LECTURE & SEMINAR by Suzana Milevska / Curating Participatory Art as Means for Social Change

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LECTURE & SEMINAR ///
 
Suzana Milevska
Ph.D. in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths College London, curator and theorist of visual culture ///
 
Curating Participatory Art as Means for Social Change ///

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract: Some of the main questions to be addressed in this lecture and seminar will be what kind of socio-political conditions and juridical structures call for, allow and/or prevent the participatory art to fulfill the given promises for social and cultural change. The conundrums of participatory art are many. Curating Participatory Art as Means for Social Change is imagined as a curated participatory and self-reflexive back and forth conversation that will eventually result with a collaboratively composed cross-disciplinary questionnaire.

I’ve already discussed some of the crucial contradictions and frustrations of the participatory art practices in the context of neoliberalism-driven cultural movements. For example in the text “Infelicitous Participatory Acts on the Neoliberal Stage” (https://www.p-art-icipate.net/infelicitous-participatory-acts-on-the-neoliberal-stage/) I looked at the challenges that participatory arts face due to the systemic and institutional conundrums in contemporary societies and prevent the potentialities of such practices from realisation and fulfillment of their aims. Some of the important issues to be discussed are related to different processual hierarchies between the artists, participants and institutions stemming out of the socio-political and economic systems and structures that condition the work conditions, means and relations of production, etc. The main paradox of participatory art, however, stems from the promise of social change because the question of whether it’s possible to substantially change society with art that is produced by art institutions and structures created by that very same society still remains an unresolved puzzle.

 

The final outcome of the seminar will be The Questionnaire of Participatory Art. It will gather the most relevant and urgent questions about the aims, potentialities, and failures of participatory art when such art projects are curated as means for social change. The Questionnaire is not conceptualised only as a usual repository of questions, but it also functions as a participatory and collaborative research tool that invites the participants to formulate their own questions and to “feed” the questionnaire in a processual and collaborative way. This will eventually enable them to develop new participatory artistic, curatorial and educational research methodologies. Last but not least important, the Questionnaire can be used as auxiliary educational tool in alternative educational and curatorial projects that focus on participatory art or in an academic context.

 

Seminar methodology:

Part 1 - presentation of the seminar’s concept and open discussion including answers to some of the preliminary questions about the methodology and format of the Questionnaire based on the information that is to be submitted to the applicants in advance and discussing the questions submitted by the participants in their applications (2 questions each).

Participants’ profile: young professionals of various professions: artists, academic researchers, art historians, ethnographers, art and museum educators, curators, etc.

Part 2 - offline: distributing a google.doc in which the participants will write their questions

Part 3 - deadline for sending the written questions and comments and completion of the Questionnaire (offline).

 

About the school:

International summer school Curating in Context is developed in order to respond to the challenges that the growing influence of the concepts of curating and curatorial posed in the contemporary art field, beyond the sphere of visual arts. It is related to the question of the curatorial and its extended understanding which goes beyond black or white box presentation and representation politics.

The program includes lectures, seminars, artists and curators’ talks, discussions and interviews, as well as production of curatorial works and co-curatorial publication.

 

The summer school is intended for:

Practitioners who would like to pursue their career as curators in the contemporary performing arts or through interdisciplinary approach, and who would like to critically address representation politics and develop curatorial methods related to practices of activism, self-organization and critical reflection.

Curating in Context began as an activity developed as part of the Erasmus + project Curating in context and its partners Tanzfabrik Berlin, Stockholm University of the Arts and University of Zagreb.

 

*****

This year, the Summer School Curating in Context/2021 is part of a collaboration with Brain Store Project in frame of Performance Situation Room activity of Life Long Burning project, and it is supported by the Ministry of culture, City of Skopje and Creative Europe Program of the European Union.

Curating in Context is co-curated by Biljana Tanurovska–Kjulavkovski and Slavcho Dimitrov.

Lokomotiva team: program director Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski, project manager Blagica Petrovska, program coordinators are Zorica Zafirovska and Kristina Todoroska Petreska, administrator Gjurgjica Hristovska and PR Dino Chupovski.

 

More about the program of the Summer School “Curating in Context” 2021

https://www.lokomotiva.org.mk/summer-school-program-2021/

 

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