Lívia Páldi is the new director of the Baltic Art Center (BAC) in Visby and our next speaker in the HIAP Talks series. Páldi’s talk is part of a three-day workshop based on the theme of “non-aligned art” and organized in the frame of HIAP’s Paths Crossing project. This project, co-funded by the EU Culture Programme, unites the forces of five North European artist-in-residence centres to invite nineteen young and emerging visual artists and curators from new and applicant EU Member States.

Reflecting on her extensive experience as the chief curator of the Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest, Páldi seeks to re-think the current parlous state of the field and its history. She asks questions about the position of the intellectual and her responsibility, and the potential of engagement in a volatile cultural-political predicament.

The need to reinvestigate norms and forms of cultural memory and identity within the changing parameters of artistic and curatorial practices has been central to Lívia Páldi’s research and production. In her talk, she will specifically address how some aspects of her previous involvement and practices can be developed further within BAC and its context.

The Baltic Art Center is a production office and working place for artists, curators and contemporary art writers located in Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland. BAC runs a variety of production and residency programmes in collaboration with regional and international organisations. It engages actively with issues concerning the relationship between artistic processes, institutions and society, with the aim to continuously assess and rethink possible working methods. This enquiry is carried out in the form of new productions, public talks and discussions, screenings, workshops and other forms of knowledge production. BAC seeks productive relationships between specific artistic projects and broader, widely contextualised explorations.

Budapest-born Lívia Páldi is currently the director of Baltic Art Center (BAC), Visby. She was the chief curator of the Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest between 2007 and 2011, where she organised talks, discussions, workshops and numerous exhibitions, including Other Voices, Other Rooms—Attempt(s) at Reconstruction: 50 Years of the Balázs Béla Studio (2009); Mircea Cantor: Future Gifts (2008); Deimantas Narkevičius: History Continued (2007); !REVOLUTION? (with Ulrike Kremeier, 2007); and Dreamlands Burn – Nordic Art Show 2006 (with Edit Molnár, 2006). Previously, Lívia Páldi was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros (Hungary) and its co-director from 1997 to 1999. She has also edited several exhibition catalogues and was a contributing editor of the East Art Map magazine and book organised by the artist collaborative IRWIN in Ljubljana (2002–2005). Páldi has participated in the Curatorial Training Programme at De Appel in Amsterdam and is currently a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Art Theory and Media Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She is one of the curatorial agents of dOCUMENTA (13).