Les sources au travail: Galeries-anti-Galeries
Universite d'été de la Bibliotheque Kandinsky 2020

The Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s Summer University is a Musée National
d’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou research program installed on the very
premises of the museum. It focuses on modern and contemporary art
primary sources: archives, documentary materials, interviews, records,
as well as new forms of artistic appropriation and documentary
production. Interdisciplinary in format, the Summer University brings
together young researchers: historians, art historians,
anthropologists, sociologists, artists, critics and curators who share
a collective reflection with art professionals and various scholars
around primary source materials. It will be held in one of the museum
rooms, around a conference table, used at the same time as a workspace
and an exhibition device for the display of documents. Facsimiles,
reproductions, and archival material will be unfolded in the space
during the working sessions.
Several writing workshops will rhythm the program, as well as visits
to various documentary collections. Editorial work is at the heart of
the Summer University: a new issue of the “Journal de l’Université
d’été de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky”—conceived both as a critical
anthology based on the debates during the sessions and as an
experimental production—will be released at the end of the session.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Robert Barry initiated a series of
conceptual works famously related to Herbert Marcuse and critically
addressing the nature of art galleries as sites of both artistic and
intellectual production. Galleries were reputedly “Some places to
which we can come, and for a while “be free to think about what we are
going to do.” Echoing the permanent collection of the Musée national
d’art moderne dedicated this year to the 20th century art gallerists,
the 7th edition of Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University will
question the different twists and turns of the “art gallery” canon.
Working across primary sources, it will investigate recent phenomena
of galleries and alternative commercial spaces for art and exhibition
and implicitly the economic operations they drive.

Histories of taste, logics of collecting, sale-systems, alternative platforms of distribution and
exchange, network construction and management, institutional and
counter-institutional changes, this new edition will interrogate
alternative economies of artistic practices at stake in contemporary
structures, as well as their impact placed at a geostrategic level.
From Mexico to Istanbul, from Stockholm to Singapore by a detour to
Johannesburg, new economic forms of exchange are invented. It is also
imperative to imagine and build new tools for analyzing them.

The word “alternative” covers a wide range of meanings. The paper
proposals are expected to address the multiplicity of formats and
spaces as well as of the promoting figures and players: artist-run
spaces, apartment galleries, self-managed and hybrid alternative
venues, reinventing and redistributing practices; bookshop-galleries,
ephemeral sites and projects, Internet networks, collaborative and
community-based spaces. Case studies focused on the “anti-gallery”
profile can coexist with studies on precursory, historical
genealogies.

Interrogating primary sources, the 2020 Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer
University will go back to artistic initiatives that have lastingly
transgressed the canon of art gallery starting with the 1990s until
the present days and that have provoked new modes of creation,
representation and distribution of art.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

The Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s Summer University is aimed at young
fellows (PhD candidates, PhDs, PostDocs): historians, art historians,
anthropologists, sociologists, curators, librarians, graphic designers
and artists at large.

Application file:
– written proposal (4,500 characters/700 words) either in English or
in French, in PDF format.
– CV which should clearly assess the candidate’s language proficiency.
In order to apply is important to have a good command in both English
and French.

Candidates are expected to bring along a selection of sources used in
their research.

The proposal dossier will be sent to:
bibliotheque.kandinskycentrepompidou.fr by 8th March 2020.

The proposals will be evaluated by a scientific committee, in charge
of drawing up the final Summer University program. The Committee will
retain 25 projects.
All applicants, whether selected or not, will be personally contacted
before March 16th, 2020.

A participation of € 150 will be required from each participant, who
will be provided with tuition. The participation will cover
transportation on site and institutional entries.
If requested, the Centre Pompidou will be able to issue any required
certificate in order to apply for scholarship or funding from
foundations, museums, universities or research institutes.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITEE

Gallien Déjean, art historian, curator, Ecole nationale supérieure
d’arts de Paris-Cergy

Mica Gherghescu, historienne de l’art, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée
National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris

Céline Heytens, archivist, contemporary holdings, Bibliothèque
Kandinsky, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris

Dominique Liquois, reference librarian documentary and scientific
watch, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre
Pompidou, Paris

Yekhan Pinarligil, archivist, contemporary holdings, Bibliothèque
Kandinsky, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Didier Schulmann, conservateur, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National
d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris

For any inquiry, please write to:
bibliotheque.kandinskycentrepompidou.fr
Tel : +33 (0)1 44 78 46 65
Please find the entire call at the following link: https://carnetbk.hypotheses.org/2855