Audacious Landscapes: The Curatorial Thing

I’m participating in The Curatorial Thing of SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen. Register for the free public program here: https://madmimi.com/p/7b97a41 (I’m speaking on Day 4)

Text and image by SixtyEight Art Institute:

THE CURATORIAL THING (5th Edition)

Announcing our Public Programme for ‘Audacious Landscapes’

Organised by SixtyEight Art Institute

1 – 8 October, 2022

SixtyEight Art Institute is pleased to announce the schedule for public lecture events of our upcoming curatorial intensive programme, The Curatorial Thing, organised under the Audacious Landscapes theme and framework. This week-long gathering will explore SixtyEight Art Institute’s research on climate art histories to critical discussions of future imaginaries in a warming world and incorporate critical approaches on climate grief and regenerative thinking through art, architecture, and design.The 1-8 October 2022 meeting period will be shaped by workshops between participants and invited speakers, site and studio visits, and lecture-based events open to the general public. These public lectures will take place at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences building of the University of Copenhagen. All lectures will be available (physically) to the public for free and seats are open on a first-come, first-served basis. The Curatorial Thing will also be streamed (virtually) for a nominal fee for anyone interested in following our programme.

SixtyEight Art Institute is hosting all the public lecture events online for the upcoming edition of The Curatorial Thing. You can choose individual days or the entire week-long sequence. See the links below to register and access our event streaming options. One-day registration Week-long registration

Saturday, 1. October  13.30 – 15.30 Public Lecture Programme  Critical Visions in a Warming World  The Faculty Library of Social Sciences building of the University of Copenhagen Gothersgade 140.Anne Haaning, visual artist and Research Fellow, The Norwegian Artistic Research Programme, NO/UK/DK.KEYNOTE: T.J. Demos, art historian and cultural critic, Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, at University of California, Santa Cruz, US. 17.30 to 19.30 Installation Opening  Anne Louise Blicher, Grief Shrine  Part of the Climate Thanatology project  Sharp Projects Gallery,  Blegdamsvej 38. —Monday, 3. October  17.00 – 21.00 Interactive Shadow Theatre  Part of the Climate Thanatology project  LiteraturHaus, Møllegade 7  (Three 40-minute performances, advance registration is required).The Bird Ladies  HenBlakstad Productions in co-production with Animalske Productions(NO), silo portem, sound art duo (UK), Catharine DeLong, harpist (US).Three performances of 40 min., limited to 20 people for each performance.Starting at 17.00; 18.30; and 20.00. All performances are free of charge.Please follow this LINK to register for The Bird Ladies. – –Tuesday, 4. October  18.00 – 21.00 Public Lecture Programme  Climate and Cultural Art Histories  The Faculty Library of Social Sciences building of the University of Copenhagen Gothersgade 140.Mathilde Helnæs, curator, Sorø Kunstmuseum (DK).Luamba Muinga, curator, cultural researcher, writer (AO).KEYNOTE: Andri Snær Magnason, writer and documentary filmmaker, author of On Time and Water (IS). – –Wednesday, 5. October  18.00 – 21.00 Public Lecture Programme  Image and Media in Climate Communication  The Faculty Library of Social Sciences building of the University of Copenhagen Gothersgade 140.Catherine Sarah Young, artist, Manila/Sydney (AU/PH).Jørgen Bruhn, intermediality and ecocriticism specialist, Professor of Comparative Literature, Linnaeus University (SE).KEYNOTE: Diedrich Diederichsen, writer and cultural critic, Professor of Theory, Practice, and Communication of Contemporary Art, Institute for Art History and Cultural Studies, Vienna (AT).– –Thursday, 6. October  18.00 – 20.00 BOOK LAUNCH  Climate Thanatology by Heidi Hart  Published by Really Simple Syndication Press  SORTE FIRKANT (Blågårdsgade 29, 2200 Copenhagen)  – –Friday, 7. October  18.00 – 21.00 Public Lecture Programme  Engaging with Place: Ruin, Memory, Regeneration  The Faculty Library of Social Sciences building of the University of Copenhagen Gothersgade 140.Maddie Leach, artist/Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts, University of Gothenburg (SE/NZ).Ash Sanders, climate writer and activist (US).KEYNOTE: Darren Parry, former chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, author and founder, Boa Ogoi Cultural Interpretive Center (US). – –Saturday, 8. October  12.30 – 15.30 Public Lecture Programme  Regenerative Architectures in Climate Art History Perspective  The Faculty Library of Social Sciences building of the University of Copenhagen Gothersgade 140.Ariana Kalliga, independent curator, New York and Athens (GR/UK).Angela YT Chan, researcher, curator, and artist (UK).KEYNOTE: Beatriz Colomina, architecture historian and theorist, Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture, Princeton University (US). For a full list of BIOS follow this LINK

ABOUT OUR FIFTH EDITION OF THE CURATORIAL THINGThe Curatorial Thing is our annual intensive programme for curators, artists, researchers, and the public, from 1 – 8 October 2022. Using the Nordic notion of a ‘thing’ – an old concept for a meeting place, an assembly of the community, or as the precursor of the modern term ‘parliament’ – we have invited 18 individuals or groups of artists, designers, and curators for a series of day-long closed workshops. In addition, we are organising a lecture programme for the general public that will feature leading figures operating in and outside the Nordic Region. This year’s edition of The Curatorial Thing will build on SixtyEight’s ongoing exhibition programme, Memoirs of Saturn, which envisions potentials for prosperity in a warming world.We have chosen the title AUDACIOUS LANDSCAPES, from a 1938 poem by Muriel Rukeyser on witnessing an industrial landscape with “clouds over every town” that “indicate the stored destruction,” foreshadowing our own time. As this carbon buildup has led to global climate crises, curatorial practices have become a form of witness. In developing The Curatorial Thing, we read “audacious” as a paradox of capitalist hubris and the risk of imagining better possible afterlives. Using this paradox as a starting point, we consider “landscape” beyond framed artworks in museums, as art objects take on new roles in the public sphere.Our twofold goal is to move participants’ thinking from art histories of grief to imaginative proto-histories of thriving, especially in profoundly changed ecosystems, and to move critical inquiry from a modernising to an ecologising mindset. We aim to find a triad of contextual histories, climate narratives, and innovative spatial-natural theories that can enable us to foster a new climate art history. Therefore, the workshops and keynote lectures of this meeting will not only focus on the aftermath of climate-related art histories to aid us in thinking forward but will also explore climate grief as a moving bio-physical space to seed new and active imaginations. To this end, we want to investigate how art can inspire larger-scale solutions for a warming world and, at the same time, find the historical lineages that can give us both the hermeneutic and contemporary tools to sustain critical spaces, such as those that can nurture and support these new imaginations.The Fifth Edition of The Curatorial Thing is organised/curated by Heidi Hartand Hugo Hopping for SixtyEight Art Institute and is made possible with the generous support of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Hosting partners in Copenhagen are LiteraturHaus, The Faculty Library of Social Sciences at University of Copenhagen, Statens Værksteder for Kunst, and Assistens Kirkegård.

SixtyEight Art Institute is an artistic/curatorial research organisation looking to uncover, develop, and further exchanges between artists and curators and their creative labour. See our current exhibition The Late Shop on view from 9 September to 14 October 2022. This exhibition is part of our two-year programme of exhibitions, Memoirs of Saturn, which is kindly supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Det Obelske Familiefond, Beckett-Fonden and Københavns Kommune Rådet for Visuel Kunst.