ARC Researchers Sophie Behal, Isadora Epstein, Eoghan McIntyre and Benjamin Stafford will present a performance lecture, titled Fool’s Guild, as part of the Prognostics Lecture series in the Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki, Wed 28 February 2018, 6pm.

Details below and here.

Fools are marginal figures; they transgress custom and convention and by doing so are marked as outsiders. Often this marginalisation is due to ineptitude; a fool’s labours are often marked by the absence of skill, finesse or ingenuity. The Fool’s Guild are a fictional group of artists and curators who advocate foolishness, folly and incompetence as an art making tactic.

Playfully adopting the framework of a fictional gallery allows for a critique of the follies that are conceived by the institutionalisation of art; the convergence of art, marketing and commerce and the need for a gallery to assume an identity. The performative lecture, Fool’s Guild examines, reenacts and offers new representations of the fool in visual culture.

With reference to thinkers such as Desiderius Erasmus, Soren Kierkegaard and Glen Campbell, Fool’s Guild offers a parodic investigation into how the archetype of the fool has been appropriated in contemporary art.

Sophie Behal, Isadora Epstein, Eoghan McIntyre and Benjamin Stafford are students of the Art + Research Collaboration Masters in Dublin, Ireland. They have previously presented projects together encompassing exhibitions, performances and publications in Sandretto de Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland and The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Prognostics lectures map new areas of art, which challenge established forms of art, exhibition methods, and shake up societal norms and political thinking. Prognostic lecture series is supported by Saastamoinen Foundation.