AICA International would like to express its solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement.
AICA International condemns systemic racial injustices in all forms and in all institutions worldwide, particularly in art museums, galleries, and educational institutions.
AICA International will devote a special virtual noticeboard, on its website for the posting of stories from art professionals from all over the world, who have experienced racism, managed by its Censorship and Freedom of Expression Committee that has the mandate to monitor and report censorship and discrimination of all sorts. Also, we will make available our resources and our global member outreach to organizations spearheading reforms in policies of employment, acquisitions, representation of art collections in art museums, galleries and art colleges to institutionalize equal rights for all art professionals.
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Black Lives Matter
Photo: Lorie Shaull. The George Floyd mural in Minneapolis. USA.
AICA-International and
Conference - AICA Turkey
Firat Arapoglu informs that AICA Turkey offers to take the initiative, lead the planning and to meet the other requirements of organising an international online Conference with an open call for participation to experts from various disciplines. They strongly believe that proposing such a conference would be an important and purposeful project for the future. They suggested the theme: “Art World, Reflexes and Alternative New Worlds”. The conference would be held in November. Mrs. Cigdem Zeytin, AICA Turkey states that:
“During the Covid-19 pandemic some governments moved into rapid arrangements to protect the art space while others found it difficult to support or put the art world on an alternative footing. However many of the art producers continue their working lives as freelancers and some of those affiliated with institutions struggle with financial cuts. Such an intense slowdown and unpredictable future puts us all under stress. But this new era also provokes us to break our habits and generate ideas to create new possibilities. Although this period is a crisis it may be a sign of new opportunities and perhaps more effective new beginnings.”
A new book by Kim Levin,
ELSEWHERE
Elsewhere – The Tainted Garden and other Essays on Art was launched by Booklocker Editor, in the U.S. Written between 1991 and 2017, Kim Levin´s essays put the focus on art and issues of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Levin examines the transitional period from the end of postmodernism to the dilemmas of the present. In these 35 essays, many of which appeared only in translation elsewhere, Levin discusses such relevant “ancestors” as Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Jean Tinguely, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Ana Mendieta, and Mike Kelley as well as newer artists. Linking these essays are the concepts of selective amnesia and creative misunderstanding, plus changes in the nature of time, space, the future, and the meaning of “elsewhere.” From the first essay, “Art That Makes Itself,” to the last, “Everywhere and Nowhere: From the Myth of Progress to the Sixth Extinction,” the undercurrent is an awareness that we exist in the era of the Anthropocene.
WEBINARS IN JULY
Webinar with KIM LEVIN on her new book Elsewhere – The Tainted Garden and other Essays on Art. Conversation with Norman Kleeblat (AICA U.S) and Henry Meyric-Hughes (AICA UK).
Language: English. Date, Time and link will be informed.
Webinar with TICIO ESCOBAR. Conversation with Adriana Almada and Lia Colombino.
Language: Spanish. Date, time and link will be informed soon.
Ticio Escobar. Photo: Bienal de Curitiba.
Kim Levin. Photo: Wikipedia.org
AICA IN FOCUS
Jean Bundy. Photo: personal archive.
Photo by Carl Johnson of a fly fisherman in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Keeping the environment pristine is good for recreation too!.
Award Committee – Interim Chair
JEAN BUNDY volunteered to become Interim Awards Chair. Presently, she is researching past prize contests, and thinking about how to approach the next Congress, when one emerges. Anyone who has information or history to share can email her ([email protected]).
An information and a thought from the Envoy on Climate Change
Jean Bundy announces that Susana Sulic will join her as CC- Envoy Co-Chairs, which will give AICA art-environmental presence in Europe and the Americas.
And she sent us a thought:
“Coronavirus has temporarily shelved conversations about CC, although some see a connection between Global Warming, and an increase in invasive germs worldwide. Good news-- the hole at the top of the Earth has shrunk, and canals of Venice are blue/green. The article ´Climate Changes Everything (Art in America May, 2020)´ reminisces about Post-war architecture, which designed Natural light/heat to enter a structure, being rethought because these elements now become irritants. And a sub-genre to ‘Environmental Art’ that generally contextualizes Global Warming’s negativities is ‘Ecological Art’ which depicts Nature more positively. Perhaps more amusing than enlightening is Kim Stanley Robinson’s book, ‘New York 2140’ which imagines a futuristic water-logged Manhattan. Jean Bundy ([email protected])”.
WHO´S WHO
Special news from our members
This year LIAM KELLY celebrates 40 years as an active member of AICA. Liam became a member in 1980 and presented his first paper at the AICA congress in Dublin that year. He was elected President of the Irish Section from1990 to 1998. During his tenure as President he organized, inter alia, the AICA international annual congress, ‘Art and Centres of Conflict - Outer and Inner Realities’ in Northern Ireland, in1997.
Liam was international General Treasurer from 1990 to 1998. He has also served as International Vice-President AICA for four terms. In 2010 he was appointed inaugural Chair of the AICA Censorship and Freedom of Expression Commission and currently chairs the AICA Congress Committee. Over these 40 years he has attended 38 AICA annual congresses and presented 18 AICA congress papers as well as chairing/participating in a number of congress panels, e.g. Poland, Japan, Croatia, Paraguay/Brazil, Taiwan and Germany. At present he is Emeritus Professor of Irish Visual Culture at Ulster University, Belfast.
Liam Kelly on the right. During the Taiwan Congress in 2004.
Jean-Marc Poinsot, Henry Meyric Hughes, Marc Partouche, Mathilde Roman, Joke de Wolf, Liam Kelly, Jean Bundy, Lisbeth Rebollo Gonçalves (editor) collaborated on this Newsletter.
Translation: Sonia Recasens (French); Jesus Pedro Lorente (Spanish).
VISIT US ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Archives and Living Memory
The video of the international symposium, Constellations critiques, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the foundation of the Archives de la critique d’art / Archives of Contemporary Art Criticism, of which AICA is one of the three principal stakeholders, was held on Wednesday 4 March and is now being streamed (in French) at https://www.lairedu.fr/media/video/conference/mot-daccueil-constellations-critiques/
No. 54 of the bilingual review, Critique d’art (spring / summer 2020) is now out. One year’s subscription normally costs 50 euro for two issues, including postage, but is offered free in the first year, with free online access to all back numbers, going back to May 1993. Enquiries to: [email protected]
The Archives are open to new projects and proposals for collaboration. They are now beginning a push for increased internationalization and closer involvement of AICA members worldwide in their activities and in the bilingual journal, Critique d’art.
©2020 AICA. All rights reserved.
eNEWSLETTER JULY2020
This JULY NEWSLETTER is written in a period of Covid-19 pandemic, with the Coronavirus spreading or resurging in many places and in a scenario of growing effervescence of international social movements railing against racism. Black Lives Matter spontaneously spread to all continents. AICA International stands solidarity with the movements against racism and supports all manner of eradicating social injustice.
Tomáš Štrauss,
ART CRITICS OF THE WORLD SERIES
The book of essays in English translation by the slovak art critic and theorist, Tomáš Štrauss: Beyond the Great Divide, has now been published, but the distribution of review copies has been held up by the Coronavirus epidemic. The book will now be launched in the early European autumn.
Subject to confirmation of funding, the next publication in the series, Art Critics of the World (series editor, Jean-Marc Poinsot), published by Les Presses du Réel and AICA Press, will be an anthology of critical writings about artists by German critic, Walter Grasskamp, edited by Danièle Perrier, Jean-Marc Poinsot and Henry Meyric Hughes. The author has already made a selection of 22 essays going back 30 years, which will be published in English in hardback and in German on-line by January 2021, with the aid of a 10.000 euro grant from the German Federal Culture Foundation.
Other projects in the pipeline include the proposed volume of essays by the late Adelaide de Juan (Cuba), work on which is ready to begin again, according to the latest information received by Carlos Acero; Sarah Wilson also still wishes to be kept in mind for a future publication in the series.
Part 2 of the on-line 70th Anniversary Commemoration publication (eds. J-MP and HMH), which features episodes in the histories of the national sections, has already been launched. Contributions from individual AICA members will be welcome, up to an extended deadline of 15 September 2020, with a publication date at the end of December.
Cartography Project
Acknowledging the lack of visibility of the actions carried out by its 56 National Sections, the board of AICA Int. decided during its meetings in Cologne in October 2019 to map AICA sections activities, country by country. In order to complete this cartography, we drafted an online survey in 3 languages (French, English and Spanish), and contacted each section’s president in February and again in March and April in order to gather as much information as possible from them.
The goal was to have a better grasp of the work done by national sections all around the world over the past 10 years and to start reflecting on how to better promote and publicize, both within and outside the network, the wide ranging activities, global reach and diversity of AICA.
As a result of the covid-19 crisis, the 2020 year will not always be taken into consideration in the analysis as it won’t always reflect the sections’ regular activities. Twenty eight sections responded to the survey. They represent 50% of the 56 sections, 3480 members, 72%of the total number of members.
Partenariat AICA / Switchonpaper
On the initiative of Mathilde Roman, treasurer of AICA Int., and following a call for contributions, the journal Switchonpaper has commissioned 12 critics from different countries on subjects combining art and society. Texts written in the critic’s original language will all be translated into French and English and published online. This project was selected as part of the Manifesta 13 Marseille Parallel program in the South and the publications will be put online in fall of 2020 to follow the calendar of the event.
In response to the Covid crisis19, Mathilde Roman also launched an investigation into the economic conditions of art criticism by speaking with the various AICA sections. A first summary will be published on Switchonaper during the summer.
A first article has just been published on Switch(on)Paper: https://www.switchonpaper.com/en/art-criticism-in-the-face-of-the-crisis/
