Curating Europes' Futures - Event Series

Curating Europes' Futures - Discursive Event Series 2014-15

Curating Europes’ Futures was a collaboratively-organised discussion series which explored contemporary curatorial and artistic practices that have critically addressed themselves to the processes of socio-economic restructuring, identity politics, gender dynamics and cultural policies within ‘post-bloc’ Europe. The series looked to curatorial practices as they have evolved within the shifting and uneven economic and socio-political relations across an expanding European Project, whilst raising questions over different kinds of constructed identities.

Curators who have investigated the paradoxes of national ideology and capitalist structures, raising questions about interconnections between contemporary art and the shaping of daily social reality, were invited to participate. The speakers discussed their involvement in arts and publishing projects that have not only sought to critically address these areas, but also broadened the interpretive range and prospective interplay of artistic research to ongoing socio-political struggles and possibilities within ‘post-bloc’ Europe.

The speakers throughout the duration of the series were: Lina Dzuverovic, Minna Henriksson, Sezgin Boynik, Katarzyna Kosmala, Maria Hlavajova, Rael Artel, Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Yaiza Hernández Velázquez, Nana Adusei-Poku, Eddie Chambers, Loulou Cherinet and Power Ekroth. The discussions were free, open to the public, and aimed principally at artists, researchers, curators and those with an active interest in the changing contexts of interdisciplinary, experimental and investigative curatorial and artistic practices.

Each talk was video-documented and is available on the Curating Europes' Futures website. The final event 'Blind Spots' was facilitated by Mother Tongue. The event focused on curatorial and artistic interventions into different kinds of archives; asking how the creation or maintenance of archives reflect national interests and place-making; and with a particular emphasis on projects that have sought to address racial inequalities, exclusions, grand narratives and myth-making in the visual arts. Focusing on the Nordic region and Scotland, the programme had a particular focus on the manifestation of whiteness in northern artistic cities, drawing parallels between Stockholm, Oslo and Glasgow. The talks given by the four speakers at Blind Spots - Nana Adusei-Poku, Eddie Chambers, Loulou Cherinet and Power Ekroth - can be viewed below.

Translated excerpts of writer Oivvio Polite’s ‘White Like Me: Selected Texts on Racism’ (Danger Bay Press, Stockholm, 2007) were translated into English specifically for this event - please see below.

Curating Europes’ Futures brought together Creative Futures Institute of the University of the West of Scotland, the Graduate School of The Glasgow School of Art, as well as the practitioner-research networks of Variant, Framework, Mother Tongue, as hosted by CCA. The series received financial support from the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts & Humanities,and the Embassies of Sweden and the Netherlands in the United Kingdom.

With thanks to Caroline Gausden, Arianna Introna, and Susannah Thompson.