Video courtesy Brace Brace

DIS Magazine and Red Bull Studios invite you to ECOLOGY 2: Art & Commerce.

3-5pm
Saturday, March 22nd
220 W. 18th St

Can art, as the ultimate benchmark of connoisseurial consumerism, be mobilized through commercial processes to redirect networked flows of power, capital, and desire? Introduced by artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas, this discussion brings together philosopher Benjamin Woodard, curators Agatha Wara and Victoria Ivanova, artist and writer Gean Moreno, and theorist Suhail Malik to address the political horizons of accelerating rather than resisting technology to inflect rather than oppose intensified trajectories of capitalism.

This event is the second in an ongoing series of discussions addressing the political economy of art’s increasingly networked condition. Last year’s ECOLOGY 1: Art & Democracy took place at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (Berlin) with Hito Steyerl, Timur Si-Qin, Daniel Keller and Christopher Kulendran Thomas.

ECOLOGY 2: Art & Commerce, is presented by Brace Brace, a luxury safety wear and emergency equipment brand by Annika Kuhlmann and Christopher Kulendran Thomas.

Followed by drinks compliments of Reyka.

About the speakers

Gean Moreno is an artist and writer based in Miami. His work has been exhibited at MoCA North Miami, Kunsthaus Palais Thurn und Taxis in Bregenz, Institute of Visual Arts in Milwaukee, Haifa Museum in Israel, Arndt & Partner in Zürich, and Invisible-Exports in New York. In 2008, he founded [NAME] Publications and in 2013 he edited the e-flux journal on Accelerationist Aesthetics.

Agatha Wara is a Bolivian-born, U.S. raised curator and writer based in Oslo. She engages with art on a “pre-political” level that merges information and matter, the biological and the cultural, and subjects and objects. She is co-founder of 101Tokyo Contemporary Art Fair in Tokyo and former Head of Project to the Bergen Assembly Triennial. Wara has written on the work of Yngve Holen, Katja Novitskova, Timur Si-Qin, and Anne de Vries, and is currently co-curator of DISown.

Suhail Malik’s recent series of talks, On the Necessity of Art’s Exit from Contemporary Art, at Artists’ Space (N.Y.) addressed art’s axioms and its political economy. Malik is Visiting Faculty at CCS Bard (N.Y.) and Programme Co-Director of MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths (London). Recent publications include “The Value of Everything” in Texte zur Kunst (2014), “The Ruling Elite Have Feelings Too” in The New Reader (2014), “Tainted Love: Art’s Ethos and Capitalization” (with Andrea Phillips) in Art and Its Commercial Markets (2012) and “You Are Here” for Manifesta 8 (2010).

Victoria Ivanova’s curatorial practice integrates strategies from various fields (such as human rights, law, economics and contemporary art) into situation-specific projects. In 2010, she co-founded IZOLYATSIA, a cultural space on the territory of a former insulation materials factory in Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine. Victoria holds a degree in Politics and Philosophy from the University of Leeds, a Graduate Diploma in Law from The College of Law (London), and an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is currently curating ‘Dark Velocity’ to open at CCS Bard (N.Y.) on April 13, 2014.

Benjamin Woodard’s doctoral research focuses on the relations between thought and nature, speculative physics and pragmatism, and pessimism and ecology. His contemporary philosophy blog Naught Thought addresses Speculative Realism (particularly the work of Iain Hamilton Grant and Ray Brassier) in relation to nature, posthumanism, weird fiction, and the physical sciences. Woodard’s first book Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation and the Creep of Life is out on Zero books and On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy is available from Punctum Books.

Christopher Kulendran Thomas’ work manipulates the processes by which art is distributed. Solo exhibitions include Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (Berlin), the Centre for Contemporary Art (Tel Aviv) and Mercer Union (Toronto). His work was recently included in Tate Liverpool’s historical survey ‘Art Turning Left: How Values Changed Making 1789-2013’ and can be seen now as part of ‘Fulfilment Centre’ currently at The Sunday Painter (London) and soon in the forthcoming exhibitions ‘911,000 B.C.’ at Grand Century (N.Y.), ‘Dark Velocity’ at CCS Bard (N.Y.) and ‘Art In The Face Of Radical Evil’ at The Air Inn Venice (L.A.).

DISown is open to the public at the Red Bull Studios. Come by 220 W 18th to shop products created by over 30 artists. The store is open on weekends from 12-8pm, with events every Saturday and Sunday.