Cancelled: Symposium “Critical (Re)positions. About the Implicit Consequences of (Undesired) Heritage”

Due to logistical circumstances, the symposium “Critical (Re)positions” has been cancelled. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.
The symposium will be postponed to a new date in October 2020, which will be communicated at a later time.

Critical (Re)Positions: About the Implicit Consequences of (Undesired) Heritage.

The meetings within the Critical (re)positions-symposia that Els Opsomer organizes annually focus on topical questions about society and its demands. The symposium aims to provide a critical platform to reflect on artistic positions in a complex and globalized world. This year it will take place at WIELS in collaboration with the Lieven Gevaert Chair, the Lieven Gevaert Centre, and the Photography Expanded research cluster at LUCA, of which Els Opsomer is a member.

The energy invested in the transmission of knowledge, wisdom and intrinsic values seems to disappear before our eyes into our (political) landscape. The legacy you carry with you comes from both the social, geopolitical background and a personal, family history. Els Opsomer wonders what remains of it in the long and short term. How do you deal with this baggage as an artist and researcher? Does it make sense to care, to convey and pass on values when you have the feeling that the world ignores honest knowledge? What are expressions, questions and solutions proposed within our art world? How can tradition become an added value and tool in the positive change of a distant and dense environment? While entropy is never far away, Els Opsomer wants to keep believing in small changes.

For Els Opsomer an open artistic dialogue is vitally important and arises from the amazement and affinity she feels with the course and practice of the invited artists. For her, connecting is something organic and sharing this common concern is a primary need. For this symposium she invited several artists from different generations to share their strategies and methods with the public: 

Invited speakers: Lucile Desamory, Susana Pilar, Ângela Ferreira

Screenings of interview with Thao Nguyen Phan conducted by Els Opsomer; introduction to Thao Nguyen Phan’s work by Zoë Gray

Register here!

Organization: Intermedia Research Unit (LUCA School of Arts) & Lieven Gevaert Centre, KU Leuven

Supported by Lieven Gevaert Leerstoel vzw, LUCA School of Arts, Lieven Gevaert Centre, KU Leuven, WIELS