‘Attention Economy’ and the Art World Today: Nicolaus Schafhausen and Lolita Jablonskienė in Conversation at CAC Cinema

14 January, Wednesday at 6 pm , CAC Cinema

Rupert together with Goethe Institute in Lithuania invite Lolita Jablonskienė, Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Art, Lithuania and Nicolaus Schafhausen, Director of Kunsthalle Wien, Austria for a public discussion. Departing from Attention Economy, a collection of interviews with 30 artists living in Germany, edited by Brigitte Oetker and Nicolaus Schafhausen and published by Sternberg Press in 2013, discussion will progress to questions about the art world at large; the commodification of attention, ‘bad’ and ‘good’ art, artists as superstars, art as entertainment, exhibition consumption and a lot more.

Lolita Jablonskienė, PhD, is a contemporary art critic and curator based in Vilnius. Since 2000 she has headed the Contemporary Art Information Centre (CAIC) – a spin-off of the Soros Foundation – and joined the Lithuanian Art Museum to work for the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (opened in 2009) in Vilnius. In 2002 she was appointed Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Art. Jablonskienė was Commissioner of the Lithuanian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2005. She has curated contemporary art exhibitions in her home country and abroad, written art criticism for the Lithuanian and foreign press, and also lectures at the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts as Associate Professor.

Nicolaus Schafhausen is the director of Kunsthalle Wien, Austria. He worked as artist before he started his career as a curator. He served as artistic director of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and as director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. He was a curator at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki (NIFCA) and the founding director of the European Kunsthalle. From 2006 to 2012 he headed the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Nicolaus Schafhausen was the curator of the German Pavilion for the 52nd and 53rd Venice Biennale in 2007 and 2009. Since 2011 he is the strategic director of Fogo Island Arts an initiative of the Canadian Shorefast Foundation. In addition to Nicolaus Schafhausen’s extensive experience in leading institutions and curating exhibitions, he is author and editor of numerous publications on contemporary art.

Lolita Jablonskienė and Nicolaus Schafhausen are jury members of “Art in Quadrum” competition organized by Schage.

Event is organised by Rupert in partnership with Goethe Institute in Lithuania. Special thanks to Contemporary Art Centre.