Building a Code of Conduct for an Art Organisation: Discomfort and Transformation
With Grégory Castera (Curator-at-large and Head of commoning KANAL-Centre Pompidou)
Iliana Fokianaki (Director Kunsthalle Bern)
& Piergiorgio Pepe (Collector, Ethics Practitioner)
The talk will be exploring the making of the Codes of Conduct for KANAL-Centre Pompidou and Kunsthalle Bern as collective practices: confronting tensions, reimagining responsibility, and asking what remains to be done
Iliana Fokianaki is a Greek curator, writer and theorist, and Director of Kunsthalle Bern since 2023. Her work examines the relationship between art and power, particularly through geopolitics, national identity, and cultural histories. She is the founding director of State of Concept Athens and has held curatorial and artistic leadership roles at Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp and Survival Kit at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in Riga.
Piergiorgio Pepe is a Paris-, Athens- and Bangkok-based ethics practitioner, industry scholar and collector. A City lawyer, he has over 25 years’ experience in professional ethics and advises organisations, including museums, gallery associations and art workers’ unions, on ethics codes and programmes. He teaches at Sciences Po, INSEAD, and the in-tangible Institute. He co-founded Ethics of Collecting and co-runs Phenomenon, supporting queer, feminist and anti-colonial practices in Greece and beyond. He is a board member of the Ethics Society.
Grégory Castéra is a curator, an educator, and a strategist. Rooted in ecological and long-term thinking, his work critically examines prefigurative practices in contemporary art. He is currently Curator-at-Large and Head of commoning at KANAL–Centre Pompidou (Brussels) and strategy and program advisor for Kerenidis Pepe. He is a founding member of Council (2013–2023); Afield (2014–present); and Celador Brussels (2023–present). He was Co-Director of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (2009–2012), Associate Curator of Bergen Assembly (2016), the Taipei Biennial (2020) and Sharjah Biennial (2013). He founded and led the post-master’s programme Collective Practices at the Royal Institute of Art (Stockholm, 2019–2022), was a member of Encyclopédie de la parole (2007-2014) and is adviser to the Jan van Eyck Academie (since 2021).