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Conclusion
The fact that the fantastic institution requires rethinking the entire apparatus of artmaking and its diffusion means that it requires change in society. This change is, paradoxically, already here. The fantastic institution just has to be actualized. People can make it appear. It's not a utopia, it will exist if and when we found it. Curators, artists, dramaturges, academics and the audience are all accomplices in (on various levels) the gentrification of art. It's an international model of organizing works and speaking about them, which goes hand in hand with gentrification, exclusion, economic growth and increasing financial precarity. (At the symposium a new social class division was addressed: the "salariat" versus the "precariat", the latter being a working force that is constantly available, flexible and unorganized - artists are a good example of this category). We can't immediately stop gentrification, but we can deny it the ownership and the centrality of art. Art exists in other places than in the main institutions, who have appropriated art and its representation, and who have instated hierarchies and privatized its practices and visibility. The old institution should decolonize itself and this space for art should be reclaimed, reinvented, shared, and not appropriated by the selected few cultural workers and artists. We hear from curators that too many works are being produced, but it's the opposite: too few people are making art, sharing art. Events can be organized in living rooms, kitchens, central squares, parks, forests. And when no space is available, artists could occupy theatres and empty spaces and produce works outside of the established structures. It might be a side job, or a job, a way to gain freedom, equality, dignity and it could multiply the possibilities of expression and assembly. The art institution can no longer be a small market in which new works are displayed only to the experts. It is a public place which serves to empower people and in which conflicting visions are confronted. It's a work, a very sensitive and soft work. It's a patient and attentive practice that might need some time, but that everybody can participate in with attention and love.
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