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.
Recent work
David Swift: The Identity Myth
"It’s not about race, it’s about class" is the fastest way to shut down a conversation on the progressive values. David Swift considers how the boundaries of identities are policed and how diverse versions of the same identity can be deployed to different ends.
(No) Politics in Venice
This year's Biennale is in denial of the circumstances that have forced the event to shift from odd to even years. To find artistic politics in Venice, one has to consider form and matter on their own terms: in the long term.
Epistemic politics, knowledge warfare
Snow asked his literary colleagues about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. “The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?”