Wednesday, 22 May, 6-8

The Institute for Human Activities has located its settlement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, eight hundred kilometers upstream from Kinshasa on the river Congo. Here, in one of the most burdened yet promising regions in the world, the Institute for Human Activities will launch its five-year Gentrification Program and, in an in vitro testing ground, mobilize the modalities of art production.

The talk will be followed by a roundtable discussion between Renzo Martens, TJ Demos, Anthony Downey (chair), and Sarah James.

Location:

Archaeology G6 Lecture Theatre

Institute of Archaeology

University College London

31-34 Gordon Square

London WC1H 0PY

This event is co-sponsored by Sotheby's Institute of Art, London, and UCL's Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art

About The Institute for Human Activities

The Institute for Human Activities was founded in 2012. With legal structures in Amsterdam, Brussels and Kinshasa, a number of renowned institutional partners and advisors, and a dedicated team of artists and scholars, the Institute's raison d'être is to recalibrate art's critical mandate.

In the transfer of critical, interventionist art from the areas of intervention to the areas where the art is presented to audiences, a gap seems to arise; a gap very similar to the division between labor and profit in other globalized industries. Art may expose the need for a political change in Nigeria or Peru, but in the end brings beauty, opportunity and capital to Berlin-Mitte, or Chelsea and the Lower East Side in New York.

We may lament this and feel that the alliance between art, money and power undermines art's integrity and critical mandate. However, we believe that the radical acceptance of the terms and conditions of the production of art will offer the potential to forge a new mandate for critical art.

The Institute for Human Activities operates on a settlement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, eight hundred kilometers upstream from Kinshasa on the river Congo. Here, in one of the most burdened yet promising regions in the world, the Institute launched its five-year Gentrification Program. In an in-vitro testing ground, it mobilizes the modalities of art production. In the course of its implementation, the Institute will establish a site for love, art and profit.

For further information about Renzo Martens and the IHA, see http://humanactivities.org/