Conference Schedule

Arrival and Registration

Welcome

Lynne Sowder and Victoria Burns, Principals of Burns Sowder Arts Advisory. Cultural entrepreneurs committed to the development of new audiences through innovative communications strategies, cultural programs and art collections for private and institutional collectors.

Keynote: Globalism - Crisis and Opportunity

Peter Sellars - World-renowned director, MacArthur Foundation fellow, and professor of World Arts and Culture at U.C.L.A. where he teaches Art as Social Action and Art as Moral Action.

Lunch

Session I / Panel Discussion: New Models of Cultural Production and Distribution

Anne Pasternak Moderator - President and Artistic Director of Creative Time, a cultural production agency dedicated to introducing contemporary art to new audiences and preserving public space as a place of creative expression.

Steve Dietz Artistic Director of ZeroOne: the Art and Technology Network, Director of ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, and former Curator of New Media at the Walker Art Center.

Stanley Hainsworth - Vice-President Global Creative for Starbucks Coffee Company, whose new entertainment initiative markets and sells books, music and movies at Starbuck’s shops and on the web, and hosts Starbucks cultural salons nationwide.

Ruby Lerner - Director of Creative Capital, a unique granting agency that supports adventurous work in all media, and focuses on cutting edge cultural practices, connecting artists to sponsors and presenters, and developing grantees’ careers.

Break

Session II / Panel Discussion: Interdisciplinary Artists and Unconventional Interventions

James Rondeau Moderator - Frances and Thomas Dittmer Curator and Chairman, Department of Contemporary Art at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Rick Lowe - Artist and founder of Project Row Houses, an artist residency / social activist nexus that the New York Times recently said “may be the most impressive and visionary public art project in the country.”

Adam Pendleton - Artist, writer, performer and founder of the think tank LAB, which produces projects including the experimental publication LAB MAG.

Mathew Wilson - Artist, educator and founding member of Industry of the Ordinary, an artist collective challenging received wisdoms and the status quo through performances, exhibitions, publications and the web.

Art Chicago Opening Preview Party

Transportation provided to the Merchandise Mart

Session I / Panel Discussion: Challenging Cultural, Political and Formal Boundaries

Jon Winet – Moderator, Artist, activist, and Area Head of Intermedia Programs at the University of Iowa, who often collaborates with scientists, technologists and various community groups in his politically engaged and net-based works.

Natalie Jeremejinko - Artist, engineer, former Director of the Experimental Product Design Initiative at Yale University, and currently professor at UCSD, who explores how technological innovation can be used toward social and ecological progress.

Francesco Bonami - Manilow Senior Curator at large at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Artistic Director of Fondazione Sandretto ReRebaudengo per l’Arte in Turin, and the Fondazione Pitti Discovery in Florence.

Susan Harris - Editor, Words Without Borders, an advocacy organization devoted to promoting international communication by translating into English and then publishing important but normally unavailable works by international writers.

Lunch

Session II / Conversation

Robert Enright - Interviewer - Arts writer and cultural journalist working in print, radio and television, Senior Contributing Editor of Border Crossings magazine, and author of Peregrinations: Conversations with Contemporary Artists.

Ken Lum - Artist and educator examining the intersections of identity and global urbanism who has recently completed public art projects in Zurich and Toronto, and is the founding editor of Yishu: The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

Break

Session III / Panel Discussion: Connecting Local to Global / Past to Future

Erika Dalya Muhammad - Moderator - Curator of the critically acclaimed nationally touring exhibition, Race in Digital Space, currently developing the Mount Vernon Hip-Hop Arts Center, the first multimedia space dedicated to global urban youth culture.

Simone Aaberg Kærn - Artist, pilot, and filmmaker whose Denmark to Afghanistan flight in a small 1961 Piper Colt was documented in Flying to Kabul. Kærn’s award-winning films also include Smiling In a War Zone and Sisters in the Sky.

Lu Jie - Curator of the Long March Project, an ongoing series of exhibits, performances, and workshops along the route of Mao’s six thousand mile journey, designed to "interrogate Chinese visual culture and revolutionary memory."

Stephen Burks - Designer whose Readymade Projects has worked with Calvin Klein, Missoni and Vitra, among others, and is presently collaborating with crafts people in the developing world for Artecnica’s Aids to Artisans initiative.

Hiro Yamagata - Artist who explores the ways that natural phenomenon and cultural memory shape and are shaped by technology. Recent projects include his proposed projections of images of the Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Break

Keynote

Bruce Ferguson - Independent curator and critic, and former Dean, School of the Arts, Columbia University, who works as a consultant to exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and as the head of a new institute for media, arts and culture soon to be announced at Arizona State University, Phoenix.

Private Screening at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Lynn Hershman Leeson - pioneering photographer, filmmaker and net based artist, introducing her most recent film Strange Culture about artist Steve Kurtz (whose work exploring genetic modification led to his arrest) premiered simultaneously at the Sundance Film Festival and in the online virtual world of Second Life.

Session I / Panel Discussion: Creating a Sustainable Future

Natalie Jeremijenko – Moderator - Artist, engineer, former Director of the Experimental Product Design Initiative at Yale University, and currently professor at UCSD, who explores how technological innovation can be used toward social and ecological progress.

Bruce Mau - Visionary designer whose recent Massive Change project positions design as “one of the world’s most powerful forces…in a period were all economies and ecologies are becoming global, relational and interconnected.”

Jennifer Siegal - Award-winning architect, author, and founder of the Office of Mobile Design, recently featured in Fast Company’s “front lines of design” for her exceptional approach to utilizing new material and forms to create mobile architecture.

Ed Gillespie - Creative Director and Co-Founder of Futerra, a consultancy working with corporations, governments and non-profits to produce strategic and creative communications for sustainability.

Lunch

Session II / Conversation

Lawrence Wechsler – Interviewer, Former staff writer for The New Yorker, Director of New York Institute of Humanities, Artistic Director Chicago Humanities Festival, Pulitzer Prize nominee and author of Calamities of Exile, and Vermeer in Bosnia.

David Buckland - Artist and creator of the Cape Farewell project, a series of expeditions to the High Artic bringing together artists, scientists and educators to create artworks, films and public information programs to raise awareness of climate change.

Break

Session III / New Artistic Practices in the Culture of Ecology

Stephanie Smith - Moderator- Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, and curator of Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art.

Lucy Orta - Artist and designer whose Fluid Architecture and Refuge Wear blur the boundaries separating art, fashion and architecture to examine social structures, political systems, and ecological issues.

Dan Peterman - Artist who investigates alternative processes of production, consumption and recycling in an aesthetic practice that is both localized and has global environmental implications.

Amy Balkin - Artist examining how humans impact their social and environmental spaces through collaborative interventions like This Is Public Domain (an investigation into transferring land to the “global public”), and Public Smog.

Conference Closing

Lynne Sowder and Victoria Burns, Burns Sowder Arts Advisory.

Performance at The Merchandise Mart

Anna Deavere Smith Playwright, performance artist and MacArthur fellow who has created a new, signature kind of theater blending theatrical art, social commentary, journalism and intimate reverie, presenting excerpts from Fires in the Mirror and Twilight Los Angeles among other pieces.

Transportation provided to The Merchandise Mart.