Part of the Visual Arts Platform Open House

The symposium Culture and Location on Wednesday 17th March, provides a critical framework to question the notion of ‘belonging’ and cultural translation in contemporary art, featuring speakers from the arts and cultural theory: Anton Lederer, rotor (Graz, Austria), artist Harold Offeh (London, UK), artist and writer Dr. Rachel Garfield (Goldsmiths College, London), and Deniz Sözen. Artist and musician Korhan Erel (Istanbul, Turkey) will perform his work and Austrian based artist Rashid Badreldin will create a culinary feature with food for guests. Culture and Location will be chaired by Edgar Schmitz (Goldsmiths College, London) and is in partnership with the Journey’s With No Return, an exhibition at the A Foundation, London and conference at the Goethe Institut, London on 19th February, exploring how culture is transformed through migration and the influence of Turkish migration on contemporary practitioners. Using the discussions from Journey’s With No Return and Sözen‘s work as a point of departure, the symposium will investigate ways in which artists and cultural activists can challenge assumptions about cultural identity and how they can respond critically to the tendency for “multicultural managerialism” in the art world, which expects artists to play on the market’s expectations of fetishising non western artists and their culture. The symposium will also explore artistic strategies for destabilizing cultural representation and focus on the genre of autobiography, including artists who work with fictional personas and fake biographies.

The syposium will run alongside Deniz Sözen's exhibition Be Longing featuring SuZan Dennis.

For more information visit www.denizsoezen.net and www.journeyswithnoreturn.com