Dutch Art Institute
Van Abbemuseum COOP Academy: Practicing Articulation, Articulating Practice

The word articulation has a productive double meaning in English. Its first is to speak forth, to put into words, to articulate something. Stuart Hall calls this a ‘laguag-ing or expressing’. Angela Davis would call it ‘finding the words you do not yet have’. However, articulation also means the linking of different elements to create a new unity. Hall famously uses the example of an articulated lorry which joins the cab and the trailer to create the lorry. The two parts, he says, are made to become one through a specific linkage. ‘How it Comes to Matter” can be seen as an articulation in both sense of the word. It shows seven artists ‘finding words’ they do not yet have. But it is also what Hall describes as a moment of ‘arbitrary closure’ - a coming together of theories, forms and ideas for before they spin out and reform into new configurations.

As a study group over the past eight months we have been asking and re-asking ourselves foundational questions about our work: What constitutes a practice? How are different ideas, positions, emotions and politics articulated within that practice? What are the structures underlying their articulation that inform, dictate or resits the practice? How do we bring these articulations into the world? Comprising an ambitious constellation of moving image, installation, drawing, performance and reading groups ‘How It Comes t Matter’ sees seven distinct but interrelated propositions consider the specific type of knowledge production art practice gives rises to - and why, and how, that matters.

In partnership with Van Abbemuseum and Dutch Art Institute
Special Events:
+ The Entangled Readers - Reading group with Lucie Draai and Zoe Scoglio, June 3rd, 10:00-1230.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1806300049665733/
+ Maya Watanabe and Nick Aikens in conversation - June 3rd, 13:00
+ What does a mountain fear of a fly? - Performance by Jonathan Baumgärtne during the opening and June 1st at 14:00