About
The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is proud to announce the launch of Agora: A Gathering of Art and Philosophy. This fully-funded online program is designed to confront the challenges of our time by combining two disciplines uniquely capable of reimagining the future: art and philosophy.
Conceived by Andrea Bellini and Federico Campagna, Agora will offer semester-long free programs of English-language lectures, seminars, and one-on-one mentoring to a group of eight practicing artists and philosophers from January to April. The lectures will subsequently be made available for free on the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève’s digital platform, the 5th floor, and will also find resonance across Mousse Magazine’s digital channels, opening the dialogue to the broader public.
Each participant will receive a stipend, in order to guarantee equal access. All classes will be held online, so that participants from around the globe may take part. In addition to lectures and seminar-style discussions, students will also develop their personal work in private meetings with the lecturers.
“With Agora, the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève introduces a new idea of the museum as a public space: free lectures by world-acclaimed thinkers and practitioners, stipends for participating students, and a yearlong colloquium of philosophers, curators, and artists,” said Agora’s co-founder and director, philosopher Federico Campagna. “We are delighted to be creating a new home for the next generation of world builders,” he said.
Lecturers will include Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Nicolas Jaar, Jota Mombaça, Nora N. Khan, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Laura U. Marks, Hito Steyerl, and John Tresch. These internationally renowned thinkers and art practitioners will also accompany the students in seminars and one-on-one sessions, encouraging them to probe prevailing contemporary worldviews and forge new avenues for the imagination.
The lectures will be grouped into three main areas of inquiry: Technologies of
Consciousness, Materialities, and Social Imagination. Agora’s aim is to combine philosophical investigations with the perspectives of marginalized groups, the urgency of developing a new environmental consciousness, and the technical challenges posed by art practice. Fiercely committed to opening artistic discourse to pluralistic views of the world, the expert talks and tutorials will explore “post-contemporary” visions of the future, a future in which art takes a leading role in reshaping the realm of what is imaginable, possible, or necessary.
“The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is thrilled to launch this free online cultural program, which builds on the hundreds of videos, artist interviews, and podcasts on art, philosophy, music, and literature that we’ve already shared with the public through our digital platform, the 5th Floor,” says Centre director and Agora’s cofounder Andrea Bellini. “Open to artists and art lovers worldwide, Agora will be a vibrant new space for imagining, sharing, and creating contemporary culture and art.”