The Art Brussels art fair is taking place from 25 until 27 April. BAM and Art Brussels are co-organising a Curator’s Programme and a series of debates. BAM also supports the workshop “On & For Production” initiated and organsied by Auguste Orts.

Curator’s Programme

BAM and Art Brussels are pleased to collaborate for the second year on the Art Brussels Curator’s Programme. Each year, we invite a select number of internationally recognised curators (institutional as well as independent) to visit the fair and attend a tailor-made programme, which includes special visits and guided tours to the most important cultural institutions and contemporary art centres in Brussels, as well as custom-made studio visits with artists and a day trip to other Ghent and Antwerp. The programme also features several professional networking events where we aim to bring the curators in contact with artists, colleagues and other professionals from the Belgian art scene.

For more information about the Curator’s Programme, please contact Lissa Kinnaer: lissa.kinnaer@bamart.be

Debates

– Friday 25th April, from 2.30 pm until 3.30 pm at Art Brussels
‘Changing City Dynamics and Visual Arts: Antwerp, Berlin, Brussels, Cologne’

More then any other art form, visual arts seems to move and act on the waves of the ever changing city dynamics, which are always a mixture of economy, politics, urbanism, media and hype. Artists and curators are attracted by available space and open sphere where professionals meet and take initiative easily, while private galleries are interested in the presence of a market. Cities go up and down, sometimes based on temporary influx of important curators which are hired for a short term and private galleries and collectors which move between cities. But what’s hot today might be down tomorrow. More interesting is to see how to use this attention to invest in long term and stable initiatives, to build a strong connection between art and the city and to analyse how cities which relatively close to each other can benefit from each other.

Panel: Eric Corijn sociologist, professor at Free University Brussels (VUB), Dr. Brigitte Franzen (Ludwig Forum Aachen), Martin Germann (S.M.A.K., Gent), Erika Hock (artist, Brussels), Anna Tilroe (art critic and curator, Amsterdam). Moderator: Lieven De Cauter.

– On Saturday 26 April, BAM and Art Brussels organise thematic debates about ‘The Role of the Gallery, Beyond Commerce: Towards a New Paradigm of Appreciation’. They will be moderated by Nathalie Hartjes, artistic director of Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem) and coordinator of the Gallerist Programme of de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam.

• Part I: Private Meets Public: To Whom Are We Indebted? The Fiction of Financial Independence – Can We Make It On Our Own? 

2:00 pm – 2:45 pm
Panel: Victor Gisler (Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich), Stella Lohaus (archivist, curator and one of the founders of HELD, Antwerpen), Nathaniel Pitt (artist, galerist, curator and director of Division by Labour and PITT projects, Worcester), Jonas Zakaitis (curator, editor and writer, Vilnius).

• Part II: The Production of Content in the Gallery Space 

3 pm – 3:45 pm
Panel: Marie José Burki (artist, Brussels) JJ Charlesworth (art critic and editor of ArtReview magazine, London), Silvia Dauder (gallerist, ProjecteSD, Barcelona), Elizabeth Dee (gallerist and co-founder Independent, New York).

• Part III: Are We Really That Global? The Gallery: a Homestead or an Agent?

4 pm – 4:45 pm
Panel: Yasmin Atassi (Green Art Gallery, Dubai), Lucrezia Cippitelli (independent curator and researcher, Professor of Aesthetics at the Art Academy of L’Aquila, Rome), Rose Issa (gallerist, curator, writer publicist, Rose Issa Projects, Londen), Edi Muka (curator, Public Art Agency, Stockholm)

Click here for more information on the debates.

Practical information: you can register by sending an e-mail toinschrijvingen@bamart.be before 23 April or call +32 9 267 90 40 (BAM) with the date and title of the debate(s) of your choice.

Open Workshop “On & For Production”

“On & For Production. Trying out a practical context for the production of artists’ films” is a project initiated by Auguste Orts (BE) in collaboration with LUX (GB), Contour Mechelen (BE) and Art Brussels (BE) with the support of Argos Center for Art and Media, BAM, the Flanders Audio-visual Fund and Media Desk Flanders. Moderator: Maria Palacios Cruz (Brussels/London).

Click here for more information about the project and the workshop.

Location workshop: Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF), Blvd. Bischoffsheim 38, 1000 Brussels
Free admission but limited seats. Please register by sending an e-mail to anna@augusteorts.be.

Other information about the art fair:
www.artbrussels.com