Symposium Curating through Conflict with Care

The nGbK working group „Curating through Conflict with Care“ (CCC) hosted to a three-day summer symposium from 4 to 6 August 2023. 

The symposium used conflict and contradiction as a methodology to identify and work through the paradoxes of inclusive curating. CCC addressed these contexts as a starting point for further developing best practices and existing debates on curatorial responsibility. The nGbK working group invited workers in the arts to exchange ideas on how to further develop the role of the curator and address contemporary challenges. Together they gathered experiences and ideas for (extra)institutional changes that put care at the center. The programme was divided into three thematic areas: Friday was about curating, Saturday about conflict and Sunday about care work.

Everyone could apply via our open call, whether as a contributor to the programme or as a participant. A large proportion of places wasreserved for BIPoC participants who self-identify as such. This ensures that those who are excluded from these spaces due to discrimination, access difficulties and unaffordability are given the opportunity to explore this work together.

Unlearning “curation” & undoing artworld hierarchies
with CCC (Ayasha Guerin, Duygu Örs, Maithu Bùi, Moshtari Hilal)
We will introduce ourselves, our research project, our structure and vision for the symposium. Why do we need to unlearn curation? How can we undo artworld hierarchies? And what resources do we need to work?

Curating in Germany
with Aïcha Diallo, Cate Lartey, Mable Preach
What does curating look like beyond the German mainstream and canon? Drawing from their local practices in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and beyond the curators share their experiences with and outside of German institutions. To what extent can we undo the coloniality of the structures we work from? And what does it mean to be a bridge between a community and the institution?

Alternative Curatorial Methods
with Azadbek Bekchanov, Edna Bonhomme, Mawena Yehouessi, Felisha Maria Carenage
These art-workers will share insights and questions developed from experience with alternative artist-run spaces, co-organizing working groups to address questions of curatorial control and curatorial kindness, and strategies of taking care with language and critique towards decolonial methods for Europe’s cultural and education spaces.

Caring Infrastructures (DE + EN) 
with Sascia Bailer 
„Caring Infrastructures“ is a concept that attempts to counter structural barriers in the arts with infrastructures of care. This is about critically examining different elements of curating (e.g. budgeting, communication, visibilities, parenting, power etc) and re-exploring them with feminist care ethics (as democratic practice).

somtam manifesto
with Mon Sisu Satrawaha 
This workshop will explore care through sharing knowledge. “Unthaitled” aims to transcend the identity of Thai women beyond the confines of stereotypes in the colonial gaze. The central element of our exploration will be the iconic Thai dish „Som Tam“, we will unravel the intricate narratives woven into its preparation, ingredients, and cultural significance. „Som Tam“ becomes a gateway to understanding the multifaceted experiences and struggles of Thai women within the context of marriage migration.

Mindfulness Exercises
with Shivā Amiri
“It’s time to Rest / Rest will make us more human / Rest as Resistance / We need rest”  (The nap ministry by Tricia Hersey)
An embodied social justice approach that looks at the  body based connection between the body and social justice intersectionally. All are invited to participate each morning in various mindfulness exercises. 

Collective Code of Conduct
in working groups 
Based on the discussions from the first day this writing session aims to translate what we have learned into practical steps and agreements. How could a collective code of conduct look like in order to help us work better together, navigate conflicts and be careful of our resources and time?

Reflecting Conflict
with Parand Danesh, Rubén Ojeda Guzmán, Hajra Haider Karrar
Drawing from their own practices and research the speakers take a closer look at conflict in the most conventional sense of the term, when it is about militarization, about oppression, about war and genocide: How do the materials we use, the themes we explore, the fundings we receive – enable and disable artists and the cultural landscape? While working with vulnerable and oppressed experiences, how can we research and curate responsibly? How can we map and link seemingly isolated conflicts to learn from their patterns?

Curating Conflicts
with Lama el Khatib, Fogha Mc Cornelius Refem, Cẩm-Anh Lương 
In this sharing circle we want to understand the possibilities of conflict-based curating in the art world. What are bottom-up and top-bottom approaches and what makes the difference? By examining curatorial, collaborative, and artistic cases and works, we aim to open a dialogue about shared experiences and finding possible strategies.

Censorship and Scapegoating
with emet ezell , Sinthujan Varatharajah, Zoé Samudzi
This circle critically discusses the cost of speaking in the German public and the search for a different cultural sovereignty: How does a critical engagement with structures and atmospheres of the German (institutional) and cultural industry look like? What hierarchies of victimhood and legitimacy can be identified and how are they being used by those in power? And to what extent can curatorial and artistic work practice integrity and navigate disguised censorship?

A manifesto for radical care or how to be a human in the arts
with Tian Zhang
Join Tian Zhang for a collective reading and discussion of her text „A manifesto for radical care or how to be a human in the arts“. Drawing on her experience in curatorial, community and collective practice, this manifesto is a provocation for reimagining how we relate to each other, to work and the arts. Together we will discuss how these principles can be applied in life and practice.

A reflection in transmissions: Curation as caring belonging
with Feben Amara und Jasmine Grace Wenzel 
The similarities between curating and caring as sustaining activities have already received much discursive attention. However, the care of relatives, which members of the cultural sector also have to provide on a daily basis, hardly plays a role. Cultural workers who provide care are constantly moving between coping with reproductive work - in and outside the cultural sector - and being overwhelmed by it, which often leads to exclusion from the formal and informal networks of cultural work contexts. In this Sharing Circle, we want to orient ourselves and exchange ideas based on questions we have brought with us. Through which structural changes, but also curatorial attitudes and practice (designs), is it possible to maintain the affiliation of those cultural workers who, for their part, care for others? How could inclusion be conceived and expanded in this context? What could the inclusion of such life realities in curatorial practice look like? We would like to approach the answers to these questions together and encourage exchange through various text-based impulses.

Collective Voices 
with Azul Carolina Duque 
We will engage with our voice as an organ that can be collectivized and we will touch sound from a place of ‘depth’ as opposed to ‘mastery’. This practice invites us to interrupt our colonial desires to use our voices for external validation, and instead place our bodies as offerings in the service of resonance. This session is grounded in the notion that by fracturing extractivist patterns of relating to ourselves ( and to each other) as a resource, we can begin to re-member how to ‘care’ for one another in more response-able ways. We will play with the dissonance, resonance and (in)balance of the following questions: How can we increase risk in proportion to care? How can we de-center ourselves, declutter the noise, and dis-invest from our harmful ways of thinking, feeling and relating? How do we embody a political practice of healing and well-being? 

Artistic Responses to Conflict and Care
with Yumna al-Arashi, Havin Al Sindy
As artists, how can we understand and work through the conflicts that surround us? How can art making be a mindspace and tool to take care of conflicts, contextualize, remember or overcome them?