Institute of Contemporary Arts

From Violence to Endurance: Extreme Curating

A talk held at the ICA on 24 September 2008.

During the first Fluxus event at the ICA, 1962's Festival of Misfits, it is reported that artist Robin Page kicked his electric guitar off the stage and down the stairs of the Dover Street building and into the street. The July 1966 press release for The Destruction in Art Symposium (at the Africa Centre) announced that: "The main objective of DIAS was to focus attention on the element of destruction in Happenings and other art forms, and to relate this destruction in society." In January 1964 the ICA was given over to the theme of Violence, while that November Cornelius Cardew warned that "Experimental music is the most DEADLY form of TOTAL ABSTRACTION ever devised... INSTANTLY you will see how to DESTROY ILLUSION AND DRAW ATTENTION TO THE FACTS."

Can curators and artists draw attention to the 'facts' of an often violent world through extreme methods of curation? Is it possible through extreme methods and content to avoid mere spectacle within the gallery? Speakers: artists Stuart Brisley and Mark McGowan; Lauren Wright, curator Long Weekend, Tate Modern; Yasmin Canvin, curator AfterShock: Conflict, Violence and Resolution in Contemporary Art, Sainsbury Centre; artist and novelist Stewart Home. Chair: Dr Dorothée Brill, lecturer and curator.

Developed in association with Ben Cranfield and the London Consortium. Ben Cranfield is a collaborative doctoral award student at the ICA and London Consortium, currently working on an intellectual history of the arts in postwar Britain.

In association with the London Consortium.