Decommissioned

You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black- tarred street being swallowed by speed; ['] When you arrive in your driveway and turn off the car, you remain behind the wheel another ten minutes. You fear the night is being locked in and coded on a cellular level and want time to function as a power wash. Sitting there staring at the closed garage door you are reminded that a friend once told you there exists a medical term'''John Henryism'''for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the build up of erasure. Sherman James, the researcher who came up with the term, claimed the physiological costs were high. You hope by sitting in silence you are bucking the trend.

– Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

In a series of ten lectures, Decommissioned seeks to address how strategies of disavowal, inactivity and transition are employed in contemporary art and design. When encountering cultural bias, uncertainty and co-option across the arts, how can the dominant flows of information, language, policy and ideology be circumvented? Curators, sociologists, artists, politicians, academics, queer-thinkers, bio-designers, film-theorists and other, will respond through diverse fields of exciting and critical research.

This series is curated and convened by Dr. Stephen Wilson and is staged in collaboration with Chelsea College of Arts Postgraduate Community and the University of the Arts London, CCW Graduate School.

For more information and to book tickets please visit the ICA Website

Coming up in the Decommissioned Series…

Ba ak Ert r | Building Barricades: Resistance and the Untimely | 27th Jan 2016

Sook-Kyung Lee | Radical acts: Political consciousness in Asian art | 10th February 2016

 

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