Overview

Future Audience forms the title of part of the research of Adnan Yildiz, who is interested in the politics of representation, both through image research and image production. Understanding his own practice as located in many different but interrelated contexts, the position of the audience is a continuing concern through each of his exhibitions. At the time of March Meeting 2011, Adnan Yildiz had recently been appointed Artistic Director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.

Presentation Proposal

There is no difference between ‘what we do’ and ‘who we are.’ I see myself positioned crucially amongst the audience. In fact, my professional identity arises from recognising that all of the activity occurs as an audience and to an audience; it is self-reflexive. This shift between states of reception and production, or more the ability to consciously make this shift, is what characterizes me as ‘agent’—a term used in the sense carried by Hannah Arendt’s concept of the human as agent of her/his existence, as one who simultaneously has the ability to make choices and impose those choices onto the world. The potential for agency does not specifically belong to me; it is my belief that any audience can receive and produce, given the proper conditions for awareness, and with this belief I approach the theoretical vision for the research proposal. The project aims to examine how public imagination, social criticism and collective creativity are perceived today in diverse cultural, political and social contexts, and seeks to understand how artistic research and knowledge respond to these transformations.