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Intangible Economies

November 18 – 20, 2011 / Fillip and Artspeak present Intangible Economies, a three-day forum that broadens the notion of economy beyond its financial dimension. Initiated by Fillip Associate Editor Antonia Hirsch, the Intangible Economies series focuses on the multifarious forms of exchange fuelled by affect and desire and speculatively investigates the fundamental role these affective transactions play in modes of representation and, accordingly, in cultural production.

The premise of Intangible Economies is the assumption that personal relationships are produced by economic activity, and that conversely, affect, and in particular desire, generates economic transactions. In the wake of recent global financial crises, it seems critical to interrogate the notion of “value” in a broader sense. Intangible Economies seeks to tackle the difficult task of tracing the role of affect in economic exchanges relative to artistic production, while also enacting the unruly force of such transactions.

Intangible Economies was initially developed through a series of texts published in Fillip magazine over the past year and will culminate in a book anthology published as part of Fillip’s ongoing Folio Series in 2012.

Livestreaming now: http://livestream.com/fillip

Schedule
Friday, November 18
7 pm: Antonia Hirsch
8 pm: Hadley+Maxwell

Saturday, November 19
11 am: Melanie Gilligan
12:30 pm: Lunch
1:30 pm: Monika Szewczyk
3 pm: Olaf Nicolai
4:30 pm: Clint Burnham (Response)

Sunday, November 20
11 am: Juan Gaitán
12:30 pm: Lunch
1:30 pm: Candice Hopkins
3 pm: Jan Verwoert
4:30 pm: Marina Roy (Response)

Location
GreyChurch Collection & Project Space
3092 Fraser Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada

Attendance to the forum is free but space will be extremely limited. We recommend arriving 10 minutes before the first talk even if you have preregistered. The event will be broadcast worldwide on Livestream.

Speakers
Juan A. Gaitán is a curator and writer. Recent exhibitions include I, YAMA, Istanbul; The End of Money, Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; and Models for Taking Part, Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto. His writing has been published in _Afterall_, the Exhibitionist, and _Mousse_ magazine, among others. He is teaching in the curatorial studies master’s program at CCA in San Francisco.

Melanie Gilligan is an artist and writer based in London and New York. Gilligan has written for magazines and journals such as Texte zur Kunst, Mute, Artforum, and Grey Room. In 2008, Gilligan released Crisis in the Credit System, a four-part fictional mini-drama, made specifically for internet viewing. Her most recent serial video works, Popular Unrest and Self-Capital, look at the current state of politics in the midst of capital’s ongoing crisis.

Antonia Hirsch is an artist whose work has been exhibited at ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Power Plant in Toronto, and the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, among others. Her work can be found in public collections such as that of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami Beach.

Hadley+Maxwell have been working together since 1997. Recent presentations of their work include the solo exhibitions Improperties, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam, and who can resist a Human? who doesn’t finger lies?, YYZ, Toronto, and the group exhibitions It’s the End of the World as We Know It, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse and The End of Money, Witte de With, Rotterdam.

Candice Hopkins is the Elizabeth Simonfay Curatorial Resident, Indigenous Art, at the National Gallery of Canada and formerly the director and curator of the exhibitions program at the Western Front, Vancouver. She is co-curator of the exhibition Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, opening in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in January 2011.

Olaf Nicolai is an artist who lives and works in Berlin. His work has been exhibited at documenta X, the Sydney Biennale 2002, and the 51st Venice Biennale, as well as the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, among others.

Monika Szewczyk is a writer, curator, and educator. Since 2008, she has been head of publications at Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art and a tutor at the Piet Zwart Institute, both in Rotterdam. She has contributed essays to numerous catalogues as well as journals such as Afterall,
 A Prior, Camera Austria, Canadian Art, F.R. David, C Magazine, Mousse, and e-flux journal, which has published installments of her ongoing project, Art of Conversation.

Jan Verwoert is a Berlin-based critic and author of Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, published by MIT Press and Afterall Books. Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, a collection of Verwoert’s essays, was recently co-published by Sternberg Press and Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.

Respondents
Clint Burnham teaches at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby and Surrey, British Columbia. His latest book is The Only Poetry that Matters: Reading the Kootenay School of Writing. His art criticism has appeared in Artforum, Fillip, and the Times-Colonist, and he has lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Witte de With, and the Carnegie Community Centre. He lives in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver.

Marina Roy is a Vancouver-based artist. She is associate professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. She is currently working on a book about biopolitics titled Queuejumping.

The Intangible Economies forum is generously hosted by Jane Irwin and Ross Hill through the GreyChurch Collection & Project Space and made possible with support from the City of Vancouver and the Canada Council for the Arts. Olaf Nicolai is a guest of the Goethe-Institut as part of its Vancouver Satellite Series. Additional support provided by Best Western Hotels and Dunlevy Snackbar.

image: Fifty pfennig emergency mark, Konstanz, Germany, 1919.