Institution as Medium. Curating as Institutional Critique?

Kunsthalle Fridericianum and Postgraduate Program in Curating, ICS, DKV, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, are hosting the symposium Institution as Medium. Curating as Institutional Critique? on Friday, 26 and Saturday, 27 March, 2010.


The two-day symposium Institution as Medium. Curating as Institutional Critique? intends to put the possibilities, opportunities as well as the limitations of current critical curating up for discussion based on the presentation of exemplary projects, curatorial programmes, theoretical analyses and artist talks. The symposium will focus on art institutions, exhibition formats and exhibition paradigms. It will include presentations and discussions and additionally serves as a communicative platform enabling curators, students, scholars and artists to engage with curating.

If we view exhibitions and art projects as an institutional apparatus that allows curators to convey certain meanings and new viewpoints to a broader public, then what is important is how new audiences are addressed, how knowledge circulates and which social spaces and institutions are created and addressed. Thus, criticism through the medium of the institution "art" may have only just begun and we have to take the issue of the messages of exhibitions seriously. So what are the opportunities, possibilities and impossibilities of critical curating? How and for whom are programmes shaped, which deviations from formats change content?


Friday 26 March 2010
12.00 Welcome Rein Wolfs / Dorothee Richter, Introduction
12.30 Oliver Marchart, The Politics of Biennialisation
13.30 Dorothee Richter with Damian Jurt, Irene Grillo, Maren Brauner,
Postmodern Education. Round and Round it Goes, Where it Stops Nobody Knows
14.30 Visit exhibition (WHITE REFORMATION CO-OP) MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO by Thomas Zipp at Kunsthalle Fridericianum
16.00 Maria Lind, Contemporary Art and its Institutional Dilemmas
17.00 San Keller, Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Preview / Rein Wolfs
18.30 Carina Plath, From Curatorial Studies over Kunstverein to Sculpture Projects and Museum. Curatorship between Liberties, Conditions and Conservation
19.30 Panel 1, Curatorial Appeal: with a.o. Marysia Lewandowska, Renée Padt (Konstfack, Stockholm), Lisa Le Feuvre (Goldsmith College, London), Sissel Lillebostad (Creative Curating, Bergen, Norway), Tim Brennan (University of Sunderland, MA Curating)


Saturday 27 March 2010
9.30 Welcome Rein Wolfs / Dorothee Richter, Introduction
10.00 Helmut Draxler, Ecstasy in Mediation
11.00 Axel Wieder, Institutions and Crisis
12.00 Giovanni Carmine / Hassan Khan, Possible Encounters
14.00 Stella Rollig, Legitimating
15.00 Stih & Schnock, Who Needs Art, We Need Potatoes
16.30 Søren Grammel, A Series of Acts and Spaces
17.30 Panel 2, Educational Critique: How to Swot Curating
Hyunjoo Byeon, Lisa Boström, Övül Durmusoglu, Alhena Katsof, Natalie Hope O'Donnell, Alessandra Sandrolini, Andrea Roca, Adnan Yildiz. Moderators: Maja Ciric, Isin Onol
18.30 Comments & Conclusions

Location: documenta-Halle, Du-Ry-Straße, Kassel
Accreditation until 17 March 2010: symposium@fridericianum-kassel.de