Nav Haq

Tirdad Zolghadr

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie investigates the latent issue of class underlying the field of contemporary visual art. On the one hand, it raises the question of whether a given socioeconomic background still helps define your artistic career--and to which point the said career might reflect or consolidate the hierarchies in question. On the other hand, the project asks whether the traditional analytical tools at our disposal are helpful in such an examination of the art world today. Class inevitably raises awkward questions regarding the very participants, their backgrounds, patrons, and ideological partialities. This is perhaps the reason why the role of class structure has been so easily overlooked in the production and presentation of contemporary art, especially so in an era where artists are coaxed into anthropological framings of their practice. What was it that made gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationality eclipse the class issue with such ease? Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie presents a collaborative project with a number of practitioners that scrutinize their own positions, bias, and gaze within the hierarchy of cultural production. It seeks to identify the levels of affect class has in the field--from artists, through to curators, institutions, and even audiences--and also looks at the hidden anxieties involved, particularly in relation to the actual decision-makers in mainstream art. Contributors Charlotte Bydler, Neil Cummings, Annika Eriksson, Chris Evans, Liam Gillick, Nav Haq, San Keller, Hassan Khan, Erden Kosova, Dr. Suhail Malik, Marion von Osten, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Dr. Malcolm Quinn, Tirdad Zolghadr

Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie

Thomas Keenan

Fondation LUMA.

The 1955 exhibition The Family of Man, first shown at MoMA, used

The Human Snapshot

Suhail Malik

It is difficult to imagine making claims for human rights without using images. For better or worse, images of protest, evidence, and assertion are the lingua franca of struggles for justice today. And they seem to come in a flood, more and more, day and night. But through which channels does the torrent pass? The Flood of Rights examines the pathways through which these images and ideas circulate—routes that do not merely enable, but actually shape human-rights claims and their conceptual background. What are the technologies and languages that structure the global distribution of humanism and universalism, and how do they leave their mark on these ideas themselves? Which narratives and imageries have proven easier to export and import, and whose interests are at stake in the configurations in question? The Flood of Rights draws on a conference of the same name, organized by the LUMA Foundation and Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, which took place in Arles, France, in 2013. Copublished with the LUMA Foundation and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York Contributors Amanda Beech, Rony Brauman, David Campbell, Olivia Custer, Rosalyn Deutsche, Thomas Keenan, Eric Kluitenberg, David Levine, Suhail Malik, Sohrab Mohebbi, Sharon Sliwinski, Hito Steyerl, Bernard Stiegler, Tirdad Zolghadr

The Flood of Rights

Wie lässt sich die Ökonomie des Land Grabbing überwinden – auch mit den Mitteln der Kunst? Dazu liefert diese Publikation konkrete Vorschläge. Die Auswirkungen der Pandemie auf die Mobilität stellen eine historische Chance dar. Selten war die Kritik an der extraktiven Logik der Kunstwelt lauter. REALTY ist ein langfristiges kuratorisches Programm von Tirdad Zolghadr (*1973), das ursprünglich vom KW Institute for Contemporary Art beauftragt wurde. Mit Hilfe von Künstler*innen und Expert*innen, die zwischen 2017 bis 2020 zum Projekt beigetragen haben, überdenkt der Reader, welchen Beitrag die Kunst zu entscheidenden Gesprächen über Urbanismus leisten kann. TIRDAD ZOLGHADR (*1973) ist Kurator und Autor. Derzeit ist er künstlerischer Leiter der Sommerakademie Paul Klee. Seine kuratorische Arbeit der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte umfasst sowohl Biennalen als auch forschungsorientierte Projekte, zuletzt als assoziierter Kurator am KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2016–2020).

Beyond the Traditional Blueprints of Art & Gentrification

REALTY

Charlotte Bydler

Michaela Kehrer

How to assess the vicissitudes of the gradually "globalizing" art circuit without repeating recent curatorial cliches? Having watched one example of critical internationalism after another reduce itself to postcolonial platitude or self-congratulating adventurism, the participants in this book and its accompanying exhibition took on that tricky subject with an inquiry into Euro-American xenophilia. Rather than trying to build the proverbial Third World "platform," "forum," or "bridge," they asked, what makes bridging so attractive in the first place? Who stands to gain from searing critiques of the North and Northwest, and upholding the aims of the East and South? This project was organized by Tirdad Zolghadar, born in California, raised in Iran, England and Switzerland, and recently co-curator of the 2005 Sharjah Biennale. Participating artists include the Atlas Group, Shirin Aliabadi and Farhad Moshiri, Jens Haaning, Lisl Ponger, Shahrzad and Erik van Lieshout.

Tirdad Zolghadr

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