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5. – 7.9.2010. / workshops in Home of Croatian Association Visual of Artists lecture Hall (to see program scroll down)

7.9.2010. Tuesday / opening event / 6pm – 8pm

Slought in Transit is an ongoing series of public programs promoting cultural dialogue and institutional exchange. The latest installment will be presented at the Home of Croatian Association Visual of Artists, in Zagreb, Croatia, and will take place from September 5-7, 2010. It will include public programs with artists, curators, and architects including Katherine Carl, Aaron Levy, Armin Linke, Osvaldo Romberg, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (see below), and others, with a companion installation in the Home of Croatian Association Visual of Artists exploring the activities of the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. This program has been made possible through the generous support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, New York and is presented in collaboration with the Virtual Museum of the Avant-garde, which is assisting in its coordination. For more information, please contact Branko Franceschi, the local organizer of the project.

In the spirit of the conceptual information shows of the early 1970s, the exhibition component of Slought in Transit at the Home of Croatian Association Visual of Artists takes the form of an archival exploration revisiting past programs at Slought Foundation about contemporary art, architecture, and social theory. Juxtaposing video documentation of these projects with artists such as Peter Weibel, Gary Hill, Dennis Oppenheim, Werner Herzog, and Vito Acconci alongside posters, publications, and a series of live discursive events, we communicate Slought Foundation’s signature mix of art, culture, and politics to the public of Zagreb.

Live events have been organized in conjunction with the project in Zagreb. They revolve around the question of “Political Education,” and explore the way in which the city of Zagreb can be thought of as a political school. Organized by Katherine Carl, they include:

5.9.2010. Sunday / Home of Croatian Association Visual of Artists lecture hall
1pm: Conversation between Maroje Mrduljas and Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss on Continuing Modernism
7pm: Discussion with Darko Fritz on New Tendencies, and Iva Rada Jankovic on Ivan Kozaric and Gorgona, moderated by Katherine Carl

6.9.2010. Monday / depart from Home of Croatian Association Visual of Artists
10am: Photo safari with Berlin-based photographer Armin Linke to an abandoned political school near Kumrovec. Contact for information info@slought.org

7.9.2010. Tuesday / Home of Croatian Association Visual of Artists lecture hall
5pm: Presentations and roundtable discussion reflecting on the question: how does the city of Zagreb generate political education today and historically through art and design? In dialogue with Branko Franceschi on Virtual Museum of the Avant-garde, Osvaldo Romberg on broader questions of cities as sites of political education, and Aaron Levy on the Perpetual Peace Project

On Slought Foundation and the idea of Slought in Transit

Philosophers, theologians and scientists have historically maligned curiosity, and the experimental disposition more generally, as a lack of specialization, a sort of intellectual futility or vacuousness. At Slought Foundation, we have diverged from this conceptualization, arguing instead for curiosity as a curatorial methodology. Curiosity, for us, entails a resistance towards entrenched hierarchies, the fostering of dissent, and the discouragement of habitual forms of thinking. It is this spirit of curiosity that we hope to convey through the Slought in Transit project and its associated programs.

Catherine Liu, in her essay ‘Auditions for the Future,’ in Rrrevolutionnaire: Conversations in Theory, (Slought Books, 2006), similarly argues that “What Slought has done is something civic-minded-if that sounds terribly pedestrian, it is, in the most literal sense of the term. Its location does promise something to the flâneur of Walnut St., the curious person just out for a walk. This aleatory encounter with something anachronistic like a ’society’ or ‘academy’ or a cult takes place in a white cube space meant for the display of contemporary art. Theory has proven disappointing not because it has not necessarily led to great social, political or cultural change, but because it seems to have been fully institutionalized. But there is still the possibility that something happens within this way of thinking and talking that is both expansive and explosive when it addresses the instability and the historicity of the institutions in which it finds itself precariously at home.”

History of the Slought in Transit Project

Slought in Transit has previously traveled to Galerie Heike Curtze, Berlin and Zone:Contemporary Art, New York (2007), la maison rouge, fondation antoine de galbert, Paris (2008), Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and Kasa Galeri, Sabancı Üniversitesi, Istanbul (both 2010). Each articulation is accompanied by a limited-edition hardcover publication, published in conjunction with the institutional affiliate.

Exhibition was made possible thanks to the grant by Ministry of Culture Republic of Croatia and Trust for Mutual Understanding