Alternate Assembly 2021
EXPO CHICAGO presented Alternate Assembly: Environmental Impact in the Era of Pandemic, a digital proxy for rigorous in-person discourse over three days (January 21–23, 2021) in the form of an engaging hybrid online event. This amalgamation, hosted on the exposition’s newly launched microsite (program.expochicago.com) featured a series of scheduled programs with leading curators, artists, and scholars to address how ideas in contemporary art can contribute to rethinking our environment within the era of pandemic.
Approaching the dual theme of environmental impact, as both a natural ecology and constructed institutional space, Alternate Assembly interrogated the future of our (art)world landscape. In response to our current moment, the thematic of this public program centered on artists and theorists that challenged us to think differently about our environment—from projects that explored water rights, to theories on viruses and virality, as well as notions of sustainable societies, and the multi-layered impacts felt from environmental racism.
As a complement to these live-streaming conversations, hosted on the Alternate Assembly microsite, select film screenings by leading contemporary artists were shown, illustrating the new ways of thinking that artists have proposed about our environment, ranging from the poetic to the activist. Concentrating on these issues explored by contemporary artists alongside museum and non-profit leadership and art criticism published in THE SEEN, this program called upon EXPO CHICAGO’s commitment to the necessary discourse across commercial and non-commercial sectors in support of ongoing inquiry.
Alternate Assembly: Environmental Impact in the Era of Pandemic was presented in collaboration with the Malmö Art Museum and the exhibition Sustainable Societies for the Future.
Film Screening | Toril Johannesen & Marjolijn Dijkman
Reclaiming Vision was live on this page January 21-23, 2021. Captured through a light microscope, ‘Reclaiming Vision’ features a diverse cast of microorganisms, sampled from the brackish waters of the inner Oslo Fjord, alongside algae, cultivated at the University of Oslo. The film reveals various processes in the water that are hidden to the naked […] More information →
/Dialogues | Sustainable Societies for the Future
In the face of challenges such as climate change, migration, and the world’s growing population, how can we accumulate change that inspires collectiveness and social engagement for a better future together? Director of the Malmö Art Museum Kirse Junge-Stevnsborg will speak to members from The Floating Museum and Hesselholdt & Mejlvang who are involved in […] More information →
/Dialogues | Desert as Place and Idea: Planning Desert X 2021
The desert is a state of place, and a state of mind—and as such must be acknowledged beyond the privileged mythologies of desolate landscapes and boundless possibilities. The third edition of Desert X encourages connections between artworks and the specific realities of California’s Coachella Valley, the histories that forged its communities, and the social and environmental dynamics […] More information →
/Dialogues | On Viruses — Critical Theories of Contagion
Artists and writers discuss the implications of viruses as a metaphor and a reality in our current moment. How can we learn from the behavior of viral organisms (the microscopic) to rethink how we approach societal structures (the macroscopic)? More information →
/Dialogues | Practices of Conservation — Exhibition and Environmental Impact
As the pandemic has forced institutions, galleries, and artists to reconsider their methods of operation, in October 2020 The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles announced the creation of an Environmental Council, the first for a major art museum in the United States. A range of arts-based resources, councils, and coalitions have continued […] More information →
Curatorial Forum Presents | Weathering Regional Landscapes
Focusing on several recent curatorial and artistic projects anchored in the Gulf Coast—home to some of the fastest disappearing land masses in the world—this conversation considers how art can encourage new forms of environmental awareness, and invite new thinking about culture and community. How can art shed light on urgent local issues, while also looking beyond […] More information →
Film Screening | Carolina Caycedo—Thanks For Hosting Us, We Are Healing our Broken Bodies / Gracias por hospedarnos. Estamos sanando nuestros cuerpos rotos
Thanks For Hosting Us, We Are Healing our Broken Bodies / Gracias por hospedarnos. Estamos sanando nuestros cuerpos rotos was live on this page January 21-23, 2021. Human bodies appear incomplete, divided and fractured by water and fabrics as a way to address the cementing, impoundment, and fragmenting of local streams and rivers. The body […] More information →
/Dialogues | Perspectives on Water: Land Rights, Accessibility, and Histories
This panel invites artists who have initiated further investigations into the histories of water in terms of land rights and clean water accessibility in lakes, rivers, and oceans, to explore the cultural ways in which water bridges communities both locally and globally. Highlighting the often-unseen political history that water and its major infrastructures has, this […] More information →