Who's in town?
Simon Rees

Breaking the taste barrier?

SALT Beyoğlu, Walk-in Cinema

Like it or not, class and national identity are determinants of world view: including the so called “universal” wording associated with art biennials and the universal museum. These limits of perception remain in place despite the rhetorical flowering of the “post” and “multi” movements and discourses from the late-1960s onwards and the constant avowal of “self-reflexivity” (an apparent meta-examination of one’s world view). With reference to the self-invention of Donald Draper in the television series Mad Men, various travellers in the novels of Joseph Conrad, the ambiguity of Ka in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, and the violence of the humor in the sit-com Breaking Bad, the talk will examine if universality in exhibition making and museum display is possible and desirable.

Simon Rees (b. 1972, NZ) was appointed the head of curatorial development at MAK in Vienna (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art) at the beginning of 2012 where he curated the exhibition Envisioning Buildings: reflecting architecture in contemporary art photography (2011-12). Formerly, Rees was the head of exhibitions at the CAC, Vilnius, and was responsible for the magazine CAC Interviu and the international lecture series the CAC Café Talks. In that role he curated numerous exhibitions both at the CAC and internationally and in 2011 was lead curator of The 15th Tallinn Print Triennial (For Love Not Money) and in 2007 was commissioner of the award winning Lithuanian Pavilion with artists Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas at the Venice Biennale. Rees writes regularly for international press and publication, including for Frieze and Frieze D/E.

The talk will be held in English.