Contemporary Art and the Rebuilding of Social Trust | Chus Martínez | Plattform | Bergen Kunsthall

Bergen Kunsthall proudly hosts an online lecture featuring the acclaimed curator, art historian, and writer Chus Martínez. The lecture is part of our series Plattform, and is organised on the occasion of this year’s Festival Exhibition “Moon Bag” with Tori Wrånes.

Oracular Thinking and Democracy
Contemporary Art and the Rebuilding of Social Trust

One of the core questions I have in my mind these days is: what could serve as a civic medium? In times when political speech and political public debates are unsatisfactory or so deeply unable to fulfil our ethical expectations, art—especially its public forms, like the exhibition—can serve as a civic medium. I believe that the current interest in storytelling, narrative forms, and indigenous epistemologies and mythic thinking is connected with our aspiration to find collective ways of restoring civic life. That is: The sphere of shared, public engagement where individuals participate in shaping the moral, cultural, and political directions of their communities.

Public orientation is broken for many reasons, the often very loaded dynamic exchanges and exposure in social media, the feeling that we are too far apart from each other, the growing powerlessness sentiment in the citizens… For all these reasons, it is worth revisiting the claims that point to contemporary art as “remote” and unable to connect with the concerns of general audiences and invest in reversing this claim.

Contemporary art exhibitions could and should assist all of us, professionals and not, to reorient our public life towards matters that affect our near future and with languages that foster personal and direct exchanges among individuals. I would go through several examples, a very recent one now, the Ljubljana Biennial and will talk about audiences and art.

Bio
Born in Spain, Chus Martínez has a background in philosophy and art history. She is currently the Head of the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Switzerland, and associate curator of TBA21 in Madrid/Venice. She is currently the Artistic Director of the 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, running till October 12th. She is a board member of CIMAM (International Committee for Museums). She serves on the advisory boards of numerous international art institutions, including Castello di Rivoli, Turin and Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin. She has been the Chief Curator at El Museo Del Barrio, New York and dOCUMENTA (13) Head of Department. Previously, she was Chief Curator at MACBA, Barcelona, and Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Martínez has organised numerous exhibitions and publications with contemporary artists. She lectures and writes regularly, including numerous catalogue texts and critical essays, and is a regular contributor to international journals. Recent publications are The Complex Answer. On Art as a Non-Binary Intelligence, Sternberg Press, 2023; Like This. Natural Intelligence As Seen by Art. Hatje Cantz Verlag (2022); Coding Care (edited together with Sabine Himmelsbach), Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2022, The Wild Book of Inventions, Sternberg Press (2020), Corona Tales. Let Life Happen to You, Lenz, (2021). Upcoming exhibitions: “Search for Life”, TBA21 at Thyssen Museum, Madrid; “Doblad mis Amores”, Collegium February 2023; “Living in Joy”, Art Sonje March 2023; Mathilde Rossier, Fondation Pernod Ricard, May 2023.