DECENTRALISING POLITICAL ECONOMIES

Decentralising Political Economies - Roaming Symposium (19/21 October and 5/19/23 November 2021) was an event conceived and developed as part of the TOOLKITS section of Decentralising Political Economies platform, a collaboration between The Whitworth (Manchester), the Institute of Art and Technology at the Liverpool John Moores University, and the Asociación de Arte Útil. 

The symposium was organised to launch DPE’s content after one year of preparation and research. I decided to focus on the premises of DPE, such as providing an environment that could publicly support and showcase how artistic and curatorial research develops and to translating the symposium in and of itself into a toolkit. 

The sessions – four panel discussions and four workshops - were planned over a month and a half. Guests were invited to send a pre-recorded presentation of about twenty to thirty minutes according to the topic of each meeting that was made available on the DPE’s YouTube channel and SoundCloud a couple of days before the live conversations.

Following the Usological turn*, I have applied the principles of Arte Útil to the symposium, in particular regarding the long-term sustainability of the project. The symposium was intended as a ‘research event with art professionals (such as artists, curators, and directors of cultural organisations), academics, researchers, constituencies and practitioners who apply art as a tool to be used as a resource for social, political and economic change’. 

Making every recording available online enabled users to approach the symposium-as-syllabus* and toolkit beyond the project itself.

🔗 To use the symposium-as-syllabus, please go to > dpe.tools