Global Academy at Salzburg’s Summer Academy

A two-weeks curatorial course “Thinking with works of art” with Ruth Noack & Grace Samboh (July 17-29, 2017)

Today’s globalised art world has replaced all the hard questions with smart curatorial practices that claim to deal with the intricacies of power relations, while shifting goods from one continent to another. It is time to start asking what might resist this transnational trading of objects, people and networks. The workshop will address the potential of form to resist. This potential, however, is not to be equalled with resistance per se. Any form might be only provisionally non-transmittable. Much depends on the context in which – and methods with which – a form is meant to be transmitted – or not. Does this mean that non-transmittability has to be actively sought out, imbued with agency and introduced into our fantasies, if it is to become resistant? Or is it one of those phenomena that show their resistance by confounding anti-essentialism and thus, ultimately, defying the idea of the human subject in control?

Starting from this question, participants will be encouraged as teams or individually to develop exhibition concepts, going through the steps of discussion, research, proposal and making. The aim of the workshop is not necessarily to end up with actual exhibitions, but to learn from the process of making how we might understand curatorial engagement with works of art as a process of thinking through an issue.

For the Summer Academy course page, click here
For an interview with Ruth about the class, click here
For photos of our class’ final presentation, click here
For a lecture I gave during the Summer Academy, click here
For a review written by Ana Bambić Kostov, click here