In the context of TO THE FUTURE PUBLIC Act #2 

The author of the influential book "Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture" Gregory Sholette, joins us in Athens for a discussion of his new book "Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism", and a talk on his concept of cultural resistance in a "bare art world." , in the context of TO THE FUTURE PUBLIC series of actions, talks and workshops.

In the aftermath of the 2016 US election, Brexit, and a global upsurge of nationalist populism, it is evident that the delirium and the crisis of neoliberal capitalism is now the delirium and crisis of liberal democracy and its culture. And though capitalist crisis does not begin within art, art can reflect and amplify its effects to positive and negative ends.

In this follow-up to his influential 2010 book, "Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture", Sholette engages in critical dialogue with artists’ collectives, counter-institutions, and activist groups to offer an insightful firsthand account of the relationship between politics and art in neoliberal society. Sholette lays out clear examples of art’s deep involvement in capitalism: the dizzying prices achieved by artists who pander to the financial elite, the proliferation of museums that contribute to global competition between cities in order to attract capital, and the strange relationship between art and rampant gentrification that restructures the urban landscape.

With a preface by noted author Lucy R. Lippard and an introduction by theorist Kim Charnley, Delirium and Resistance draws on over thirty years of critical debates and practices both in and beyond the art world to historicize and advocate for the art activist tradition that radically—and, at times, deliriously—entangles the visual arts with political struggles.

http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745336848&st1=sholette&sf1=kword_index%2Cpublisher&sort=sort_pluto&m=2&dc=4

http://gregsholette.tumblr.com/

In his wide-ranging art, activist, teaching and writing practice, Gregory Sholette has developed a self-described “viable, democratic, counter-narrative that, bit-by-bit, gains descriptive power within the larger public discourse.” Sholette is a founding member of Political Art Documentation/Distribution, which issued publications on politically engaged art in the 1980s; of REPOhistory, which repossessed suppressed histories in New York in the 1990s; and more recently, of Gulf Labor, a group of artists advocating for migrant workers constructing museums in Abu Dhabi. In dozens of essays, three edited volumes, and his own books including "Delirium & Resistance: Art Activism & the Crisis of Capitalism (2017)" and "Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (2011, both Pluto Press)", and "It's The Political Economy, Stupid" with Oliver Ressler on view at the Contemporary Art Center, Thessaloniki, Greece in 2010. Sholette documents and reflects upon decades of activist art that, for its ephemerality, politics, and market resistance, might otherwise remain invisible. A co-director of Social Practice Queens at Queens College CUNY, he holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is a graduate of The Cooper Union, the University of California San Diego, and The Whitney Independent Study Program in Critical Theory.

TO THE FUTURE PUBLIC

From the point of view of Athens, TO THE FUTURE PUBLIC attempts to formulate a meeting point between local communities, artists, researchers, activists and initiatives with a focus on self-organization and cooperative economy, connecting various locations in an open, decentralized and evolving testing laboratory for the exploration of future curatorial and artistic practices, bringing together different voices from various fields, with different perspectives and backgrounds.

The program focuses on providing a collaborative framework for in-situ responses to specific sites or contexts in the public sphere of Athens, while thinking collectively about ways to act when "thinking beyond a frozen future is inconceivable, an institutional limit impossible to cross". Through interventions, performances, ephemeral installations, research-based projects, workshops and cartographies, the areas of the city center are responded to as field that is experienced and performed - an intricate web of inter-dependencies, conflicts, and radical syntheses.

We resist the abstracted narratives of Athens as being ”unique” and "creative" due to crisis as constructed and traded
in a market of symbolic capital conforming to the prerogatives of an international art market, institutional and urban
development interests. This comes at a moment when basic human rights are considered a state security risk, when sweeping economic restructuring converts the global majority into a segregated precarious surplus, and when a widespread hostility to the very notion of society has become commonplace rhetoric, at a time when the public sphere, as both concept and reality, is under threat.

As agents working locally and engaged in global discourse, we stand in support of ground-up participation and art as a catalyst for organizing, reviving, rethinking, and remaking the everyday experience. Seeking counter-narratives to the increasing in commercialization of the cultural field, we trace the radical points of intersection with the practices of others from around the world, who are also working from within and outside existing institutional framings, and whose locally focused work constitute de-facto deflections from accepted paradigms within the globally established art economy.

Resisting cultural and artistic monopolies, we support, by all means possible, the creation of new temporary spaces in the overlapping zones of art, political activism, and theory - spaces where the boundaries between artists and public are blurred, where the concept of "expertise" is fluid and radical relations become possible. We envision a shift away from models based on the exporting of cultural capital, towards a new hierarchy of priorities based upon actual needs and sustainable practices. In doing so, we strive for the development of participatory, inclusive models and strategies, and attempt to carry out the urgent task of cultivating horizontal communication and exchanges between movements across social, geographical and institutional divides.