Join artists Jenny Holzer, Lili Kobielski and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer as they discuss the impact the pandemic has had on their creative pursuits.

Artistic expression has an irreducibly public dimension. Although technology allows us to experience art by ourselves, there is something about the communal dimension of experiencing art together that simply cannot be replaced either by producing art for private enjoyment, or by coming into contact with artistic expression by ourselves. Reacting to art as a member of a collective, and performing before a live audience, just are a different set of phenomena from what is involved in private experience.

The COVID-19 pandemic overnight almost eradicated the habitual public vehicles in which the communal experience of art occurs. Museums and galleries have been deprived of their audiences for over a year now. Even public spaces that are often the sight of mass transit and congregation have been empty. How does such an absence of public and civil engagement in spaces devoted to art impact artistic creation?

This webinar brings together three world-renowned artists to reflect upon the challenges that the year just past has presented. What has its impact been on their creative process? What has their experience of these alternative « modes of delivery » been? Have there been any unexpected benefits or opportunities in the adaptation to a new reality? And what does the future hold for the art world? Will we be returning to « normal », and if now, what relatively permanent changes do they foresee in the ways in which they continue to create?