Trimming the Arts
Art Cuts and the Role of the Artist within Societies in Crisis
by Lanfranco Aceti
Wednesday May 22, 2013, from 19:30 to 20:30
Introduction by: Andre Zivanari,
Chaired by: Yiannis Colakides,
Kasa Gallery, NeMe and Point Center for Contemporary Art present a talk by Lanfranco Aceti “Trimming the Arts: Art Cuts and the Role of the Artist within Societies in Crisis.”
Taking as its starting point Pier Paolo Pasolini’s analysis of exploitation of labor and Jean Baudrillard’s idea of commodification Trimming the Arts examines the current metaphysical remnants of state, society and the citizen.
“Qu'ils mangent de la brioche,” (let them eat cake), exclaimed Queen Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1782). Similarly, Silvio Berlusconi, denying the effects of the crisis in Italy at the press conference of the G20 in Cannes, declared that “i ristoranti sono pieni,” (the restaurants are full.)
The talk will present and discuss the artistic and curatorial practice of the Museum of Contemporary Cuts, addressing the role that art has to play, if any role at all, in the current crisis that is not solely economic but a crisis of society itself, since the concepts of citizenship and state are not just in crisis but have become trite illusory representations; simulacra of no value.
Dr Lanfranco Aceti works as an academic, artist and curator. He is Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths College, Department of Art and Computing, London; teaches Contemporary Art and Digital Culture at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul; and is Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (the MIT Press, Leonardo journal and ISAST). He is the Gallery Director at Kasa Gallery in Istanbul and worked as the Artistic Director and Conference Chair for ISEA 2011 Istanbul. He has a PhD from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. His work has been published in Leonardo, Art Inquiry and Routledge and his interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersection between digital arts, visual culture and new media technologies. Lanfranco Aceti specialises in contemporary art, inter-semiotic translations between classic media and new media, contemporary digital hybridisation processes, avant-garde film and new media studies and their practice-based applications in the field of fine arts. He has worked as an Honorary Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, Virtual Reality Environments at University College London. He has exhibited works at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London and done digital interventions at TATE Modern, The Venice Biennale, MoMA, Neue Nationalgalerie, the ICA and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Previously an Honorary Research Fellow at the Slade School of Fine Art, Dr Aceti has also worked as an AHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, School of History of Art, Film & Visual Media and as Visiting Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum.