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
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 New Museum, Again
Who really has a say in what museums do and for whom? Will museums heal the wounds inflicted on them and their audiences by the past decade’s political, social, and economic upheavals? At what cost?
Renzo Martens: Enjoy Poverty
What are the productive limits of art practice as critique? Renzo Martens’ ‘Enjoy Poverty’ is as relevant and as challenging as it was on its release.
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.
The Elusive Dream of Universalism
Sometimes, ‘it’s not race, it’s class’ is the correct response to inequality.
Decentralised Non-Autonomous Organisation
Documenta 15 reads like a series of creative workshops staged by corporate HR departments to boost loyalty at the lowest possible cost. Perhaps the next Documenta should be curated by an artist.
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