On Curating issue 25 out now!
“Social Sculpture Revisited”
Edited by Dorothee Richter & Michael Birchall
With contributions from Grandhotel Cosmopolis Augsburg, Marina Belobrovaja, Søren Berner, Ursula Biemann, Michael Birchall, Dario & Mirko Bischofberger, Fabrizio Boni & Giorgio de Finis, Eyal Danon, Altes Finanzamt, San Keller, Beta Local, Oliver Ressler, Planting Rice, Dorothee Richter and Martin Schick, featuring works by Jeanne van Heeswijk, San Keller and Szuper Gallery.
Interviews conducted by students in the Postgraduate programme in Curating: Nadja Baldini, Silvia Converso, John Kenneth Paranada, Eleonora Stassi, Agustina Strüngmann, Adriana Domínguez Velasco and Dina Yakerson.
The curatorial project “New Social Sculptures” took place in four different parts over one and a half years, the curatorial concept evolved through time as more participants became involved. An archive of shared interests was developed with the artists: Marina Belobrovaja, Ursula Biemann, Corner College, Jeremy Deller, eggerschlatter, Finger (evolutionäre zellen), forschungsgruppe f, Heinrich Gartentor, Hanswalter Graf, Fritz Haeg, Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller, Michael Hieslmair & Michael Zinganel, interpixel, Martin Kaltwasser & Folke Köbbeling, San Keller, Pia Lanzinger, Michaela Melián, metroZones, Peles Empire, Frédéric Post, Public Works, Alain Rappapor, raumlaborberlin, RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co), Oliver Ressler, Shedhalle, Erik Steinbrecher, support structure (Celine Condorelli and Gavin Wade), Szuper Gallery, tat ort, Jeanne van Heeswijk, and Markus Weiss.Their contributions to the archive questioned the idea of community and were exhibited at the White Space, Zürich as well as secondly at Kunstmuseum Thun.
“Social Sculpture”—the German notion even downplays this term as “Soziale Plastik” was coined by Joseph Beuys. As a new form of creating art and influencing society, his expanded notion of the area of the arts was initiated by the confrontation with Fluxus practices when he hosted one of the first Fluxus Festivals in Düsseldorf.
In considering the notion of social sculptures, this issue of On Curating reflects on the projects encountered by the Postgraduate programme in Curating, and explores this topic into an international context of artists working with social change, housing, politics, food and economics. The range of interviews and essays presented are reflective of the dynamic range of practices that exist in the social sphere. Many of the projects presented exist beyond the art circuit, and enter the social consciousness of the spaces they encounter.
Also available soon in the book section:
Millet Matrix
Forthcoming publication by: Rosika Desnoyers, David Tomas, Marc James Léger
How do art exhibitions serve as liminal sites for the investigation of the invisible institutional forces and influences that condition contemporary visual art practices? How can an apartment space, as a distinct form of socio-cultural environment, operate differently from public exhibition spaces? How can curatorial praxis provide a framework for making art through an extended, affective bond of artistic commitment and friendship? These are some of the questions that are raised by Millet Matrix, three post-institutional apartment exhibitions of the conceptual needlepoint work of Rosika Desnoyers. This book documents the series of texts and interviews that accompanied the production of the exhibitions, which were curated by artist and anthropologist David Tomas between the years 2010 and 2014. As an adjunct to Desnoyers’s practice in research-creation, the commissioned work Millet Matrix as well Tomas’ artistic interventions in the third exhibition introduced a potential mutation in Desnoyers’s work, exploring the limits and possibilities for transcultural curating in an age in which creativity is for the most part consigned to the needs of a market economy.
Postgraduate programme in Curating, ZHdK
Call for applications 2015—view our website
Application deadline: 30 June 2015
We strongly advise applying as soon as possible.
