Brooklyn Commons, a new discussion series beginning this fall at ISCP, presents intellectual and artistic pairings between the established Brooklyn-based artist community and ISCP residents. This series puts artists in conversation who have not shared a dialogue in the past and focuses on the vibrant and diverse cultural practitioners living and working in Brooklyn, both long-term and short-term.

Fred Wilson and Danish collaborative benandsebastian will discuss the politics of display and the re-imagining of the historical narratives of objects. Wilson’s work has explored themes of display and how objects in museum collections carry or reveal political and institutional power structures. benandsebastian’s ongoing project, Phantom Limbs, explores how systems of display are involved in embedding meaning in spaces and artifacts during conditions of absence. The duo’s work employs architecture as a way of thinking,  which is explored through mythical stories, utopian models, economic systems, and power relations.

Fred Wilson (born in 1954 in Bronx, NY) lives and works in New York. Wilson has received numerous awards including, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award (1999), as well as represented the United States at La Biennale di Venezia (2003) and the Cairo Biennial (1992). Wilson’s work has been exhibited internationally including a retrospective of his work Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations, 1979-2000 (2001-2004). In 2011 Ridinghouse, London published Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader bringing together a significant amount of texts about the artist’s work and exhibitions.

Ben Clement (born 1981 in Oxford, United Kingdom) and Sebastian de la Cour (born 1980 in Copenhagen, Denmark) live and work in Berlin. benandsebastian are graduates of  University College London, Cambridge University and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include: Phantom Limbs, Trapholt Museum, Kolding, Denmark (2012) and Unbuilt Extremities, Friedelstrasse 27, Berlin (2011).

Brooklyn Commons is organized by Kari Conte, ISCP Director of Programs and Exhibitions.