Curating and Beyond

The Postgraduate Program in Curating, ICS, DKV, Zürich presents a panel about curatorial practice and beyond. We would like to discuss contemporary curatorial practice which investigates with curatorial means into socio political issues.
Ellen Blumenstein (1976) is an independent curator and member of the curatorial collective THE OFFICE (founded in 2009, with Katharina Fichtner, Fiona Geuß, Maribel Lopez, Kathrin Meyer). Operating from Berlin, THE OFFICE intervenes into the cities' cultural infrastructures to connect and expand existing configurations and to provide a space for discursive activities in constantly changing environments. THE OFFICE explores a model of collective practice and experimentation for artists, curators, writers and other cultural producers. It is a network for receiving and developing projects, inventing and testing formats. THE OFFICE insists on autonomy while emphasizing collaboration on temporary operations into the arts.
SALON POPULAIRE is organized by THE OFFICE (Ellen Blumenstein, Fiona Geuß) and Arthur Berlin (Tanja Schomaker); its spatial conception is conceived in collaboration with raumlaborberlin (Markus Bader). SALON POPULAIRE is a meeting point for conversations on art and neighboring topics, for the convergence of different ideas, positions and contexts. Conceived as an informal social space with bar and kitchen it can actively be re-defined and used by and with its guests according to the respective needs.
www.theoffice.li / www.salonpopulaire.de
Rakett is a collaboration between Karolin Tampere and Åse Løvgren starting in 2003 in Bergen, Norway. The Rakett-projects often function as temporary platforms for curatorial examinations. Both implicit and explicit these project address issues of copyright, (im)material and ephemeral production, the role of artist and curators as well as the possibility for mobile and flexible platforms within the institutional and public framework from where to look at art and society. 2008-2010 they initiated COMMON LANDS – Allmannaretten which is an exhibition project that uses the process of the redevelopment of the harbour area in Oslo, to highlight a number of issues associated with urban development, democracy, access to and the distribution of land.
www.rakett.biz / www.commonlands.net
The Postgraduate Program in Curating (MAS/ CAS) is a discursive platform designed to impart specialist knowledge of contemporary curating practices through practice-oriented projects. Curating means the creation of innovative structures for the presentation of cultural artefacts through interdisciplinary collaboration. In this field, art, digital media, design, and architecture relate in new ways to one another. The last few years have seen curators working in increasingly close collaboration with artists, architects, designers, and educationalists on the development of exhibitions, projects in the public sphere, the design of museum spaces, and the presentation of collections. Contemporary exhibitions are changing, with new interpretative strategies complementing the integration into exhibitions of innovative display structures, lounge areas, archives, reading rooms, and new media interfaces.
We are witnessing a shift in the organisation of work processes throughout society. Within this shift, individual areas of action are coming together in new meta–levels, such as networks and know-how transfer. The Postgraduate Programme in Curating responds to these changes in the processes of the production of cultural meaning. It aims to address the significant changes affecting cultural production. It seeks to provide a model situation for course participants to gain practical curating experience, and to critically reflect on the issues involved.