Creative Time Summit: The Curriculum

August 11 - 13, 2015

At the invitation of Okwui Enwezor, artistic director of the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia, the 2015 Creative Time Summit will participate in the program All the World’s Futures. The Summit is a core program of Creative Time, the innovative experimental arts organization based in New York. This year’s Creative Time Summit will focus its renowned summit on the topic of Curriculum during a lively three-day forum in mid August. In development since summer 2014, this year’s Creative Time Summit has engaged a broad range of thinkers, artists, researchers, and activists in a series of plenary sessions to address what it means to produce, transform, and transmit knowledge across the conflicted terrain of the world today.

Moving beyond the familiar association between traditional courses of study and formal education, the inquiry into the Curriculum will delve into a far-reaching consideration of various curricula systems. How is knowledge formed within a person and transmitted through time, space, and social relationships? Moreover, what practices and manifestations of knowledge are privileged and what forces shape these values? In its response to the invitation, Creative Time Summit stated:

“Throughout our conversations, we came to the understanding that the idea of the Curriculum will aid our interrogation of the social, infrastructural, administrative, and private realms in which knowledge is produced and enacted within the social contract. Following Michel Foucault’s assertion that “in its function, the power to punish is not necessarily different from that of curing or educating,” we organize this Summit around the suggestion that the concept of the Curriculum is integral to power. The Art Biennale offers a unique opportunity to gather an international community from a range of disciplines to consider how knowledge is produced and how it comes into contact with civic society. Focusing on the most pressing issues of our time, we offer this iteration of the Summit as an opportunity to present information, debate, and organize.”

The Summit will be held at the Teatro Tese Cinquecentesche, located in the Arsenale. The first two days will include short presentations, longer keynote addresses, and a dynamic round of break-out conversations. The third day will offer a wide range of breakout discussions concerning specific case studies, political issues, and other curricular activities.

For more information, visit the event webpage here.