SYMPOSIUM: ART CRITIQUE AS MIDWIFERY OF A SHIFTING IN CONSCIOUSNESS

 

This symposium explores transitional states such as grief, healing, and collective reconsideration—and their connection to art criticism. It asks how the spiritual, aesthetic, and political work of art—tracking pain, mapping intergenerational trauma, and designing fragile architectures of care—is linked to the urgent need to renew the language in which such work occurs. The title, “Art Critique as Midwifery of a Shifting in Consciousness,” refers to the phrase “midwifing a cultural shift,” attributed to midwife and birth companion Rachelle Garcia Seliga. It emerged from a conversation with Stav Yeini about the loss of language through polarization, the physiology of childbirth, and the current shift in consciousness—a shift shaped by new technologies. New concepts of art criticism beyond linear media will be discussed, positioning criticism as a metabolism of upheaval and awakening—as a form of listening and responding differently to aesthetic and social shifts. Together with members of AICA Germany, the event creates a conceptual framework in which criticism is understood as an analytical tool deeply intertwined with our understanding of the world and the presuppositions embedded therein. Art criticism is reimagined here as a tool that allows us to process pain, trauma, and ideological rigidities in artistic production—while simultaneously engendering critical joy: a practice of presence that challenges the fixation on singular forms of truth. Can art criticism become the midwife of a new consciousness by keeping space open for what has not yet found expression? program 11 a.m. – Introduction & sound intervention 12 noon – AICA Panel I: Writing about art as a healing process Participants: Will Furtado, Kristian Vistrup Madsen Moderation: Ruth Noack This panel explores how writing about art can serve as a vessel for psychic and social healing. From the embodied topographies of place and tradition in AWC to Will Furtado’s diasporic, queer editorial practice to Kristian Vistrup Madsen’s meditative prose on intimacy and institutions, all contributions center vulnerability as a method. 1 p.m. – AICA Panel II: Art Criticism as Mycological Communication Participants: Stav Yeini, Julieta Aranda Moderator: Stanton Taylor What can critique learn from mycelium? This panel brings together artists whose practice operates on the threshold between the seen and the sensed—where performance, pedagogy, and publication model alternative systems of knowledge. Stav Yeini’s somatic practice rethinks birth and border as sonic conditions, Taylor explores collective bodily knowledge in motion, and Aranda interrupts capitalist time through speculative infrastructures. Critique, the thesis goes, can spread horizontally like a fungal network—dissolving hierarchies, nourishing from decay, and sustaining networks of solidarity. 3 p.m. – Discussion with Issa Amro and Barbara Debeuckelaere In this conversation, image-based activisms meet witnessing care. Amro and Debeuckelaere discuss the body as archive, photography as situated knowledge, and the poetics of resistance. The discussion asks how critique can inhabit political realities without instrumentalizing them. 4 pm – Closing & Concert A collective exhalation. The day concludes with a musical performance by Stav Yeini, transforming affective resonances into rhythm—a space for nonverbal continuity. Complemented by collected notes by Kate Brown. Everyone is welcome. To secure a spot, please register at: distro@artsoftheworkingclass.org Curated by María Inés Plaza Lazo, member of AICA Germany, editor and founder of Arts of the Working Class. Supported by Atelier Gardens and the Institute for Film and Performance Expanded.