Civil Action Between Crime and Creation

In his lecture Gielen analyses the relationship between art, politics and the public space in the creative city. He looks at how artists and other creative ‘workers’ respond to contemporary neoliberal policy by taking civil action in the grey zone between creativity and criminality. The lecture is based on research Gielen did for the European Cultural Foundation about the role of art and cultural organizations in building a transnational civil space. The research resulted in an analysis of how civil action takes place and how art can play a pivotal role in a so-called ‘civil chain’. The results of the research are published in the books No Culture, No Europe; Interrupting the City and The Art of Civil Action.

Pascal Gielen is full professor of sociology of art and politics at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (Antwerp University) where he leads the Culture Commons Quest Office (CCQO). Gielen is editor-in-chief of the international book series Arts in Society. In 2016 he became laureate of the Odysseus grant for excellent international scientific research of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders in Belgium. His research focuses on creative labour, the institutional context of the arts and on cultural politics.

His books include Being an Artist in Post-Fordist Times (ed. Gielen & De Bruyne, 2009); Mobile Autonomy (ed. Dockx & Gielen, 2015); The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude. Global Art, Politics and Post-Fordism (Valiz, 2009, 2011 and 2015); Creativity and other Fundamentalisms (Mondriaan, 2014); Community Art. The Politics of Trespassing (eds. De Bruyne & Gielen, 2011); Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm. Realism versus Cynicism (ed. Gielen & De Bruyne, 2012); Institutional Attitudes: Instituting Art in a Flat World (ed. Gielen, 2013); and The Ethics of Art (ed. Cools & Gielen,2014).

TASC Ablett & Brafield

TASC Ablett & Brafield is a collaboration between two Bergen based artists, Amber Ablett and Stacy Brafield. As well as sharing artistic interests in conversation and performance, the two artists found that they also shared a background in and a love of food. Ablett and Brafield began TASC in 2013 to explore how sharing food could be a way to open up discussion around art, culture and society.