From Dry to Wet Conceptualism in Cognitive Capitalism

SFSIA 2025 | Paris | September 1 – 6

In celebration of ten years of programming, this year’s Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art in Paris, hosted by Centre des Récollets and Master in Arts & Vision of Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, will look at alternative historical frameworks of Conceptual art in order to engage the newfound significance of this movement in the digital information age. To do this, we will introduce the novel category of “Wet” Conceptual art at a moment when the knowledge economy and the significance of mind, brain and consciousness have never been more important. While some earlier examples, such as Boris Groys’s 1979 essay “Moscow Romantic Conceptualism” and the exhibitions Global Conceptualism at Queens Museum (1999) and Romantic Conceptualism at Kunsthalle Nurnberg (2007), attempted to question Conceptual art’s limitations and blind spots, exposing its mystical and romantic roots as well as its inherent xenophobia, recent social, political, cultural and technological conditions have developed and accelerated the need for a new understanding of classically defined Conceptual art to combat the impending despotism of Big Data and a social media-generated consciousness industry. > READ MORE