Creative Europe
Desk UK
for Culture

This two-year project is dedicated to the theme of AFFECT and is collaboratively developed by IICD – curatorial platform in Amsterdam NL, M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp BE, SITE GALLERY Centre for Contemporary Art in Sheffield UK and WYSPA Institute of Art in Gdansk PL. The exchange of cultural values is the basis for cultural production. Therefore the project works through European and international partnerships with cultural practitioners, theoreticians and institutions. The second premise of the project is that artists’ practice should be at the core of curatorial activity. The project therefore will produce and develop with artists new, ambitious projects that can develop over time. The artists’ projects have different stages and different manifestations in the European partner institutions. The format for this project is to work within the frame of an association of international partners and to develop a project that unfolds along a travelling trajectory. The discipline of performance, where this project focuses on, is the perfect discipline to explore within such a systematics and rhythm. In addition a discursive programme will be collectively developed, including reading groups, symposia, workshops and publications. These activities aim to research and communicate the theme with the European audiences. The current global economic climate (and knock on issues of poverty and redundancy) makes a consideration of affect in art and life very timely. To look at affect implies to look at values in life that surpass the one-dimensional desires for wealth and progress. This project will look for alternative values and will present artists’ practices that are concerned with ideas about care ethics, affective labour, and on the politics of friendship. With philosopher Brian Massumi we define the concept of affect as a way of talking about the where we might be able to go and what we might be able to do in every present situation.”