05 May 2021

Online Course on Contemporary Curating: The Emancipated Audience – Experiential Curatorial Knowledge Production

The Emancipated Audience – Experiential Curatorial Knowledge Production
Lecturer: Berit Fischer, PhD

Course dates: 15 May + 22 May 2021, 2–6pm (CEST)
Enrol until 8 May 2021

www.curating.org/emancipated-audience/

This course invites curators, artists, activists, educators, cultural workers, and those who are interested in critically engaging in thinking about post-representational, affective, and experiential transdisciplinary curatorial forms: a curation that allows for a shift from an on-looking audience towards activated and self-empowered protagonists; a holistic and relational – versus informational and representational – curation, for an emancipatory activation of the curatorial public.

The materiality of our human existence – as a spatial agent itself – and as a multidimensional being with its sentient qualities, is an essential starting point for experiencing a critical practice. How might we create alternative curatorial ways to stimulate not only human inter-subjective but also inter-relational agency and critical consciousness towards our environment, and towards what might be considered as the 'Other'? How might we take better account of, and create 'response-ability' in the ways that we learn, practise, and live together?

Berit Fischer is a curator, researcher, and writer who has worked internationally since 1999. She holds a PhD from the Winchester School of Art/Southampton University, UK. Her curatorial research interests lie in critical spatial practices, socially and holistically produced spaces, the specification of art as a producer of new knowledge, as a means to permeate the status quo, the creation of fields of action, and the development of spaces for critical engagement, affective encounter, and relational learning.

She has published articles internationally, e.g. with Afterall or Onomatopee, and has both contributed to and edited or co-edited books like New Spaces for Negotiating Art (and) Histories in Africa, Hlysnan: The Notion and Politics of Listening, and Other Possible Worlds – Proposals on This Side of Utopia.

She has presented tutorials, lectures, and workshops around the world, e.g. at Making Futures School (raumlabor, UdK Berlin), Bergen University, ZHdK, Freie Universität Berlin, Nottingham Trent University, or at Soma in Mexico City. Some of her notable curatorial projects have taken place at nGbK, Berlin; Radical Intention, Italy; tranzit.sk, Bratislava; x Luxembourg Forum d'Art Contemporain; Brooklyn Waterfront Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition and Dumbo Arts Festival, New York; Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai; and BankART in Yokohama. www.beritfischer.org

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The Online Courses on Contemporary Curating are offered by the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, Continuing Education, Zurich University of the Arts.
In collaborations with Oncurating.org.

Collaborations with
– Postgraduate Programme in Curating: www.curating.org
– publication platform Oncurating.org: www.oncurating.org
– PhD in Practice in Curating, Practice-Based Doctoral Programme, University of Reading: www.curating.org/phd-in-contemporary-curating

ZHdK
Zurich University of the Arts is amongst the largest art schools in Europe. While firmly anchored in greater Zurich, its influence extends well beyond Switzerland to the wider international stage. As the cultural centre for art in Switzerland, Zurich provides a unique and vibrant cultural scene at the heart of Europe.