Confirmed speakers include: Marc James Léger, Jacqueline Rose, Andrea Phillips, Esther Shalev Gerz, Gertrud Sandqvist, Henk Slager, Joanna Warsza, Jason Bowman, Sally Tallant, Ingrid Elam, Annika Lundgren, Mika Hannula and …

Access the conference brochure here.

This conference will mark the conclusion of the Göteborg Biennial by interrogating the overarching thematics adopted by this year’s programme and signaled in the biennial’s title: “Play! Recapturing the Radical Imagination”. The conference is a partnership between Valand Academy of Arts, the Göteborg Biennial of International Contemporaray Art, and EARN, the European Artistic Research Network.

• In what sense can we speak of the imagination as “radical”?
• Is “the recapture of the radical imagination” about regaining something lost or reclaiming something stolen or remembering something forgotten or rebuilding something broken?
• In a period characterized by creativity rhetorics (“creative cities”, “creative hubs”, “creative class”) and dominated by the imperative of consumption to “enjoy”, what might the instruction to “play!” mean?

The conference is structured through a series of “provocations” where keynote speakers are invited to provoke and challenge the audience in response to these themes. These provocations lead to a series of table talks where participants can then respond in smaller discussion groups to the speakers. These are interwoven with a series of conversations where artists enter into dialogue on the relationships between their current enquiries and these wider questions.

Admission to conference is free, however spaces are limited, so booking is required.
Booking will open 1/9/2013 and will be by email.