09.00–09.30 hrs: Registration, Coffee and Tea
09.30–10.00 hrs: Welcome by Richard Noble and Maria Hlavajova
10.00–10.30 hrs: Introduction by Simon Sheikh into the Construction of "the People" within the Former West condition
10.30–13.00 hrs: Panel with Barby Asante, Andrea Phillips, Morgan Quaintance, and Irit Rogoff
This panel discusses the construction of a “we” in terms of current issues of race in the United Kingdom, with specific reference to the historical and institutional paradigms developed and maintained through contemporary art. At a time of shifting models of institutionalization and funding strategies, and in acknowledgement of the critical influence of London’s cosmopolitical and migratory context, the panel focuses on the embedded exclusions that continue to be performed by and through contemporary art.
13.00–14.00 hrs: Lunch Break
14.00–16.30
hrs: Panel with Jan Breman, Melissa Gordon, Massimiliano Mollona,
and Bev Skeggs
This panel considers the construction of the people by looking at issues of precarity and class fragmentation from feminist and postcolonial perspectives, while weaving in views from art and political economy. By looking at the generalized condition of dispossession of contemporary capitalism as a form of radical exclusion—but also an avenue towards new possibilities—the panel asks: What are the future forms of class recomposition and collective engagement of the people in contemporary Europe?
16.30–17.00 hrs: Coffee and Tea
17.00–18.00 hrs: Response by Elvira Dyangani Ose, followed by a discussion moderated by Massimiliano Mollona
10.00 hrs: Registration, Coffee and Tea
10.30–13.00 hrs: Panel with Nina Power, Janna Graham, Dave Beech, and Bernadette Buckley, moderated by Simon Sheikh
Looking at identification and identity, politics and populism, affect and aesthetics, this panel investigates how “a” or “the” people are constructed through both art and politics. What cultural forms and institutions can produce this elusive entity, and how might it be addressed after the reconfiguration of the great divide that was the East/West?
13.00–14.00 hrs: Lunch Break
14.00–15.30 hrs: Conversation between Rastko Močnik and Boris Buden
Revisiting Rastko Močnik’s crucial essay “How Much Fascism?,” this conversation examines the surviving forms of twentieth-century fascism in contemporary politics and culture, as well as its growing threat to the existing democratic order.
15.30–16.00 hrs: Coffee and Tea
16.00–17.00 hrs: Concluding conversation between Tariq Ali and Simon Sheikh
This conversation and discussion questions the notion of a “former West” itself, asking how such terms can be useful in attempting to understand people and popular movements, while simultaneously looking at alternatives to the current rule of “the Extreme Centre,” as Tariq Ali formulates it in his new book of the same name.
17.00–18.00 hrs: Response by Harry Weeks, followed by a discussion moderated by Andrea Phillips