Kasa Gallery Presents the Talk Deadly Cuts to the Arts at Art-Athina

Kasa Gallery, as part of its year-long program on art and economics, announces a talk by Lanfranco Aceti at the Art-Athina – International Contemporary Art Fair. The talk, chaired by Artemis Potamianou, Curator & Co-ordinator for Art-Athina 2013: Contemporaries & Platform Project, will provide an overview of the activities of Kasa Gallery and the partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC) and its new initiative, Deadly Cuts to the Arts.

‘Deadly Cuts to the Arts: The Art of Survival, Resistance or Fight?’—presented in conjunction with an international online survey titled Deadly Cuts to the Arts—will explore the contemporary issues that artists and cultural creators face in order to develop an analysis that moves beyond some of the more institutionalized experiences and discourses on contemporary social failures.

As the art community continues to see a slew of cuts across artistic fields and across countries, it becomes clearer that the financial crisis is not abating. Cities in Europe—even within Northern European countries—have been hit hard by failed investments in financial schemes and funds that continue to reveal their rigged structures and malpractices within both the banking and political systems.

This year sees numerous talks and art organizations presenting and debating topics on the current economic crisis. Nevertheless some of the most pertinent questions that should be addressed are: Is the current capitalistic framework and its economics a form of violence? What should the response be from the art world to economic violence? Is survival a good enough strategy, and what kind of legacy will it leave? Or should we be looking at more active forms of resistance? Should the advocacy of social fight and economic redistribution be part of the economic approach of artistic practices? Or should we just ignore the whole problem and blissfully bathe in a ‘simulated’ concern for current social realities?

Kasa Gallery would like to acknowledge the support of Art-Athina – International Contemporary Art Fair, the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC), Operational and Curatorial Research (OCR), International Association for Visual Culture, Kasa Gallery, Sabanci University, Chelsea College, Westminster University and Goldsmiths College.

Sunday May 19, 2013, 15–16h

Art-Athina – International Contemporary Art Fair
Faliro Pavilion (Taekwondo)
Hellenic Olympic Properties
2 Moraitini str., 175 61 Palaio Faliro
Athens, Greece