ARTISTS AND CURATORS TALKS by Barbara Bryan / presentation of her work in Movement Research

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ARTISTS AND CURATORS TALKS/// 

Barbara Bryan, Executive director of Movement Research New York, independent art producer and curator///

presentation of her work as a curator and executive director in Movement Research///

 

ABSTRACT:  As the Executive Director of Movement Research, my role is to innovate curatorial and programmatic structures that hold space for the amplification of artists’ voices in curation and programmatic planning. My goal is to conceive fluid and malleable formats that support evolving and emergent practices, and new voices in the field. Questions that I ask from a curatorial framework are how to be responsive, rather than reactive, to evolving discourse and trends in experimental dance and the intersections of socio-political contexts and activism? How do we develop frameworks that have flexibility built in to the fabric of the format, and thus are not formulaic, but rather are ideations that can be stretched, reshaped and reimagined by artists.

Since its beginning in 1978, Movement Research has operated through a visionary grass-roots leadership structure in which the organization is powered by artists from the very community it serves. My work is to curate structures that amplify the voices of artists through artist-driven and artist-initiated formats – curatorial, editorial and selection processes that engage groups of artists from our constituency, alongside a staff of working artists who are embedded in the artist community. Through programmatic offerings, Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political and economic diversity of our moving community, inclusive of race, national or ethnic origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, and family/parental status. An inclusive participatory structure is thoughtfully calibrated to give agency to diverse voices and to center equity, and is committed to shifting which voices are heard through rotating curatorial, editorial, and teaching structures.

To offer an example, artists selected for the well-known Movement Research at the Judson Church series are selected through multiple processes that ensure a diverse representation of voices and perspectives. Artists may apply through an open call, and are reviewed by a Selection Committee of five artists recommended by the Artist Advisory Council, the Artists of Color Council, and the Accessibility Advisory Team in collaboration with MR programs staff. Committee-selected artists show work alongside Artists-in-Residence, artists curated by the Artists of Color Council, artist participating in GPS & MRX Exchanges, and staff curated guest artists.  By creating a range of contexts and allowing for several points of entry for artists, this multi-pronged programmatic strategy dismantles the historically predominate curator-as-decider model, which has limited access for artists and often has forced artists to fit in to a constraining or reductive curatorial vision. As curators and programmers, we are called to continually reimagine and reshape our practices in order to advocate for and to give primary agency to artists – honoring their ideas, visions, and the contexts in which they create.

 

Barbara Bryan is the Executive Director of Movement Research and is an independent performing arts producer, manager and curator currently working with   Sarah Michelson, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Residency Program and Pentacle’s ART program. From 2000-12, she was the Managing Director of John Jasperse/Thin Man Dance, Inc., Producing Director with Wally Cardona, and Project Director with Jennifer Monson/iLand, Inc. She was guest curator of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s Inside/Out Series (Becket, MA) from 2002-12. She was the Associate Director of Danspace Project from 1997-99. She has served as a faculty member, mentor, guest speaker and panelist at various events and convenings in NYC, nationally and abroad. She participated in Race Forward’s New York City Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab in 2017-18. While serving as its Executive Director, Movement Research received a 2015 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. Barbara received her MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.  

 

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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