Institutional attitudes

• What is the future role of art institutions?
• Offers theoretical insights on the dire situation of art institutions today, as well as support and strategies for improvement

Today’s networked society offers us many wondrous possibilities of information, communication, mobility, and flexibility. It also has a latent side effect: it makes the world ‘flat’. Time-honoured hierarchies, traditions, elites and canons are subject to eroding movements. In such a flattened, ‘horizontal’ world, art institutions are finding it hard to survive. After all, institutions traditionally represent ‘verticality’: historic profundity, tradition, values, dignity, and certainty.
In Institutional Attitudes the future identity of art institutes is explored. Will they be able to create profundity and height again? Is this desirable? And if so, what would these new vertical ways look like? Or is it better to develop horizontal strategies in order to react more to this flat world in a better way? ‘When flatness rules, we all feel the need to stand up to get some air. It is exactly this breathing space that Institutional Attitudes hopes to create.’

Contributors: Kenny Cupers, Bart De Baere, Ann Demeester, Jimmie Durham, Alex Farquharson, Mark Fisher, Pascal Gielen, Marc Jacobs, Sonja Lavaert, Thijs Lijster, Isabell Lorey, Markus Miessen, Chantal Mouffe, Gerald Raunig, Patricia Reed, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Blake Stimson