Excursion
Anti-Racist Curation at the Milk of Dreams? / Seminar at the Muthesius University of Art and Design, Kiel, Germany & Excursion to the 2022 Venice Art Biennale.
"For curating to be anti-racist, however, it first needs to consider both subjectivity and process of subjectivation, and needs to ensure multiperspectivity. It is crucial to explore and question all narratives and exhibits of an exhibition along different line of inquiry. Whose history is being told? Whose perspective is been privileged? What kind of images are presented? Who reads these images and how? How have the exhibits been generated? How are the texts created? Do the narratives and images empower groups that have hitherto been either underrepresented or represented in a way that objectifies them? While these are essentially the very same questions that have -for a long time already- been guiding the discussions about 'history from below' as well as feminist and postcolonial historiography, it seems that they keep being actively forgotten." — Curating as Anti-racist Practice, 2019, Natalie Bayer, Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski, Nora Sternfeld
Students of the Muthesius' Painting class joined Felisha Bahadur-Carénage in Venice for 8 days, during which they visited the various Pavillions and Extended Programme of the 59th International Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani, entitled The Milk of Dreams.
Bahadur-Carénage provided research materials and types of critical methodologies and, together with student assistants, structured the week's activities – visiting Arsenale, Giardini, as well as other events including a talk on Marlene Dumas & Marguerite Duras by Elisabeth Lebovici. Below are examples of materials provided and impulses to critique contexts and experiences - accounting for passport privilege, classism and racism in looking at artist trajectories and sponsors' motivations.
Austria
Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl
Invitation of the Soft Machine and Her Angry Body Parts
Exhibition website + Instagram + e-flux + mousse
→ Can we think of the usefulness of Heterotopias?
→ Are there any other such constructions in the Biennale?
→ Do these relate to Hauntologies, Spectral rooms? If not, why?
France
Zineb Sedira
Dreams Have No Titles
e-flux + e-flux Announcements + Website
Activity Sheet from Bexhill on Sea
(engagement with school children)
Poland
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas
Re-enchanting the World
on the book by Silvia Federici
e-flux + Exhibition catalog
Scotland + Venice
Alberta Whittle
deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory
Docks Cantieri Cucchini, S. Pietro di Castello, 40, 30122
e-flux + Website + Instagram
Alberta Whittle's READING LIST
Uganda
Acaye Kerunen, Collin Sekajugo
Radiance: They dream In Time
Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, San Marco 2597
Biennale website + Website + Instagram
See also: “Football Kommando” (2022) Film at documentafifteen
monopol
United States
Simone Leigh
Sovereignty
e-flux + The New Yorker
The New York Times – Siddhartha Mitter
“Simone is certainly aware of all the other audiences out there, trust me,” O’Grady said. “But we’re talking about something very deep, which is the audience with whom you have interior conversations as you work, in order to shed light on issues that have received no light for centuries.”
→ How does this pavillion compare to Louise Neverson in terms of recognition, legacy, form?