Research workshop with Sarah Rifky hosted by Center for Research in Artistic Practices under Contemporary Conditions (CRAPCC), funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.  

This convening is a conversation that prefigures Sarah Rifky’s possible publication Delusions of Reference: In Defense of Art; a para-fictional book in which an unnamed protagonist expresses anxiety around the end of art.  

Part-roundtable, part writing-sprints around the recurring question is art history, the workshop is prompted around a future-perfect interrogation of the historicity of contemporary art and of what art will have become in 2048. 

Participants are invited to reflect on the following questions and bring their own to the discussion:  

Is there a distinction between art as an asset and art as an extension of civic practice? What are the consequences of the “democratization” of art? When art leans towards activism does it resist the space of doubt? When did artists assume a moral obligation towards society? What happens to art when autonomism disappears? Will AI generated images deconstruct the discipline of art altogether? Does the deconstruction of art as a discipline matter? 

Sarah Rifky is a writer, curator, entrepreneur, historian, and theorist, currently finishing her doctoral dissertation on Cultural Infrastructure in Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. Most recently, Sarah curated the project CAPTCHA: hiding in plain sight at the 2024 Lagos Biennale. 

A detailed plan for the workshop and how to prepare is shared in advance upon sign up to Maj Ørskov (mbo@cc.au.dk). Coffee, tea, and lunch will be served.