Care or cure? Curatorial ethics today

2. October 2018, 8–9.15 pm
Schnittmengen 4
Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart, St. Alban-Rheinweg 60, 4052 Basel
Foyer, on the ground floor

The recent phenomenon of ever more frequent and ubiquitous largescale exhibition formats –often dubbed with the critical term „biennalization“– both has the potential of shifting the focus of the (predominantly western) art world to other, less visible art scenes, artists and locations, but has also been criticized as a new form of colonial gesture and as catering to purely economic motives.
Given these debates, how can one define the scope of action of the individual actors–artists, curators, critics, visitors–within this context? What curatorial or artistic forms can we imagine that are neither paralyzed by the current state of global exhibition making, nor ostentatiously embrace the rhetorics of social change through curatorial practice? What curatorial approaches does and should global exhibition making engender? Is bigger always better? And how can the personal, aesthetic and political interest be developed into a certain „curatorial ethics“(Maura Reilly)?

These questions will be discussed by Charlotte Laubard (curator of the Swiss Pavilion, commissioned by Pro Helvetia, at the Venice Biennial 2019) and Nora Sternfeld (documenta-Professor Kunsthochschule Kassel).

The series of eikones-talks „Schnittmengen“ is conceived and moderated by Katharina Brandl and Claire Hoffmann. The talk will be held in English.