16-17 September, Forum: rethinking cultural infrastructures in post-Assad Syria

Cultural institutions around the world are facing tremendous challenges. Museums, theatres, orchestras, gallery spaces are under pressure to adapt to ever-changing policy directives and wider public discourses. Who do they serve? Do they justify their funding? Do they even receive public funding or are they dependent on private philanthropy and sponsorship? Are they subject to direct political influence or do they operate “at arms’ length”? Are cultural institutions required to respond to touristic-heritage demands rather than artistic imperatives?

The Forum is a new format with which g:dc will explore cultural infrastructure in regions undergoing turbulent transition. The first Forum will be devoted to post-Assad Syria. Once the most important cultural centre in the region, the years of war and mass emigration have left cultural landscapes in disarray. The workshop gathers together artists and curators from Syria and neighbouring countries to rethink how cultural infrastructures might be reconceived going forward. The challenges facing cultural infrastructures globally pose themselves in Syria in extremis, as much material infrastructure has been destroyed and the former institutions of a largely state-controlled arts scene no longer function. The workshop focuses on the following questions:

What remains of existing cultural infrastructure—both material and immaterial—and what new forms can still be imagined and built?

What possibilities and promises can emerge from these shifting landscapes? Which networks can be activated or reconfigured, and how might the region’s cultural life position itself within broader regional and global artistic ecologies—particularly in relation to questions of alliances, dependencies, and hierarchies in the arts?