Pierre d’Alancaisez is a curator and critic. In his PhD research, he investigates interdisciplinary knowledge exchange and the relationship between artists’ access to non-arts skills and the impacts of artistic practices.
For a decade, Pierre was the director of waterside contemporary in London, where he pioneered social practice and art activism approaches in the art market. He has curated exhibitions with artists that included Turner Prize nominee Oreet Ashery and has commissioned works with artists such as Mirza and Butler which travelled to Artes Mundi and Sydney Biennale.
He has also been a cultural strategist in higher education and the charity sector, a publisher, a scientist, and a financial services professional.
Say No to Art School
The art school is a special thing. It promises to take young people at the threshold of adulthood and turn them into lifelong dreamers, creators, and critical thinkers. But the art school is also big business, intimately involved in reproducing neoliberalism and its subjects. For many graduates, art school is the first step in a career of fierce competition, low earnings, and horrific work conditions. What can we do about this?
recent work
The Atonement Complex
The very purpose of remembrance is to facilitate the corruption of memory. We must wary of artists offering simplistic attributions of guilt.
The Cathedral and the Museum
The museum is the spiritual successor of the church. But if these institutions are historically entwined, so are their crises today.
Fear, Loathing, and Denunciation
The events sparked by the ArtForum open letter reveal an art world whose gangrenous goings-on threaten the social order.
Benevolent Edgelords
Knee-jerk accusations of fascist thought and the refusal to embrace aesthetic ambiguity have meant that that ‘the left can’t meme’. It’s all Walter Benjamin’s fault – but artist like Joshua Citarealla and Monira Al Qadiri offer alternatives.
Universal Basic Artist
Supporting artists to make art, or make-work for workless artists? The concept of state-provided incomes for artists may be hiding a whole bunch of consequences – unintended and otherwise.
The Dearth of the Clinic
The Monkeypox outbreak exposes the failings of the technocratic biopolitical rule and the erosion of our ability to act as moral agents that plagued the Covid pandemic.
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