Does private-public funding and management of culture mark the death of institutional and critical autonomy? And is direct censorship an anomaly, the most visible form of a wider constriction of cultural freedom, or the shape of cultural policy to come?

Mute has invited a range of practitioners along to discuss the perils and opportunities for critical cultural activity in neoliberalising institutions:

Leigh French, co-editor of Variant magazine and contributor Rebecca
Gordon-Nesbitt will discuss the recent censorship of Variant by Culture and Sport Glasgow, the new private charitable trust that runs the city's arts and leisure. They will be joined by Richard Birkett, assistant curator of the ICA's current Nought to Sixty programme and David Garcia, 'tactical media' theorist and Dean of Chelsea College of Art and Design London.

The talk will raise some of the following questions:

Does commercialisation enhance or corrode 'critical' culture? Why does an institutional turn to 'openness', collaborative and politicised art practices coincide with privatisation? And how will capitalist crisis impact on arts funding and cultural practice – a shift from radical reformism to conservative reaction or revolutionary refusal?

Where: Upstairs at Publish And Be Damned self-publishing fair

http://metamute.org

Streetmap: http://linkme2.net/el

Rochelle School map: http://linkme2.net/em

Buses: 243, 55, 8, 388
Tube: Bethnal Green, Liverpool Street, Old Street