Symposium Curatorial Tipping Points
27.–28.07.2024
Locations: Museum der Moderne Salzburg (July 27, 2024) and Salzburger Kunstverein (July 28, 2024)
"Curatorial Tipping Points" is conceived as a symposium that will unfold over 2 days in the summer of 2024 at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg and the Salzburger Kunstverein. This event will delve deeply into the evolving field of curatorial practices, where boundaries are not only shifted but often completely reimagined.
"Curatorial Tipping Points" can be understood through the metaphor of tipping points in climate science, where a tipping point is a threshold that, once crossed, leads to significant and often irreversible changes. In the context of curating, a curatorial tipping point refers to a critical moment or event in the curatorial process that significantly influences the perception or understanding of an art project or the art world in general. This may involve decisions, actions, or events that, once made or occurred, fundamentally alter the course of an artistic or curatorial endeavor and potentially lead to unexpected, innovative, or transformative outcomes.
At the heart of this symposium are discussions that challenge, dissect, and reconstruct our understanding of curating in our shared present. Each panel, unique in its focus and approach, converges on the idea that curatorial practice is not a static category but a dynamic process that interacts with and influences various aspects of society and culture.
Kindly supported by Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport (BMKÖS) and Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art
A project by AAC Austrian Association of Curators with a contribution from the European Kunsthalle. Organized by AAC with Salzburger Kunstverein and MdMS Salzburg.
Program Overview
Friday, 26.07, 2024
Arrival
from 19:00
Tipping Points: An Open Mic Game
& Get-together
at the Appendix, Salzburger Kunstverein
This opening game fosters engaging and thought-provoking dialogue in an unconventional and spirited manner. "Tipping Points: A Curatorial Polylogue" is structured around a series of prompted challenges where participants are invited to present a critical or transformative idea—a 'tipping point'—within the field of curation. Curators are invited to take the microphone to propose an idea, issue, or perspective that responds to some of the challenges posed by the moderator.
Saturday, 27.07, 2024
im Museum der Moderne
Am Mönchsberg 32 5020 Salzburg
11:00–12:00
Everyone talks about the weather. Curating sustainability and exhibiting sustainably
With: Bettina Leidl (Director MuseumsQuartier), Harald Krejci (Director MdMS Salzburg), Sebastian Cichocki (Chief Curator, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw)
Moderated by: Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas (AAC & Independent Curator)
The intertwining of art and ecology dates back to the early 1970s, with artists addressing environmental issues. Despite numerous exhibitions and research projects engaging with the climate crisis, there is a concern that these efforts may merely serve as "greenwashing" for economic gain. This panel will explore how artistic and curatorial practices can challenge neo-liberal-eco-governmentality, oppose the commercialization and objectification of nature, and exhibit sustainability while working sustainably. Exhibitions dedicated to sustainability face inherent contradictions, as they contribute to global warming through their carbon footprint from transporting artworks, research trips, and maintaining exhibition spaces.
While some argue that eco-art exhibitions are environmentally unviable, such views are cynical and unrealistic. Instead, there is a need for a clear formulation of sustainability that equally prioritizes social and environmental justice, transforming sustainability into political ecology (as proposed by E. Swynegdouw). Moreover, given the demands and pressures on cultural institutions, it is crucial to revisit the fundamental question of art's role in society: why should art respond to the climate crisis through exhibitions?
12:00–13:00
The Live Panel
With: Frederike Sperling (Artistic Director, Kunstraum Niederösterreich), Thomas Conchou (Artistic Director, Centre d'art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson), Gábor Thury (Curator, steirischer herbst), Marijana Schneider (Curator, MdMS Salzburg)
Moderated by: Freda Fiala (AAC & Independent Curator, Performance Researcher)
The Live-Panel formulates at a praxeological tipping point. The conflation of visual and performing arts under the umbrella of performance has embraced institutional infrastructures, production modes, and spectatorship. Having moved in from the fringes, the dynamics of liveness continue to provoke their adoption into curated frameworks. Experiencing museum and exhibition spaces, or even site-specific situations, through the lens of performance highlights ways to question the mutability of institutional dynamics.
In our networked present, the panel explores how curators co-create performative spaces of action for intersectional social responsibility and diverse speaker positions. The discussion invites positions with diverse professional backgrounds and working practices from both white cube and black box environments, to intersect their experiences of curating and programming performance across various presentation contexts.
13:00–14:30
Lunch at M32 in Museum der Moderne.
Followed by a performance by Esben Weile Kjær (Program MdMS Salzburg)
15:15–16:15
Curating Mediation
With: Jürgen Tabor, Anna-Sophie Ofner, and Tina Teufel (Curators at MdMS Salzburg)
Moderated by: Andrea Popelka (AAC & Kunsthalle Wien)
In a time when museums are not only seen as repositories of knowledge but also as dynamic places for exchange and education, the equal integration of educational and curatorial agendas presents a central task. Since its opening as the Modern Gallery and Graphic Collection – Rupertinum in 1983, art education has been an integral part of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. The museum took a pioneering role by establishing the first permanently employed art educator in Austria, initially referred to as a museum educator.
Diverse access to modern and contemporary art is the focus of the interconnected educational work and mediation as curatorial practice, implemented in numerous accompanying programs, projects, collaborations, and media offerings on-site and in outreach. In this process, education and curation meet in critical and transformative processes of institutional self-examination, learning and relearning, dealing with knowledge and power, as well as their own attitudes and gaps.
The panel focuses on the museum and its exhibitions as social spaces. It addresses the question of how the museum changes when the agendas of education and curation equally take up space and how increasingly visitor-oriented education has influenced practice. Best practice examples on current topics such as decolonization, activism (as artistic practice), and diversity will be discussed. Strategies and offerings will be explored through which curators and art educators challenge and break down the traditional dividing lines of their departments, opening up spaces for action and possibilities for participatory togetherness and polyphony. Additionally, the role of structural conditions – from employment relationships to compensation and the traditional power hierarchy – will be examined to promote truly inclusive museum work.
16:15–17:45
Collecting, Decollecting, Recollecting
With: Alfred Weidinger (CEO, Oberösterreichische Landes-Kultur GmbH), Lolita Jablonskienė (Director, National Gallery of Art Vilnius), Harald Krejci (Director, MdMS Salzburg)
Moderated by: Mirela Baciak (AAC & Salzburger Kunstverein)
As we navigate through an era of rapid cultural shifts, how should institutions approach the acquisition of new works? What strategies can be implemented to rethink collections that may no longer align with contemporary values or narratives?
This panel discussion will delve into the evolving practices of collecting, recollecting and decollecting in museums, with a keen focus on the reevaluation of the canon, sustainability in collections management, and the role of collaboration in the museum landscape.
As museums continue to serve as custodians of cultural heritage, the question of what constitutes the canon remains central. How are museums today rethinking their collection strategies to challenge and expand the traditional canons? What new criteria are being used to ensure a more inclusive and diverse representation within their collections?
In addition to rethinking the canon, museums face significant challenges related to the sustainability of their collections. As collections grow, issues of storage, conservation, and display become increasingly complex. How are institutions balancing the need to preserve and maintain vast arrays of artifacts with the practical limitations of physical space and financial resources? The concept of “decollecting” emerges as a vital practice in this context. We will discuss the various factors that influence decisions to decollect, including ethical considerations, the impact on historical narratives, and the practicalities of managing a sustainable collection.
This panel brings together museum professionals and experts to address these pressing issues, offering insights into the strategic, ethical, and operational challenges of modern collecting practices.
19:30
Proposal, Floor Plan, Installation, Opening*
Dinner at the Salzburger Kunstverein
by Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew
*Limited capacity & Euro 40, - Please RSVP.
Sunday, 28.07, 2024
Workshops at the Salzburger Kunstverein
Hellbrunner Str. 3, 5020 Salzburg
11:00–13:00
Rethinking Institutions (Again)
Workshop with: Rike Frank and Vanessa Joan Müller (European Kunsthalle)
As curatorial debates over the last ten years have shown, there is an increasing discrepancy between the programs of many institutions and the way they "institute". We are interested in an exchange on models that address this issue. This workshop draws on the practice of the European Kunsthalle as an institution, based on the idea of the Kunsthalle as a contingent institutional typology - situational, temporary and open, without manifesting itself in a defined location. In its specific form as an institution without its own physical location, the European Kunsthalle is always connected to others and takes place in different figurations.
Please register by 19 July 2024: europeankunsthalle@gmail.com
Lunch Break
14:00–16:00
Migratory Aesthetics and Counter-Public Spheres
Workshop with: Elisa R. Linn (Artistic Director, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg)
Moderated by: Andrea Popelka (Curator, Kunsthalle Wien & AAC)
The workshop addresses aesthetic practices in relation to counter-public spheres and spaces of representation. Moving between critical and curatorial theory and exhibition-making, it examines the thresholds of representational paradigms and spatial hierarchies by thinking exhibitions site-specifically, non-static, and outside the white cube in the everyday public sphere.
The workshop draws on Linn's theoretical, artistic, and curatorial research about marginalized aesthetics of queer, punk, and guest/contract worker communities on both sites of the Berlin Wall during the AIDS crisis and amidst the Cold War confrontation. It examines how aesthetic practices and their presentation in and outside the public realm challenged the architectures of state representation and institutional subjectification against the categorizing logic of identity.
Through engaging with diverse archival material from Linn's research, the workshop participants will trace how bodies migrate from one identity, gender, and place to another. Contrary to an ethno-nationalist understanding of migration, the border will be here considered as a diasporic place of articulation by drawing on theoretical-aesthetic perspectives that break with the hegemonic speech about migration as a state of exception, alienation, or threat. Instead, the question will be discussed how far the border and its liminality can be recontextualized, demobilized, and (re)appropriated – beyond territorial, categorical, and essentialist thinking to transcend the framework of the modern nation-state.
16:00–18:00
Curatorial Practices and Radical Alliances: Commoning Towards Transnational Solidarity
Workshop with: Théo-Mario Coppola (Curator and Art Writer)
In a context of rampant ostracism and violence, the notion of the commons provides an opportunity to forge aesthetic and social ties beyond pre-established, imposed or contested borders, and can lead to greater solidarity within the art world and contemporary societies. By applying the principles of commoning, Curator and Arts Writer Théo-Mario Coppola seeks to pool and intersect progressive knowledge and values with a view to discuss and encourage diverse curatorial practices and their radical alliances.
Registration
Please register for the symposium under
office@curators.at and mention which days you would like to participate in.
Symposium Curatorial Tipping Points
27.–28.07.2024
Locations: Museum der Moderne Salzburg (July 27, 2024) and Salzburger Kunstverein (July 28, 2024)
"Curatorial Tipping Points" is conceived as a symposium that will unfold over 2 days in the summer of 2024 at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg and the Salzburger Kunstverein. This event will delve deeply into the evolving field of curatorial practices, where boundaries are not only shifted but often completely reimagined.
"Curatorial Tipping Points" can be understood through the metaphor of tipping points in climate science, where a tipping point is a threshold that, once crossed, leads to significant and often irreversible changes. In the context of curating, a curatorial tipping point refers to a critical moment or event in the curatorial process that significantly influences the perception or understanding of an art project or the art world in general. This may involve decisions, actions, or events that, once made or occurred, fundamentally alter the course of an artistic or curatorial endeavor and potentially lead to unexpected, innovative, or transformative outcomes.
At the heart of this symposium are discussions that challenge, dissect, and reconstruct our understanding of curating in our shared present. Each panel, unique in its focus and approach, converges on the idea that curatorial practice is not a static category but a dynamic process that interacts with and influences various aspects of society and culture.
Kindly supported by Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport (BMKÖS) and Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art
A project by AAC Austrian Association of Curators with a contribution from the European Kunsthalle. Organized by AAC with Salzburger Kunstverein and MdMS Salzburg.
Program Overview
Friday, 26.07, 2024
Arrival
from 19:00
Tipping Points: An Open Mic Game
& Get-together
at the Appendix, Salzburger Kunstverein
This opening game fosters engaging and thought-provoking dialogue in an unconventional and spirited manner. "Tipping Points: A Curatorial Polylogue" is structured around a series of prompted challenges where participants are invited to present a critical or transformative idea—a 'tipping point'—within the field of curation. Curators are invited to take the microphone to propose an idea, issue, or perspective that responds to some of the challenges posed by the moderator.
Saturday, 27.07, 2024
im Museum der Moderne
Am Mönchsberg 32 5020 Salzburg
11:00–12:00
Everyone talks about the weather. Curating sustainability and exhibiting sustainably
With: Bettina Leidl (Director MuseumsQuartier), Harald Krejci (Director Museum der Moderne), Sebastian Cichocki (Chief Curator, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw)
Moderated by: Hana Ostan Ožbolt (AAC & Independent Curator)
The intertwining of art and ecology dates back to the early 1970s, with artists addressing environmental issues. Despite numerous exhibitions and research projects engaging with the climate crisis, there is a concern that these efforts may merely serve as "greenwashing" for economic gain. This panel will explore how artistic and curatorial practices can challenge neo-liberal-eco-governmentality, oppose the commercialization and objectification of nature, and exhibit sustainability while working sustainably. Exhibitions dedicated to sustainability face inherent contradictions, as they contribute to global warming through their carbon footprint from transporting artworks, research trips, and maintaining exhibition spaces.
While some argue that eco-art exhibitions are environmentally unviable, such views are cynical and unrealistic. Instead, there is a need for a clear formulation of sustainability that equally prioritizes social and environmental justice, transforming sustainability into political ecology (as proposed by E. Swynegdouw). Moreover, given the demands and pressures on cultural institutions, it is crucial to revisit the fundamental question of art's role in society: why should art respond to the climate crisis through exhibitions?
12:00–13:00
The Live Panel
With: Frederike Sperling (Artistic Director, Kunstraum Niederösterreich), Thomas Conchou (Artistic Director, Centre d'art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson), Gábor Thury (Curator, steirischer herbst), Marijana Schneider (Curator, Museum der Moderne)
Moderated by: Freda Fiala (AAC & Independent Curator, Performance Researcher)
The Live-Panel formulates at a praxeological tipping point. The conflation of visual and performing arts under the umbrella of performance has embraced institutional infrastructures, production modes, and spectatorship. Having moved in from the fringes, the dynamics of liveness continue to provoke their adoption into curated frameworks. Experiencing museum and exhibition spaces, or even site-specific situations, through the lens of performance highlights ways to question the mutability of institutional dynamics.
In our networked present, the panel explores how curators co-create performative spaces of action for intersectional social responsibility and diverse speaker positions. The discussion invites positions with diverse professional backgrounds and working practices from both white cube and black box environments, to intersect their experiences of curating and programming performance across various presentation contexts.
13:00–14:30
Lunch at M32 in Museum der Moderne.
Followed by a performance by Esben Weile Kjær (Program Museum der Moderne)
14:30–15:30
Curating Mediation
With: Jürgen Tabor, Anna-Sophie Ofner, and Tina Teufel (Curators at Museum der Moderne)
Moderated by: Andrea Popelka (AAC & Kunsthalle Wien)
In a time when museums are not only seen as repositories of knowledge but also as dynamic places for exchange and education, the equal integration of educational and curatorial agendas presents a central task. Since its opening as the Modern Gallery and Graphic Collection – Rupertinum in 1983, art education has been an integral part of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. The museum took a pioneering role by establishing the first permanently employed art educator in Austria, initially referred to as a museum educator.
Diverse access to modern and contemporary art is the focus of the interconnected educational work and mediation as curatorial practice, implemented in numerous accompanying programs, projects, collaborations, and media offerings on-site and in outreach. In this process, education and curation meet in critical and transformative processes of institutional self-examination, learning and relearning, dealing with knowledge and power, as well as their own attitudes and gaps.
The panel focuses on the museum and its exhibitions as social spaces. It addresses the question of how the museum changes when the agendas of education and curation equally take up space and how increasingly visitor-oriented education has influenced practice. Best practice examples on current topics such as decolonization, activism (as artistic practice), and diversity will be discussed. Strategies and offerings will be explored through which curators and art educators challenge and break down the traditional dividing lines of their departments, opening up spaces for action and possibilities for participatory togetherness and polyphony. Additionally, the role of structural conditions – from employment relationships to compensation and the traditional power hierarchy – will be examined to promote truly inclusive museum work.
15:30–17:00
Collecting, Decollecting, Recollecting
With: Alfred Weidinger (CEO, Oberösterreichische Landes-Kultur GmbH), Lolita Jablonskienė (Chief-Curator, National Gallery of Art Vilnius), Harald Krejci (Director, MdM)
Moderated by: Mirela Baciak (AAC & Salzburger Kunstverein)
As we navigate through an era of rapid cultural shifts, how should institutions approach the acquisition of new works? What strategies can be implemented to rethink collections that may no longer align with contemporary values or narratives?
This panel discussion will delve into the evolving practices of collecting, recollecting and decollecting in museums, with a keen focus on the reevaluation of the canon, sustainability in collections management, and the role of collaboration in the museum landscape.
As museums continue to serve as custodians of cultural heritage, the question of what constitutes the canon remains central. How are museums today rethinking their collection strategies to challenge and expand the traditional canons? What new criteria are being used to ensure a more inclusive and diverse representation within their collections?
In addition to rethinking the canon, museums face significant challenges related to the sustainability of their collections. As collections grow, issues of storage, conservation, and display become increasingly complex. How are institutions balancing the need to preserve and maintain vast arrays of artifacts with the practical limitations of physical space and financial resources? The concept of “decollecting” emerges as a vital practice in this context. We will discuss the various factors that influence decisions to decollect, including ethical considerations, the impact on historical narratives, and the practicalities of managing a sustainable collection.
This panel brings together museum professionals and experts to address these pressing issues, offering insights into the strategic, ethical, and operational challenges of modern collecting practices.
19:30
Proposal, Floor Plan, Installation, Opening
Dinner at the Salzburger Kunstverein
by Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew
Sunday, 28.07, 2024
Workshops at the Salzburger Kunstverein
Hellbrunner Str. 3, 5020 Salzburg
11:00–13:00
Rethinking Institutions (Again)
Workshop with: Rike Frank and Vanessa Joan Müller (European Kunsthalle)
As curatorial debates over the last ten years have shown, there is an increasing discrepancy between the programs of many institutions and the way they "institute". We are interested in an exchange on models that address this issue. This workshop draws on the practice of the European Kunsthalle as an institution, based on the idea of the Kunsthalle as a contingent institutional typology - situational, temporary and open, without manifesting itself in a defined location. In its specific form as an institution without its own physical location, the European Kunsthalle is always connected to others and takes place in different figurations.
Please register by 19 July 2024: europeankunsthalle@gmail.com
Lunch Break
14:00–16:00
Migratory Aesthetics and Counter-Public Spheres
Workshop with: Elisa R. Linn (Artistic Director, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg)
Moderated by: Andrea Popelka (Curator, Kunsthalle Wien & AAC)
The workshop addresses aesthetic practices in relation to counter-public spheres and spaces of representation. Moving between critical and curatorial theory and exhibition-making, it examines the thresholds of representational paradigms and spatial hierarchies by thinking exhibitions site-specifically, non-static, and outside the white cube in the everyday public sphere.
The workshop draws on Linn's theoretical, artistic, and curatorial research about marginalized aesthetics of queer, punk, and guest/contract worker communities on both sites of the Berlin Wall during the AIDS crisis and amidst the Cold War confrontation. It examines how aesthetic practices and their presentation in and outside the public realm challenged the architectures of state representation and institutional subjectification against the categorizing logic of identity.
Through engaging with diverse archival material from Linn's research, the workshop participants will trace how bodies migrate from one identity, gender, and place to another. Contrary to an ethno-nationalist understanding of migration, the border will be here considered as a diasporic place of articulation by drawing on theoretical-aesthetic perspectives that break with the hegemonic speech about migration as a state of exception, alienation, or threat. Instead, the question will be discussed how far the border and its liminality can be recontextualized, demobilized, and (re)appropriated – beyond territorial, categorical, and essentialist thinking to transcend the framework of the modern nation-state.
16:00–18:00
Curatorial Practices and Radical Alliances: Commoning Towards Transnational Solidarity
Workshop with: Théo-Mario Coppola (Curator and Art Writer)
In a context of rampant ostracism and violence, the notion of the commons provides an opportunity to forge aesthetic and social ties beyond pre-established, imposed or contested borders, and can lead to greater solidarity within the art world and contemporary societies. By applying the principles of commoning, Curator and Arts Writer Théo-Mario Coppola seeks to pool and intersect progressive knowledge and values with a view to discuss and encourage diverse curatorial practices and their radical alliances.
Registration
Please register for the symposium under
office@curators.at and mention which days you would like to participate in.