CURATING in CONTEXT Project and Summer School

About the Project /Curating in Context/

The 2019-2021 Erasmus+ project co-organized between two NGOs (Tanzfabrik Berlin and Lokomotiva Skopje), and two Higher Education Institutions (Stockholm University of the Arts and University of Zagreb) was developed to respond to the challenges of the growing influence of the concepts of curating and curatorial in the contemporary art field, beyond the sphere of visual arts. The project focuses on creating knowledge and opportunities for students, practitioners, curators, scholars and cultural workers to critically reflect and address different socio-political and economic contexts, and develop curatorial methods to rethink the practices of performing arts in relation to activism, social movements and self-organization. In a period of two years, the project comprises a series of meetings, public events and various resources that thematize collaborative learning approaches through curating between politics and policies, as well as valorisation of art with the greater goal of manifesting the impact of the cultural and civil sectors on society.

About the school

This school/platform aims to critically reflect and address different socio-political and economic contexts, and develop curatorial methods to rethink the practices of performing arts in relation to activism, social movements and self- organization, in a dialogue with contemporary critical theories and trans-disciplinary studies.

In addition, the school aims:

• to reflect and open a dialogue in the subjects related to the given topics of the school;
• to open a discussion and explore non-hegemonic forms of collective practices and self-organization in the field of cultural production;
• to bring the performing arts in a dialogue with the curatorial as a non-restricted field, or a field that is not exclusively related to visual arts; and
• to establish a platform of dialogue between cultural and art workers, curators, critical theorists and activists.

Themes/content directions

• Curating and the curatorial (Irit Rogoff, Beatrice von Bismarck 2012,  Maria Lind 2012,  Paul O’Neill, 2012) from the perspective of choreography & performing arts;
• Non-representative forms of curating as a political perspective;
• Curatorial practices related to social justice, social movements, activism, gender and queer politics, self-organized initiatives, struggles for new communal forms;
• Models of working together production/organization, dissemination;
• New modes of instituting the curatorial (power relations, inclusion and exclusion), and
• The curatorial as staging the agonistic public space.

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All courses include viewing, reading, analyses and writing experiments on works of art (plays, performances, installations, etc.), setting in focus their relationship with the socio-political, economic and political context, and the potentialities and strategies they open for rethinking the curatorial.

FORMATS of the school: Seminars; Lectures/ presentation; Workshops; Discussions; Artists’ and Curators’ talks; Reading groups and Mentoring

Seminars and workshops by Kirsten Maar (Germany), Goran Sergej Pristas (Croatia), Suzana Milevska (North Macedonia), Una Bauer (Croatia) and Danae Theodoridou (Greece)

Lectures/presentations/discussions: Silke Bake (Germany), Goran Pavlić (Croatia), Lydia Bell (USA), Anastasia Proshutinskaya (Russia), Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris (Sweden), Martin Sonderkamp (Germany / Sweden), Tove Salmgren (Sweden), Marijana Cvetković (Serbia), Rok Vevar (Slovenia), Jasna Jasna Žmak (Croatia), Jasmina Zaloznik (Slovenia), Nikolina Pristaš (Croatia), Anna Effermson (Sweden), Maria de la Paz Ponce (Germany), Darko Dragicević (Serbia/Germany), Dragana Alfirević (Serbia/Slovenia), Mariana Valencia (USA), Cassils (USA), Marta Popivoda (Serbia/Germany), Ivana Vaseva (North Macedonia), Kristina Lelovac (North Macedonia) and  Jana Kocevska (North Macedonia).

School Curators: Slavcho Dimitrov and Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski

Program producer: Violeta Kachakova

Coordinator and PR: Zorica Zafirovska

The International Summer School “Curating in Context” is produced and organized by the citizens association  Lokomotiva – Centre for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture with the support of the Ministry of Culture of North Macedonia and the Erasmus + program for Education, Training, Youth and Sport of the European Union as part of the project “Curating in Context”.