History, immateriality and mediation: how can we practice "the curatorial" today?
News: Feb 22, 2011
A symposium on how to perform the curatorial within art in order to try to perceive curating beyond art, towards the cross-disciplinary. As part of Performing the Curatorial: A Research project on "the curatorial" within and beyond art, November 2010-March 2012.
5-6 March 2011 at the Schildknecht Theatre, Academy of Music and Drama, Fågelsången 1, University of Gothenburg.
Interest in post-Fordist service and information-oriented working methods is evident within contemporary art. How can this type of immateriality be read into cultural heritage questions around, for example, the history of consciousness but also into the interest in history among artists today? How can we understand the privileging of the archive and the library over collections of objects within contemporary art and curating, and what implications might this have for other disciplines? What is the function of mediation and the mediator within such a preference? And not least, what does this mean if we want to practice "the curatorial"?
Programme
Saturday 5 March
13:00-13:30
Introduction Maria Lind (Stockholm), director Tensta Konsthall
13:30-14:30
Presentation Helmut Draxler (Berlin), curator and Professor of Art Theory at the Merz-Akademie College of Design in Stuttgart
14:30-15:00
Break
15:00-16:00
Presentation Eungie Joo (New York), Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs at the New Museum in New York
16:00-17:00
Presentation Clementine Deliss (Frankfurt am Main), curator and director of the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt
17:00-19:00
Discussions/workshops in smaller groups
Sunday 6 March
11:00-11:30
Recapitulation Fredrik Svensk (Gothenburg), critic, writer and lecturer
11:30-12:30
Presentation Boris Buden (Zagreb/Berlin), philosopher and writer
12:30-13:30
Lunch
13:30-14:30
Presentation Marion von Osten (Berlin), artist, curator and writer
14:30-16:00
Round-up with everybody
Moderator: Fredrik Svensk
Graphics and spatial design: Luca Frei
For reservations please contact johan.oberg@konst.gu.se
As regards contemporary art, the curator’s mediating function, or translation, has developed into curating, or even a curatorial praxis. The specific competence created by this praxis “the curatorial” can, on the one hand, be described as one typical of its time, and on the other, as a competence whose relevance stretches beyond contemporary art. The curatorial is akin to that methodology used by artists focusing on the post-production approach – that is, the principles of montage, with disparate images, objects as well as other material and immaterial phenomena that are brought together within a particular time and space-related framework. But what function do art and artists have within “the curatorial”? At the same time, since the curatorial has clear performative sides, it also includes elements of choreography, orchestration and administrative logistics – like all practitioners working with defining, preserving and mediating cultural heritage in a wider sense. Is curating therefore essentially an act of translation? If so with what purpose, and can it be performed elsewhere? How can we understand what looks like the privileging of the archive and the library over collections of objects within contemporary art, and what implications might this have for other disciplines? What is the function of mediation and the mediator within such a preference?
Curator: Maria Lind
Under the aegis of the Cultural Heritage seminars at the University of Gothenburg, a gathering point for the critical scholarly examination of and artistic perspectives on questions of cultural heritage.