Ways of Undoing with Dawn Chan

What happens if you refuse to fly for work? For gallerists, curators, and others working in the globalized field of contemporary visual art, air travel and other carbon-intensive infrastructures are a necessity. Underwritten by nations in pursuit of soft power, or by patrons jet-setting their way through a global art-fair circuit, the forms of exchange most prominently driving contemporary art’s circulation have become entirely reliant on jet fuel.

On Friday 9/19, writer and cultural critic Dawn Chan will present an on-going research project springing from a single constraint: What happens when an art critic refuses to fly for art events and press trips? Going beyond a narrow understanding of flight-free alternatives (like Zoom talks), the project proposes serious, whimsical, unsettling, even absurdist alternatives. Could one hire an actor as a doppelganger? Stage a Twitch livestream lecture? Retain an attorney as a mouthpiece for a day? Jointly review a faraway show with a local critic?