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Photo: IHA

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Photo: Institute for Human Activities

A Gentrification Program

Institute for Human Activities

If we feel art should fully embrace the terms and conditions of its own existence, it may be good to inquire where art has a bigger impact on social reality. Is it at the sites where critical artistic interventions take place or at the sites of art’s public reception, in the galleries, museums, and at biennials where these pieces are subsequently shown, discussed, and sold?

 

Eight hundred kilometers upstream from Kinshasa, on the river Congo, the Institute for Human Activities mobilizes the modalities of art production and launches a five-year Gentrification Program. The opening seminar of this program takes place in a specially created bamboo settlement in Congo and investigates the gap in criticality that arises in the transfer from the zone of artistic production to the zone of reception. At the same time, it is the kick-off of the actual process of gentrification.

 

This seminar is organized together with, among others, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Dutch public broadcaster VPRO, and the 7th Berlin Biennale. The settlement functions as a venue of the Berlin Biennale. If you are unable to come to Congo, there is an opportunity to attend a video report of the event at KW in Berlin during the last days of the Biennale.

by IHA

The Institute for Human Activities was founded in 2010.

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