Finissage Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis - 29 September 2024

Numerous commentators and critics have observed a profound crisis in what it means to know and not know – an epistemological crisis, a crisis of knowledge. This issue is far from new. There has been an intense debate for over four decades about what constitutes ‘valid’ knowledge and what does not. However, this problem has been greatly exacerbated by the spread of massive misinformation tactics. These tactics, employed by a new breed of malign state and corporate actors, are designed to create strategic doubt using sophisticated internet-based media forms.

Artists have responded with critical investigative and forensic practices to counter this strategically manufactured epistemological uncertainty – a general collapse of trust in the institutions that are supposed to ‘know’. However, this ‘evidentiary’ turn in aesthetics and artistic research invites its own problems. As the curators David Garcia and Mi You put it, these works can “have a tendency to project an aura of the irrefutable”, and a need is felt to move beyond ‘uncomplicated scientific empiricism’.

How to navigate the complexities of a situation where, as the show asserts, the crisis of knowledge and the crisis of politics have become one and the same thing?

The program is divided into two thematic blocks of interlocked conversations exploring the predicament of epistemological uncertainty, and possible ways to counteract the manufacture of strategic doubt, including new approaches to documentary practices.

The conversations involve artists present in the show, theorists, researchers and activists, including interventions by the UKRAiNATV collective and the research group Politics of Knowledge of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK).

The proceedings are moderated by co-curator David Garcia, Eric Kluitenberg (Tactical Media Files) and Alexandra Barancova (NADD – Network Archives Design and Digital Culture).

Language: English / Attendance: Free / Sign up: Here

Program Sunday September 29

10.00 Space open

10.30 Introductions
David Garcia / Alexandra Barancova / Eric Kluitenberg (moderators)

11.00 Keynote #1: Paolo Cirio - Evidentiary Realism

11.30 Conversation #1 - Knowledge in Times of Crisis
With:
- Paolo Cirio
- Lua Vollaard (Superkilogirls / Stroom)
- Chris Julien (XR / Utrecht University / Waag)
- Anke Haarmann (Leiden University)
- David Garcia & Eric Kluitenberg (moderators)

13.00 Presentation Politics of Knowledge Research Group
(Maarten Cornel, Johanna Ehde, Anke Haarmann, Ingrid Grünwald,
Eric Kluitenberg, Tatjana Macic, Elisabeth Rafstedt, Zuzanna Zgierska)

LUNCH BREAK

14.00 Keynote #2: Shatha Safi RIWAQ Centre for Architectural Conservation

14.30 Conversation #2 - Documentation in Times of Crisis
With:
- Shatha Safi (RIWAQ)
- Nermin Elsherif (Utrecht University)
- UKRAiNATV
- Fieke Jansen (Critical Infrastructure Lab)
- Alexandra Barancova (NADD) & Eric Kluitenberg (moderators)

16.00 CLOSE / Coffee break

17.00 - 18.00 UKRAiNATV hybrid performance cross mixing x performing between Krakow and the Framer Framed studio.

UKRAiNATV invites you to a hybrid and collective performance GROUNDING, where pure sounds of sirens, dirty feet, soil from Ukraine, flints and silicon, energy cables and wifi will touch, intersect, transmit signals, warm up, conduct energy, and transform into alchemical and stream-art processes, and connections between Framer Framed in Amsterdam, StreamArtStudio in Kraków, Yermilov Center in Kharkiv, and Re:frame.TV in Kyiv...

Participants: Hlib Dovzhuk, Rom Dziadkiewicz, Sofiia Reznichenko, Lorenzo Airachi, AzjA, Ksenia Mirgorodska, and others.

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This event is co-organised by Framer Framed and the Network Archives Design and Digital Culture (NADD).