Opening Conversation: Bruce A. Block, Rebeca Méndez, Mona Simpson

Moderators: Raymund Ryan, Billie Tsien, Susan Szenasy, Edward Lifson

The American art critic Dave Hickey has stated on numerous occasions that the emerging subjects of debate that change the discourse of art are driven by ennui. “We don’t stop talking about something because we have figured it out, but because we get bored and the terms of the discussion become threadbare.” As such, the next subjects of debate tend to be those that are the most mysterious and incomprehensible; the ones most removed from recent memory. The emergent is likely to come from the least acknowledged, mined, or understood condition of the present—those things that we dare not say or fail to mention—the subjects that go unspoken. The Unmentionables Symposium will serve as a provocation for marginalia, taboos, illicit ideas, and undertheorized issues to be let out of the woodwork; providing unrestricted terrain to explore notions of critical interiority and the constructed environment.