FORMER WEST. Documents, Constellations, Prospects 

FORMER WEST. Documents, Constellations, Prospects

Even though the world turned on its pivot in 1989, the West has held onto the fiction of its own superiority. FORMER WEST investigates how contemporary art has been unsettling this reality and imagining its prospects otherwise.
FORMER WEST (2008–2014) is a long-term research, education, exhibition, and publication project aimed at a critical reinterpretation of post-1989, post-Cold War histories around an artistic imaginary of “formerness,” countering the persistent hegemonies of the so-called “West” within a global context.

Artworks, talks, discussions, rehearsals, and performances in various constellations of documents and prospects offer a multitude of encounters with the public for negotiating the way of the world from 1989 to today, and thinking beyond.
Documents, Constellations, Prospects is organized into five currents. Each day, students are involved in Learning Place - realized in collaboration with international cultural institutes, universities, and art academies - folded into contemporary negotiations on Art Production, Infrastructure, and Insurgent Cosmopolitanism. In addition, Dissident Knowledges contributions propose dynamic interventions into the ongoing program with artworks, performances, and statements.

Conceptualized by Maria Hlavajova and Kathrin Rhomberg in collaboration with Boris Buden, Boris Groys, Ranjit Hoskote, Katrin Klingan, and Irit Rogoff.

FORMER WEST is initiated and developed by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. FORMER WEST: Documents, Constellations, Prospects is a joint project by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht.
Funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation); Culture Programme of the European Union, Brussels; Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam; Goethe-Institut; and ERSTE Foundation, Vienna.


http://www.hkw.de/en/formerwest