Crit Club: Should Art Always Look Forward, Never Back?
You are invited to the Crit Club event, which will take place as part of this year’s Ljubljana Art Weekend on Saturday, May 23, from 20:30 to 22:00 at the Tabor Sports Hall (Sokolski dom).
An experimental discussion format conceived by artist Cem A., in which two teams debate an unrealistic question related to art. In this edition, the discussion will revolve around the question: Should art always look forward, never back?
Participants: Stephanie Bailey, Manca G. Renko, Andrej Škufco, and Alenka Pirman
Moderator: Kate Brown
Crit Club is a performance by Cem A., the brain behind the cult Instagram profile freeze_magazine. Crit Club is a debate where participants are invited to step outside their usual roles (artist, curator, writer) and engage in roleplay scenarios that grapple with provocative, often absurd questions about art, expertise, and the conventions of art discourse. In a field where disagreement often feels risky, Crit Club creates space for critical play. Rather than rehearsing praise or silence, participants are invited to engage in disagreement—as performance, as roleplay, as a thought experiment. Each debate starts with a seemingly unrealistic question. One side argues for, the other against—until they switch roles midway through. As the performance unfolds, speakers must navigate an impossible scenario.
For its Ljubljana Art Weekend edition, Crit Club will take place in Sokolski dom Tabor, the city's iconic sports hall, accompanied by a fencing event that frames the debate, which will be moderated by Kate Brown, while Slovenian and foreign experts Stephanie Bailey, Manca G. Renko, Andrej Škufca and Alenka Pirman face off as the two opposing sides.