Political Futures: Simon Rees

A Conversation About Low Trust Societies
“In summer (2018) I attended a podium discussion between two former European diplomats talking – from their respective and relative national positions – about [an] emerging society-market-culture-demos qua nation located in the Global South. Each of them projected onto that nation a set of comparators and criticisms enshrined within European post-enlightenment values. It came-off as Ivory Tower stuff. Neither speaker seemed to have noticed that the Europe their position(s) depend upon no longer exists. In fact, their reference and discussion about problems of emergence associated with “low trust economies and societies” is as prevalent in today’s Europe as in any other socio-political-geography.

Using the idea of “low trust” (coined in the late-1990s by Francis Fukuyama and used extensively in the language of economics and its analysis of organizational/HR culture) the conversation will address the impact of politicized separatism, nationalism, populism, and xenophobia on western cultural life.” Simon Rees

Curator and writer Simon Rees (*1972) has recently returned to Vienna and was formerly director of New Zealand’s contemporary art museum, prior to which he was head of programming and development at the MAK.

The talk is part of the discursive series Political Futures that questions the role of the future between the poles of art and politics.

Admission EUR 2