A Fiesta of Tough Choices: Contemporary Art in the Wake of Cultural Policies

A Fiesta of Tough Choices is published in collaboration with the international studio program in Sweden (IASPIS).
The publication expands on the festival-inspired exhibition and two seminars held at IASPIS, on the occasion of the Swedish government’s declaration of 2006: Year of Cultural Diversity. The publication not only documents, but takes the discussion from this seminar a step further with new text and art projects.

Multiculturalism is a little too easy to dismiss. In political terms for the Right, it poses a threat to traditions and antinational identity. For the Left, it often means food festivals, post-marxist culturalism or reactionary community spokesmen. As with discussions of globalization, perhaps the crux of the problem lies in the tools at our disposal. The critical terminology is akward or embarrassing at best, dangerous at worse. At the very least, a more exact language might help define the terms of engagement more precisely. Following the Swedish government’s declaration of 2006: Year of Cultural Diversity, we looked to artists and theorists with a capacity for reassessing standard cultural terminologies and revisiting their critical potential.

Contributors: Timothy Brennan, Loulou Cherinet, Peter Geschwind, Jonathan Harris, Edda Manga, Philippe Parreno, Kate Rich, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Hito Steyerl, Måns Wrange and Tirdad Zolghadr

Published in collaboration with the international studio program in Sweden (IASPIS).