Ethics of practice – online workshop hold Marysia Lewandowska
January 25 – February 10, 2021
Dead line for applying: January 10, 2021
This intensive remote-learning course is designed to illuminate the history and theory of curating as well as the processes, procedures utilized by curators and other professionals in the art of exhibition making. Through a series of interactive lectures held by artist Marysia Lewandowska, students will be able to develop an intimate understanding of historical curatorial practice and of the most recent developments in curating contemporary art today. The course investigates a variety of approaches to curating, from the largest questions about social and cultural roles and it provides constructive tools for the participants.
Teaching: The remote learning experience includes lectures, seminar participation and discussions. The course provides unique opportunities for direct student engagement with arts professionals, as well an extensive array of discussion forums.
The teaching is intensive and supportive, with an emphasis on individual learning, on developing a broad range of knowledges and understanding related to curating and its ethics.
Faculty: The lectures will be held by Marysia Lewandowska. She is a Polish-born artist based in London since 1985. She has been exploring the public functions of archives, museums and exhibitions often resulting in conceptually driven projects and films involving the property of others. These works propose new relations between forms of knowledge and ownership, activating reflections on the social and immaterial public realm. In 2009 she has established the Women’s Audio Archive followed by a publication Undoing Property? co-edited with Laurel Ptak in 2013. Her work has been presented by Tate Modern, Moderna Museet, Muzeum Sztuki, Whitechapel Gallery. The latest installation It’s About Time occupied the Pavilion of Applied Arts at the 58th Art Biennale in Venice. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has recently included the Enthusiasts Archive project in their collection. She is currently collaborating with Kunsthalle Baden Baden on re-thinking institutional practices for the post-pandemic times.www.marysialewandowska.com
Structure: The course is taught remotely and divided into 6 sessions:
Artist as Curator
Professional boundaries legitimize positions, validate expertise, and ultimately stake claims that are as territorial as they are economic. By looking at an ongoing debate about blurring the boundaries between art and curating, the session will explore different manifestations of artist’s uses of curatorial tactics. Examples will include projects by Marysia Lewandowska, as well as those by Tanya Brugera, Jeremy Deller, Theaster Gates, Raqs Media Collective amongst others.
Publishing as Public Practice
Publishing in its extended form serves as a site of articulation as well as constitution of the public. Focusing on a dynamic between live event and publication, we will examine the ways in which the institutional space is dispersed into a wider public realm creating collaborative assemblies and provisional colloquia resulting in publishing as seminal to artists’ practice. Issues of authorship and ownership will be raised as part of the session. Examples will include projects by Group Material, Guerilla Girls, Martha Rosler, Seth Siegelaub and others.
Social Cinema
In this session we will examine recent artistic practices known for political and critical engagement with film and cinema, tracing the historical position of the camera as a means of defining power relations as well as providing an account of how contemporary artists’ involvement with cinema relates to ‘seizing speech’. Artists: Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), Harun Farocki, Hito Steyerl, Wendelien Van Oldenborgh, Maeve Brennan, Stan Douglas, Larissa Sansour, John Akomfrah.
Rehearsing the Museum
Over the past fifteen years Lewandowska’s practice has focused on re-imagining the role of the museum in relation to a global network of actors including galleries, auction houses, art fairs, biennials, art education. As she has moved attention away from the sites of production – studio manufactory – to sites of negotiation – the institution itself. Who benefits from the way the exhibitions are curated, or the museum collections are assembled, displayed, interpreted and explored? Who part-takes in the decision-making process of the institution resulting in the co-production of knowledge, and well being? Examples of practices of Andrea Fraser, Oliver Laric, Michael Asher, Fred Wilson, Yang Fudong.
Archive as Lexicon
Archives have an increasingly powerful grip upon culture, and its reproduction. We observe an astonishing growth in data banks of images and information, which can be seen as emergent archival forms of capital. Archives, like museum collections are built with the property of multiple authors and previous owners. But unlike the collection, there is no imperative within the logic of the archive, to display or interpret its holdings. How do archives shape our social imagination and extend cultural memory? Examples of artists’ practices including Renée Green, Tacita Dean, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Forensic Architecture, Maria Eichhorn.
Ethics of Distribution. Distribution of Ethic
Socially engaged practice almost always focuses on specific interests partly by attending to both its own conditions and limitations and that of its audience. Rather than dealing with the general public it recognizes the diversity of society, the divisions of access to knowledge, as well as silent communities and localities. It may be that it is closer to the questions of ethical representation and not ethical products. A closer look at the 1970 exhibition at MOMA called Information curated by Kynaston McShine.
How It Works
Before beginning of each lecture the school will provide texts and videos to be read and watched in order to devote most of the time to discuss and analyze the material produced by artists and curators.
Course begins: Monday 25th January 2020. Dates: January 25 – February 10, 2021 – Mondays and Wednesdays each week for 3 weeks – all sessions 6pm to 8pm CET. Application deadline: January 10 2021.
UPCOMING OPEN CALL
Course Online about the key exhibitions and history of the Venice Biennale
9 February – 4 March 2021
Deadline 30 January 2021
Why is Venice Biennale Such an Important Event in the Art World? The History and the key editions of the Venice Art Biennale – Online Course.
Summer school in Curatorial practices.
8th June – 1st September 2021.
Deadline for applying March 1st, 2021
The Summer course in Curatorial Practice is an English-taught, intensive program on the history of contemporary visual arts and practices of exhibition-making, taking place during the Venice Biennale.
