How do public institutions think? What does that thinking do? What does that thinking overlook?
What power do our organisations exert? What do arts organisations colonise? What values do they appropriate? What practices do they normalise? What cultures do they privilege? What have they settled over, and what do they control? What power does the arts institution exert on the ecology, on artistic self-organisation, on the nature of artistic practice itself?
How might we rethink our institutions? And how can we foster institutions that think as well as they plan and do?
The How Institutions Think symposium was presented on 24-27 February 2016 in Arles, France on the construction site of the future LUMA Arles, an ambitious new arts precinct to be opened in 2018.
Here’s my Storify of the event. Still thinking it all through…
ESTHER ANATOLITIS 