Institutional attitudes : instituting art in a flat world

Today’s networked society offers us many wondrous possibilities of information, communication, mobility, and flexibility. It also has a latent side effect: it makes the world ‘flat’. Time-honoured hierarchies, traditions, elites and canons are subject to eroding movements. In such a flattened, ‘horizontal’ world, art institutions are finding it hard to survive. After all, institutions traditionally represent ‘verticality’: historic profundity, tradition, values, dignity, and certainty.

In Institutional Attitudes the future identity of art institutes is explored. Will they be able to create profundity and height again? Is this desirable? And if so, what would these new vertical ways look like? Or is it better to develop horizontal strategies in order to react more advantageously to the flat world?

‘When flatness rules, we all feel the need to stand up to get some air. It is exactly this breathing space that Institutional Attitudes hopes to create.