How do humans constituted in today’s market navigate the “freedom” in their “freelancing”? If there is nothing particularly “de-universalising” about the occupation of contemporary art as an organising frame for one’s practice, what is the political operationality of claims only available to subjectivities prepared to inhabit the contemporary's information-rich global posture? Does the arc of the curatorial inevitably bend towards justice? This talk pursues the vicissitudes of autonomy in globalising infrastructure beyond the contemporary eventalization of boycott.

Rachel runs the theory seminar ‘At the Limits of the Writerly’ at the Dutch Art Institute. From 2004-08 she was a curator at the Gallery of Modern Art and Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane. At the Jan van Eyck Academie she developed The Gas Imaginary (2013 -), aesthetic analytics, poetry and drawings addressing unconventional extraction. Her work has recently shown at Gasworks, Tate Liverpool, Qalandiya International and Eflux/Columbia University. She co-curated the 2017 Contour Biennale public program with Natasha Ginwala, writes with Jelena Vesic and Vlidi Jeric on non-aligned legacies, and with Danny Butt on infrastructure.

Danny Butt coordinates the Master of Arts and Community Practice at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. His book Artistic Research in the Future Academy has been recently published by Intellect/University of Chicago Press. He is a member of the art collective Local Time, whose work engages the dynamics of visitor and host in the context of “mana whenua” and discourses of indigenous self-determination. He writes collaboratively with Rachel O'Reilly, including in the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (2017), and has published extensively on governance, new media, and cultural politics.