Curating: Glittering Myth, Social Symptom, Revolutionary Force?
A Conference on Curatorial Knowledge Production

The Research Platform for Curatorial and Cross-disciplinary Cultural
Studies, Practice-Based Doctoral Programme, University of Reading, Fine Art Department of Art in cooperation with the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ICS, ZHdK www.curating.org <http://www.curating.org>

Curating as a glittering myth, curating as a social symptom, curating as a revolutionary force? This last aspect of art/curating has been the hidden driving force behind many research projects. An argument can be made on the basis of various theoretical approaches how art has an impact on social conditions, how it can achieve a political dimension after all. Jacques Ranciere argues that certain forms of art, namely the aesthetic regime of visibility, express “equivalence” or “equality”, and that this is true of postmodernism. This viewpoint can also be critiqued from a perspective which takes into consideration the power struggles in the art field.

Contemporary curating exists as a media conglomerate, the production of
meaning is achieved through a combination of artworks, photographs, commentary, publications, design, gestures, music, film, press releases, websites and interviews. It is situated in a specific political and cultural context. To analyse these complex situations we need a variety of approaches, for every project the combination could alter, it makes a bricolage of methodical approaches necessary.

10:00
Welcome and introduction
Sigrid Schade and Dorothee Richter
Outline of a theory of curating

10:30 - 11:30
Felix Ensslin:
What is the Subject and Discourse of Curating?

11:30- 12:00
Coffee Break

12:00 - 12:30
Elke Krasny
Curating as Caring. Mapping Affinities, Affects, Feminist
Durationality, and Solidarity

12:30-13:00
Avi Feldman
Curating the Law - Reflection on Contemporary Art and Law

13:00-13:30
Allan Siegel
Museums, curators and precarious Democracies

13:30-14:00
Discussion

14:00-14:45
Lunch Break

14:45-15:00
Szuper Gallery,
Video: Work/Arbeit/Rabota, 2009, 15 mins

15:00-15:30
Julia Moritz
Curating: Theory - Tendecies, Tools, Trouble

15:30-16:00
Michael Birchall
Shifting power: the curator as producer in socially engaged art

16:00-16:30
Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen
Curating Architecture

16:30-17:00
Q & A
Short Break
and Performance by Fender Schrader and Nana Lüth
NANA&FRIENDS
Performance: Only strong characters can surrender, 2014

please register: officecurating.org