Presentation
The end of the Cold War removed culture’s need for exterior converstions and redirected its critical energy inward. I argue that this inward conversion has left the field poorly equipped for the decisions that now matter. Art’s engagement with extraction has concentrated on the upstream, which is visually available and yields identifiable victims, while the midstream — refining, processing, siting, chokepoints — remains culturally unmediated until it ceases to operate. Taking the European Coal and Steel Community as a founding midstream institution, and reading various biennales in 2026, I ask what an institution would have to be in order to reach the midstream before the fact rather than after it.
Mi You is a curator and professor of Art and Economies at the University of Kassel / documenta Institut, and co-director of the newly established Käte Hamburger research center Resource Worlds. She’s the author of the book Art in a Multipolar World (Hatje Cantz, 2024). Her most recent exhibitions include the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2020–21), “Lonely Vectors” at the Singapore Art Museum (2022), “Clouds, Power and Ornament” at the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (2023), “Really? Art and Knowledge in Time of Crisis” at Framer Framed (2024), “The China Moment” at Kasseler Kunstverein (2026). She is a member of the transnational NGO Common Action Forum and a Berggruen Institute Europe fellow.
Symposium: October 10, 3 pm / Flutgraben – Projektraum