Driven by an experimental and collaborative methodology and shuttling between Buenos Aires, Lisbon, and Bergen, my curatorial research focuses on the intersections of hospitality and economics in contemporary artistic practice. I understand hospitality as an unwieldy tangle of philosophical concept, social and political practices, and agile metaphors. I’m interested in the ways in which economics and finance become embodied, infiltrate language, perception, and desire, and inflect social relations. A few questions drive my inquiry: they straddle theory, practice, process, and performance. How are contemporary artists looking at inflation and speculation in economic, political, and social terms? What does economics owe to the philosophical concept of hospitality? For instance, aren’t the economic concepts of inflation and speculation informed by hospitality? What about forms like bubbles and crashes? Aren’t they produced by the “arrival” of a “stranger”? What role has hospitality played in the emergence of these concepts and the dissemination of these specific forms? What do economics and finance owe to the social practices of hospitality? Aren’t these practices the latest markets for finance’s advances via debt? Does hospitality underpin financial “forms” like futures and derivatives? Can hospitality be used to upend the dictatorship of economics and finance today? What role might hospitality play in the emergence and dissemination of new, more just economies?
This research is creating a constellation of outcomes, including a temporary research platform and a residency structure in Buenos Aires, a website, talks, a publication, and a series of variously scaled solo and group exhibitions tailored to their presentation contexts. As finance spins off new forms to infiltrate every context, so does the exhibition, which could be called “economy-specific”.
A talk by Sylvie Fortin
An event organized by AiR 351
Open Studios Fall, Nov 23, 2024 / 3pm
(residency)
(program)