Talk at POGON – Zagreb Center for Independent Culture and Youth
From the Skills of Economy to Skills of Political Economy
POGON – Zagreb Center for Independent Culture and Youth, 11th of December from 7pm.
Skills of Economy is a curatorial concept dealing with contemporary artists’ actions towards the current economical situation and the entire concept of economy as a whole. Economy and economical rhetorics have filled up media space in the western world. Economy has become the most important way of describing the world and it’s progress. Skills of Economy is a project that researches and archives contemporary artistic reactions in this societal situation.
The Skills of Economy creates a flow of views from artists, curators, activists and theorists on current artistic production and different ideas on how mainstream and hegemonic economic thinking and reality can be challenged through artistic and activist practices. These ways can be roughly divided into symbolic and direct actions. Symbolic actions can create new representations of the visualization of economy or re-perform economic concepts, situations and habits. On the other hand, direct actions, such as time banking, may be giving form to local ways of organizing change. The effects of these actions are neither purely symbolic nor direct, instead they are in dialogue with economical rhetorics as well as with different realities and politics connected to these. The event highlights art and economy both as strong targets of politics and as media of politics.
Jussi Koitela (b.1981) is a curator and visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. As a curator he is currently focused to artist’s reactions to economical discourses. His artistic work is to conceptual media art and collaboration projects. He is interested in social discourses and the settings where they are realized. Koitela is studying in Praxis Master’s Program in Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Recently he has participated Perpetuum Lap – Curating the Political Workshop in Baltic Art Center and many public discussions and debats about art, economy and institutions. Skills of Economy Event curated and organized by Koitela was held at Finnish Academy of Fine Arts October 2013.