Looking at examples of presenting practices in Berlin and Toronto, this
essay sketches the difficulties that arise when embarking on a curatorial
practice with a decolonial impulse. This text is a partner to “On
Smuggling and Drawing. A Conversation in Blocks”, a dialogue between
curator Juana Awad and artist Luisa Ungar, written in 2020 and appearing
in the publication Künste dekolonisieren. Ästhetische Praktiken des
Lernens und Verlernens (edited by Julian Bauer, Maja Figge, Lisa
Grossmann, Wilma Lukatsch; Berlin, Transcript Verlag, forthcoming.)
But while the dialogue focuses on Ungar’s creation process of the over
one hundred original drawings intervening throughout the publication,
this essay brings to the forefront Awad’s questions about, and
experiences and observations with the mingling of the curatorial and the
decolonial, from her perspective as a curator and cultural worker.
What are recent examples of practices in which ‘assembling’ and
‘disseminating’ reconfigure agencies, resources, affects and information
to give rise to new forms of collectivities? This round table brings
together Björn Heerssen and Noel David Nicolaus from the
interdisciplinary collective Clusterduck, and sociologist Serhat
Karakayali to ask about the relationships and interdependencies between
‘assembling’ and ‘disseminating’ as constitutive mechanisms in processes
of collectivization. How do agencies, resources, affects and information
elevate processes of creating collective feelings? Together we discuss
how ‘assembling’ and ‘disseminating’ take shape in each example, leading
to different forms of collectivities; what practicable mechanisms,
interfaces and infrastructures come into play; and how do these two
instances approach possibilities of collective interaction
in terms of
‘sharing’ and ‘learning’.
schmuggeln
(2021)
Dieser Beitrag ist kein Glossareintrag im engeren Sinne, da er keine
Definition für den Begriff des ‚Schmuggels‘ bietet. Vielmehr dockt er an
das ‚Schmuggeln‘ als ein Modell für das Kuratorische an. Und indem er
einige Gedanken eines früheren Textes von mir wieder aufgreift, erweitert
er den Begriff, um eine Praxis zu konnotieren, mit der es hoffentlich
möglich ist, von innen heraus den institutionellen Rahmen der Kunst neu
zu gestalten. Aus meiner Perspektive als Kunst- und Kulturschaffende of
Color in einem europäischen Kontext schlage ich hiermit das „Schmuggeln“
als Methode einer langsamen und stillen Subversion vor.
This text was part of the opening to the symposium sharing/learning:
methods of the collective in art, research and activism and was read on
28th June 2019, in English, by two members of the organizing team, as
introductory words. The text deliniates the central questions from which
the two-day gathering arises, as well as its methodologies and actors.
Many formulations originate from previously written concept papers, which
were used to present the project for various purposes. These in turn are
informed by the many conversations that took place within the
organizational team – a group of people whose constellation was shifting
along the way – orally as well as in writing.