The prolific musician discusses his influences, playing some of the songs and videos that have inspired him. He is in conversation with musician and writer Ross Simonini.  Participants: John Maus Ross Simonini

A key note presentation, by artist Joan Jonas, focusing on the development of her most recent work, an ongoing installation project titled Reanimation.

We are increasingly beginning to see survey exhibitions of the very recent past. How and why do decades come to be packaged as they do? What gets forgotten in these attempts to remember? And what does it mean to present ‘authoritative’ surveys of a time that is still very much in flux?

Participants:Dominic MolonJenny MooreChair: Dan Fox

Ahead of the publication of his memoir, Before Pictures, Douglas Crimp’s lecture explores the New York art world of the 1970s, considering the intersections of dance and critical theory, prior to his curating the seminal group show ‘Pictures’ at Artists Space in 1977.

For the first time in the Carnegie International’s 117-year history, it is organized by a team of three curators. Daniel Baumann, Tina Kukielski and Dan Byers discuss their plans for the 56th edition of the exhibition, which opens October 4, at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.

Participants:

Daniel BaumannTina KukielskiDan ByersChair: Tirdad Zolghadr

A panel on refusal and responsibility - Where there is no consensus among artists, critics and curators on professional standards or ethical principles, how does refusal come to define responsibility and vice versa? When does refusal protect the work that artists do, and when does it become an excuse masking other motives, particularly in the Middle East?

Participants:Hassan Khan (Artist, Cairo)Akram Zaatari (Artist, Beirut)Vasif Kortun (Director of Research and Programs, SALT, Istanbul)Chair: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie (Writer, Beirut)

Writing about art is a way of paying attention to the world, but also a distraction from it. At a time when we are frequently told that traditional modes and spans of attention are in decline, the panel asks what kinds of concentration and what sorts of distraction are at work in art criticism today.

Participants:Orit Gat (Writer, Editor and Translator, Brooklyn)Joshua Cohen (Novelist and Critic, New York and Berlin)Marina Warner (Writer, Novelist and Critic, London)Chair: Brian Dillon (Writer and UK Editor, Cabinet, London)

Lynne Tillman is a fiction writer and cultural critic based in New York. Her novels include American Genius, A Comedy (2006), No Lease on Life (1998), Cast in Doubt (1992), Motion Sickness (1991) and Haunted Houses (1987). She has published three volumes of short stories, the latest of which, Someday This Will Be Funny (2011), was made into an artist’s edition by Jim Hodges. As a critic she has written extensively on art and is a regular columnist for frieze magazine. 

The panel focuses on the aesthetic and economic phenomenon of the stock image, increasingly adopted as source material for art. With particular focus on its use in sculpture and installation, the panel asks what meaning this kind of recuperation may have and how it might lead to new ways of understanding the rhetorical, digitally modified image.

Participants:Lauren Cornell (Writer and Curator, New York)Oliver Laric (Artist, Berlin)Martin Westwood (Artist, London)Chair: Isobel Harbison (Curator and Writer, London)

Based between New York and Todi, Italy, Brian O’Doherty is an influential artist, critic, editor and Booker-shortlisted novelist whose career has spanned over five decades.