Talk

Charles Esche: Strange and Close

While hospitality has been a long-standing issue for the contemporary art world – as both a desirable and problematic concept – the inhospitality of European law and custom has been gathering strength. In 2023, it seems the problems of how to build a diverse society lie elsewhere than on the hostility/hospitality axis. Strange and Close is the term Homi Bhabha once used to describe a state of neighbourliness and might be useful to find a way out of this bind. Therefore, this lecture will use the ‘strange and close’ as a way to unpack hospitality, before leaving it behind to speculate on how decolonial (and demodern) thinking can move the discussion on towards relationality and positioning as terms that make more transformational demands on institutions and art as social practice. The talk will be illustrated with examples from exhibitions, artworks and artists with which I have worked as a curator and museum director over the past 20 years.

The subject of Hospitality - as a tool for artistic practice has been a part of a course for the Master students at Art and Public space lead by Ebba Moi, which will result in a show hosted by Jessica Williams and her yearlong residency (be)longing at House of Foundation in Moss, opening Sunday 30.4. at 12.00 - 14.00. Read more here https://jessicawilliams.info/belonging/maps.htm

Charles Esche is director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and professor of contemporary art and curating at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London where he works with Exhibition Studies. He is a visiting professor at Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and chair of CASCO, Utrecht. He is currently writing a book on Demodern Thinking with Prof. Walter Mignolo and preparing an exhibition project in the Netherlands, Indonesia and Australia provisionally called The Four Soils for 2023/4. On June 2022 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.

All welcome!