24 Sep 2013

One True Art: 16 Responses to the Question What Art is - a work by Manuel Saiz

One True Art - 16 Responses to the Question What Art is is a performative artistic experiment in which the aim is to come up with a definition of art or reflect on the reasons why this definition is impossible. The work is an invitation to reconsider the notion of art by looking at it from a series of simultaneous perspectives, ranging from the metaphysical to the political.

The central element in this project is a one-day public event specially conceived to focus attention on the issue of the nature and specificity of art. The event is intended to be an exceptional gathering of passionate minds all playing their part in seeing art from a slightly different angle. Sixteen art specialists, including philosophers, critics, curators and artists, have been invited to take part in a series of 30-minute interviews held in quick succession in front of an audience in the Museum auditorium. The topics to be covered, order of interviews and sequence of questions have been carefully prepared over the course of one year.

Interviewees: Christoph Menke, Pierre Alferi, Thierry de Duve, Marcus Steinweg, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, David Maclagan, Oxana Timofeeva, Chus Martinez, Dieter Roelstraete, Asier Mendizabal, John Roberts, Kerstin Stakemeier, Jesus Carrillo, Adelita Husni-Bey, Alana Jelinek and Renzo Martens.

Audiovisual material recorded during the event will be screened from October 14th, 2013, until January 6th, 2014, in the auditorium of Sabatini Building.

For the production of the event, the artist has been working with a team of young researchers with whom he has collaboratively studied the work of the invited speakers and prepared the questions. This team is composed of artist, writer and teacher Steven Cuzner, art historian and cultural theorist Julia Moritz, curator and writer Fatos Ustek, and lecturer and writer Tom Vandeputte.