Creative Time are to host The 2012 Creative Time Summit. Confronting Inequity on October 12–13, 2012, at NYU’s Skirball Center in New York City. The conference will bring together an international group of over 30 presenters—including artists, curators, and activists—to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world and to provide a glimpse into the political implications of socially engaged art. This year’s conference, titled The Creative Time Summit: Confronting Inequity, will respond to recent upheavals in the international political and economic climate by focusing specifically on the topic of wealth inequity across the globe and the ways in which it erodes democracy. Creative Time will also honor Spanish artist Fernando García-Dory with the 2012 Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, an award given every year to an artist whose work has been devoted to instigating social awareness and harnessing the communicative power of art to engage communities around critical public issues.
In taking on inequities, the Summit will explore how extreme income gaps threaten to undermine even the most robust democracies, and have contributed to the rise of new movements working for change against high concentrations of wealth and power. The 2012 Summit will present the work of artists and activists whose oeuvre contributes to such movements, changes public discourse and political debates, and in some cases, has unseated regimes. Summit participants will examine recent global protests and explore the innovative strategies, tactics, and art created by the presenters to confront inequity.
Expected presenters include:
Martha Rosler (Keynote), Slavoj Žižek (Keynote), BijaRi, Jeff Chang, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Conflict Kitchen, Malkia Cyril, Rebel Diaz, Jodie Evans and Suzanne Lacy, Fernando García-Dory, Pablo Helguera, Invisible Borders, Steve Lambert, L.A.P.D. (Los Angeles Poverty Department), Josh MacPhee, Leonidas Martin, Mosireen, Joia Mukherjee, Oda Projesi, Otolith Group, Taring Padi, Laura Poitras, Michael Rakowitz, Škart, Hito Steyerl, Tidal Journal, and more.
Nato Thompson, Creative Time’s Chief Curator and curator of the Summit, says, “We have seen a year of global unrest and all of it is geared toward a growing gap of inequity that demands accountability. Cultural producers worldwide are not merely participating in these movements, but many are operating at its wild historic center.”
The 2012 Summit will unfold over two days in order to provide audiences the opportunity to delve more deeply into discussion of the topics at hand. Day One will consist of a series of concise, dynamic presentations providing overviews of specific projects, while Day Two will engage the audience in smaller and more intimate sessions, each led by a presenter from Day One and an outside moderator. Presentations on Day One will be grouped into four main thematic sections dealing with income inequality and socioeconomic disparities around the world, namely: Inequities, Occupations, Making, and Tactics.
Also at this year’s Summit, Creative Time will award the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change to Spanish artist, activist and agro-ecologist Fernando García-Dory, whose work focuses on the relationship between contemporary culture and the natural world. Driven by a belief that art must be “proactive, not just reactive action,” García-Dory has become a leader in the field of socially engaged art.
Tickets for The Creative Time Summit: Confronting Inequity are available for purchase at www.creativetime.org/summittickets. Visit www.creativetime.org to watch via Livestream.
Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
New York University
566 LaGuardia Place
New York, NY 10012
www.creativetime.org/summit
