Curating to Speak the Unknown
Online Course on Contemporary Curating
Curating to Speak the Unknown
Lecturer: Antonio Cataldo
Course dates: 29 January + 5 February 2022, 2–6pm (CET)
Enrol until 21 January 2022:
https://www.curating.org/curating-to-speak-the-unknown/
Several questions prompt recognizing the intellectual misery disorienting us in the ferocity of the aesthetic language we have learned to speak. To enter the art sphere, lacerating screens and lamenting the grief of the aesthetic language, we must talk, again and again, with the voices left in the dark. We need to speak the unspoken: what and who remains unacknowledged by us keeping silent. Curating is the practice of finding a voice and of giving a voice. In the public sphere, it is a practice of assertion to provide images for the past to write the future.
The course will focus on community building and imagine alternative structures to access a space of appearance through practical examples and exercises. How can we start to imagine the new? How can we give voice to the otherwise unknown? How can we speak about desire and nourishment, and gratification? How can we use curatorial power to create the material conditions for speaking? How can we build knowledge that prompts archives for the yet unknown?
The course will consist of group readings and exercises to prompt gestures, performances, exhibitions, and other forms of collaborations breaking free from given structures.
Antonio Cataldo, born in 1981, is a curator and writer living and working in Oslo. Currently, he is the Artistic Director of Fotogalleriet, a publicly funded institution and the oldest existing and continually operating kunsthalle for photography as a critical art practice in the Nordic region. Here, he is envisioning a research-based program questioning the social role of images in today’s society. Cataldo has actively sought out novel institutional practices throughout his career and questioned the economic and technological contradictions underpinning institutional formats. He has worked in different capacities for several large-scale exhibitions and symposia. He earned his MA from the IUAV University of Venice under Professor and philosopher Giorgio Agamben; and a BA from the Second University of Naples. In parallel with his curatorial work, Cataldo has been working on a Ph.D. at ZHdK in Zurich, Switzerland, since 2016. Over the last two decades, Cataldo held curatorial and other positions at OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway, La Biennale di Venezia, and IUAV, University of Venice. Cataldo serves on the board of directors of Kunsthallene i Norge and the Sandefjord Kunstforening Art Award jury.
Image credit: Let’s Talk About Images, on-going programmes. Photo: Julie Hrncirova/Fotogalleriet, 2019.