija).
The House of the Unexpected 