A Fiesta of Tough Choices: Contemporary Art in the Wake of Cultural Policies

A Fiesta of Tough Choices is published in collaboration with the international studio program in Sweden (IASPIS). The publication expands on the festival-inspired exhibition and two seminars held at IASPIS, held in the occasion of the Swedish government’s declaration of 2006: Year of Cultural Diversity. The publication not only documents, but takes the discussions from this seminar a step further with new texts and art projects.

From the preface

“Multiculturalism is a little too easy to dismiss. In political terms for the Right, it poses a threat to traditions and national identity. For the Left, it often means food festivals, post-Marxist culturalism, or reactionary community spokesmen. As with discussions of globalization, perhaps the crux of the problem lies in the tools at our disposal. The critical terminology is awkward or embarrassing at best, dangerous at worst. At the very least, a more exact language might help define the terms of engagement more precisely. Following the Swedish government’s declaration of 2006: Year of Cultural Diversity, we looked to artists and theorists with a capacity for reassessing standard cultural terminologies and revisiting their critical potential.”

Contributors: Timothy Brennan, Loulou Cherinet, Peter Geschwind, Jonathan Harris, Edda Manga, Kate Rich, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Hito Steyerl, Måns Wrange and Tirdad Zolghadr.