The guest talk is part of a collaboration between the Center for Research in Artistic Practice under Contemporary Conditions (CRAPCC, Aarhus University) and Kunsthal Aarhus. It is the first talk in the new program series "Experts of the Undercommons" organized by postdoc Tobias Dias in Kunsthal Aarhus. 

Widely considered to be moving beyond or even above the state, contemporary art and its institutions have lately come under pressure exerted by state agencies in different places such as Łódź or Kassel, Copenhagen or Ljubljana. Understanding these incidents as signifying a shift in the ways in which state and art are interrelated, the talk is going to focus on the current conjuncture of state interference, and on contemporary art’s implication in cultural governance. This dimension is less visible if considered recent attempts of political involvement, namely that of the governmental functions that art (and 'culture' more generally) is supposed to perform in the endless final stages of neoliberal regimes.

The talk lasts approximately 1,5 hours and will afterwards be open for questions and discussion!

Bio: Tom Holert is an art historian, writer, curator and artist. A former editor of the magazines Texte zur Kunst and Spex, he lives and works in Berlin. Between 2012 and 2017 he was a founding member of the Academy of the Arts of the World, Cologne. In 2015 he co-founded the Harun Farocki Institut (HaFI) in Berlin, a platform for research and production departing from the example of Farocki´s film and artistic practice. He is currently Guest professor of art and cultural studies at Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK), Hamburg. Together with the German curator Anselm Franke, he curated the exhibition “Neolithic Childhood: Art in a False Present, c.1930” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2018).
Among the many publications he has authored over the years, worth of mention is his latest book "Knowledge Beside Itself: Contemporary Art's Epistemic Politics" (Sternberg Press, 2022).

The event is supported by Novo Nordisk Fonden.