Dec 11 2024

Energies Symposium: Energy in Art with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Agnieszka Kurant

WED | 7PM

SI is pleased to present the final chapter of the Energies Symposium, a series of lectures, panels, performances, and film screenings that address ecological, social, and geopolitical dimensions of energy, historically and today, while highlighting the power of community-driven infrastructural solutions.

This chapter concludes the symposium by returning to the themes explored at the beginning, on the intersections of energy and art. This event highlights the ongoing nature of these considerations through a conversation between Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, curator, art historian and former Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, and Agnieszka Kurant, interdisciplinary conceptual artist. 

Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net.

Agnieszka Kurant (Łódź, Poland, 1978) is a conceptual artist investigating collective and nonhuman intelligences and the exploitations present in digital capitalism. She is the recipient of the 2020 LACMA A+T Award and the 2019 Frontier Art Prize. Her solo shows include Mudam Luxemburg (2024), Castello di Rivoli (2021-2022), Hannover Kunstverein (2023) and Sculpture Center (2013). In 2015 she realized a commission for the façade of the Guggenheim Museum, and in 2021-22 a permanent commission for the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge. Her works were also exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Istanbul Biennial; Gwangju Biennial, the Biennale of Sydney, Milano Triennale; Dhaka Art Summit, the SFMOMA, Gropius Bau, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien, Witte de With; Whitechapel Art Gallery, the De Young Museum, Gamec, Bergamo, CAPC Bordeaux, Louisiana Museum, Denmark; Villa Medici, Rome; Nottingham Contemporary, Moderna Museet; the Kitchen, Bonner Kunstverein; Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; Frieze Projects, London and Performa Biennial. In 2010 she co-authored the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (with Aleksandra Wasilkowska). Kurant’s monograph Collective Intelligence, co-edited by Stefanie Hessler and Jenny Jaskey was published by Sternberg Press/ MIT Press in September 2024. Her upcoming exhibitions include commissions for Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection in Paris, the Pompidou Center (2024) and the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris (2025). Kurant was an artist in residence at the Berggruen Institute (2019-2021), a visiting artist at MIT CAST (2017-2020), and held a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute (2018).

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is a curator who researches artistic practices, the histories of art, and the politics of aesthetics and multispecies co-evolution. She was the founding director of Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti and formerly director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin where she curated numerous exhibitions. In 2018, Christov-Bakargiev co-curated the Sharjah presentation of the travelling exhibition Anna Boghiguian. She has written and co-authored a number of articles, catalogues and books, including Adrian Villar Rojas (Phaidon Press, 2020); Hito Steyerl. The City of Broken Windows (Skira Milan–Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, 2018); Arte Povera (Phaidon, 2014); and Arte Identita’ Confini (Carte Segrete, Roma, 1995). Named the most powerful person in the art world by ArtReview’s Power 100 listings (2012), Christov-Bakargiev has received the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence (2019). She has also participated in numerous academic residencies and held positions that include Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art Theory and Practice, Northwestern University (2013–2019) and Getty Research Institute Visiting Scholar, The Getty Center, Los Angeles (2015). Christov-Bakargiev studied literature, philology, language and art history, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pisa (1981). Born in 1957 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Christov-Bakargiev lives and works in Turin.

The Energies Symposium is made possible in part through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Image: Agnieszka Kurant, Errorism, 2021. Courtesy of Kunstverein Hannover.