"collaborations in curating, research and writing
to create translocal knowledge and experience"
Reclaim Happiness
Reclaim Happiness examines the possibility of imagining exceptions, finding escape routes and discovering loopholes in the global capitalist order from the standpoint of contemporary artistic strategies. The project consists of exhibitions, collaborative art works, discussion events and theoretical reflections and involves partners from across Central Europe.
The exhibitionLoophole to Happiness takes as its starting point the existence of loopholes on the margins of social and economic systems that enhance personal freedom and offer the potential for pleasure and fulfilment.
Loopholes in the rules and rationale of the contemporary social and economic order are discovered in unexpected places, from painterly evocations of social celebrations during communism, to meditations on the freedom of play in public spaces enjoyed before the advent of risk society. The aspiration for happiness and self-fulfilment is contrasted with the mental pollution emanating from information overload, along with a focus on attempts to revive non-capitalistic forms of knowledge and promote uneconomic attitudes in human relations.
An innovative transnational community art project involves asking people from across society to intervene on the covers of weekly current affairs magazines to express their idea of happiness.
An interdisciplinary symposium brings together artists, curators, theoreticians and activists to reflect on the potential to reclaim happiness using methods suggested by contemporary art.
Partners:
AMT_Project
Supporters:
Loophole to Happiness
at Trafo Gallery Budapest
11 Nov -30 Dec 2010
