Historically, art and cultural practices have been shaped in relation to the political and economic realities and the power dynamics that generate within and around their spatio-temporal contexts. In the colonial context in Palestine, cultural practices have been deeply linked to the political domain and its reiterations. This conference seeks to examine the politics of Palestinian art production through the socio-political structures and to raise questions around cultural institutions and the institutionalisation of culture. It also aims to probe art and cultural pedagogies, and the possibilities proposed through notions of independent practices, cultural autonomy and individual agency.
The main questions that the conference will be addressing are:
- How can we read, understand and interpret the agency of cultural institution in relation to art and cultural practices?
- What are the connections between dominant political and economic structures, cultural institutions and independent cultural practitioners?
- where do the issues of limitations of agency, autonomy and financing play a role?
- Could contemporary art practices and pedagogies as well as interdisciplinary research in the domain of cultural production contribute to fostering a critical interpretation of histories and a re-writing of narratives while it is conducted under the patronage of the institutional establishment?
