Roundtable discussion: What’s Love Got to Do with It?

This roundtable discussion brings together curatorial practices and infrastructures that work from and with precarity, foregrounding emerging practices that combine collectivity, criticality and practical nurturing. Representatives from independent arts spaces in Sofia, Athens, Bucharest, Bari and London, who find themselves at a critical and precarious junction as resources and infrastructures become less available, are invited to take part in an open and public debate about possibilities for the future. The current reality calls for active reflection on the connection between an organisation or collective’s location and its ability to amplify the voices of contemporary artists. At the same time, issues of local responsibility for emotional, social and material structures need to be taken into account by curators, artists and organisers alike.

 

Members of the public are invited to join the roundtable and think together about how care and love can become part of our curatorial and artistic practices. The thematics of the event build on Gerald Raunig’s concept of ‘instituent practices’ and the publication What’s Love (or Care, Intimacy, Warmth, Affection) Got to Do with It? (e-flux and Sternberg Press, 2017). Some of the questions we will consider include: How can we move the current socio-economic situation into the logic of care? Who and what could we care for, and how? What are the conditions that allow unconditional love to exist?

 

This event is free but please reserve a place. The roundtable will take place 1–4pm approximately, in order to give everyone time to speak and respond.

 

This event is programmed in collaboration with Cristina Vasilescu.

clearview is a contemporary art project with its base on Fountayne Road, Tottenham in Haringey, North London. clearview is a residency program, a project space, a series of events and a collective dedicated to the vision of invited practitioners. Founded in 2016, the project is run by Canan Batur, Cédric Fauq, Nilz Källgren, Raoul Klooker and Cristina Vasilescu.

 

Viktoria Draganova is a curator and writer living between Frankfurt/Main, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2014, she founded Swimming Pool, an art project space in Sofia focused on research, collaborative approaches, art education and art community politics. Her personal work relates to poetic institutions, the potentials of the imaginary and the South East. As a freelance curator, she has worked with Städel Museum and Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt/Main) and curated projects at David Dale Gallery. Viktoria writes for research publications, artists’ catalogues and art magazines, her texts have appeared in Badland, Echo Gone Wrong, Flash Art International, Frieze, frieze d/e, Mousse magazine and СВЕМА. Viktoria holds a degree in law and PhD in legal history.

 

iLiana Fokianaki is a writer and curator based in Athens and Rotterdam. Her research focuses on the notion of the state and the formations of power that manifest under the influence of geopolitics, national identity and cultural and anthropological histories. In 2013, she founded State of Concept Athens, the first non-profit institution with a permanent program and location in Athens. It promotes Greek and international artists through solo exhibitions, but also invites international curators to create exhibitions that comment on the current socio-political landscape of Greece and beyond. In 2016, together with Antonia Alampi, Fokianaki, she founded Future Climates, a platform that aims to propose viable futures for small-scale organizations of contemporary art and culture. Fokianaki has taught in Greek institutions and abroad, and is a visiting lecturer at the Dutch Art Institute, while lecturing and taking part in panel discussions in various independent spaces, museums and foundations worldwide. Fokianaki holds an MA in Art Criticism from City, University of London and her PhD research with Athena Athanasiou at Panteion University, Athens focuses on economy, identity and politics. She is a member of IKT, the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art.

 

Anna Santomauro is curator, educator and researcher in micropolitics and socially engaged art. She joined Arts Catalyst in May 2017 as Programme Curator. In 2011, Santomauro co-founded Vessel in Bari, Italy, a non-profit arts organisation dedicated to public programming in relation to contemporary social, political and economic issues. In 2015–2016, Santomauro was ESP and Public Programmer at Eastside Projects, Birmingham. She has developed several projects and curated multiple exhibitions, such as The Pacifist Library – Sarajevo, a project by Valentina Curandi and Nathaniel Katz (2013); Giant Step, a collaboration between Vessel and the Van Abbemuseum, Mostyn Gallery and Galeria Labirynt (2012); For an Ecology of the Museum at the Museum of Villa Croce in Genoa, Italy (2012); and Work in the Field, a radio program as part of Pablo Helguera’s project Aelia Media in Bologna, Italy (2011). She has attended several curatorial courses, such as GBICC 2012 organized by the Gwangju Biennial, ICA Summer Seminar in Yerevan, Armenia, ICI Seminar in Istanbul, and is a member of IKT. She has lectured, given talks, tutored and led workshops in several institutions, including CCS Bard College, NYC; Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam; Newcastle University; Salt Galata, Istanbul; University of Cambridge; and La Casa Encendida, Madrid.

 

Cristina Vasilescu is a curator based in London. She co-runs the contemporary art project clearview, based in North London. A forthcoming project around notions of privacy and technologies with artists Nora Silva, Nilz Kallgren and Ami Clarke is presented part of ODD, Bucharest. Other recent exhibitions and projects include Public Marketplace, a collective project part of Art Night, London, 2018; Is this the end? a collective project part of ICA, London, 2017; Turn The Tide, a collaborative project part of RCA, Dyson Gallery London, 2017; and remapping bodies, with artist Vlad Brateanu, tranzit.ro, Bucharest, 2016. Vasilescu has contributed to Temporary Art Review and Baltic Triennial 13 – Give Up the Ghost catalogue. She holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London (2017) and a BA in Social and Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2014).

 

Raluca Voinea is a curator and art critic based in Bucharest. Since 2012 she has been co-director of tranzit.ro Association and takes care of one of this institution’s spaces in Bucharest. The space includes an art gallery, a communitarian permaculture garden and an Orangery (a space for hosting fragile plants and ideas), all developed organically and in response to the local context and more international frameworks. In 2018–2019, tranzit.ro/Bucuresti becomes an Experimental Station for Research on the environment, technology and the society of the future. Recent curatorial projects at tranzit.ro/Bucuresti include Yuri Leiderman: Self-portrait with Valerian (2017); The Veil of Peace (2017); Frugalitas, Severitas, Fidelis – Adelina Ivan, Nicoleta Moise (2016); and Pavel Braila: Joc. The Energy of Life (2016). Other recent exhibitions and projects: Collection Collective – Template for a Future Model of Representation (tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 2017) and Alexandra Pirici: Aggregate (n.b.k., Berlin, 2017). Since 2008, she has co-edited IDEA Arts + Society magazine and since 2012, she has been the coordinator of the (Exhibitions) collection published by IDEA Publishing House. She has an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London (2006) and a BA in Art History and Theory from the Arts University in Bucharest (2001).

 

Jupiter Woods reconfigures as a platform for collaboration and experimentation, welcoming dialogue across disciplines: devoted to providing space to a multiplicity of voices and to the artistic community at large. Now in its fourth year, Jupiter Woods is run by Carolina Ongaro (Co-founder and Director) with Katie Simpson and Katrina Black, and wishes to maintain its commitment to facilitating the production and exchange of artistic and curatorial research; forging and developing collaboration across borders; and cultivating curatorial methodologies founded on relatedness, experimentation and the feminine. Jupiter Woods was established in early 2014 by Hanna Laura Kaljo, Lucy Lopez, Carolina Ongaro, Barnie Page, Cory Scozzari and Emma Siemens-Adolphe, with an exhibition space and residency facility in a domestic setting.