Hosted by the Centre for Creative Arts, Cultures and Engagement (CREATURE) Pil and Galia Kollectiv discuss 'Kitchen Table Monumentalism' as part of Public Face's "Performance, Monuments and Public Spaces" series.

Hannah Arendt famously noted the division in classical Greek culture between the private realm, where economic activity resides, and the public realm where political life happens through debate and collective action. COVID-19 has shone a new light on this dichotomy. Much economic production now happens in the privacy of one’s home, while politics is reduced to the policing of bodies in public, as economic activity is suspended. This talk will consider the implications of this new realignment of the public and the private for art practice, focusing on the trope of the temporary monument as a stage for public performance.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv are London-based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Through their performance, film and sculptural installations, they have been interrogating the organisation of labour and the manifestations of ideology in late capitalism. They have had solo shows at Centre Clark, Montreal, Te Tuhi, New Zealand and Showroom Gallery, London, and presented live work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Berlin Biennial and Kunsthall Oslo. They are the directors of artist run project space xero, kline & coma and work as lecturers in Art at the University of Reading, the Royal College of Art and London Metropolitan University.

Image: Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Concrete Gown for immaterial Flows, 2014.

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