Always Contextualise
The dance and performance scenes of the post-Yugoslav region have regional specificities that developed within non-existent institutional and policy frameworks. Diverse tactics and strategies, curatorial and collaborative approaches have been developed with values such as mutual care, collective and collaborative processes, solidarity, trans-dependence, and joy, rather than promoting competition, contest, judgmentalism, or rivalry.
The first part of this session will be a presentation of our curatorial practices within this context. The second part will take the form of a workshop, revisiting the notion of ‘local context’. The main question will be how socio-political and cultural contexts define the meaning and experience of performances and how they influence curatorial practices. The participants will be invited to propose one artwork they appreciate and then draft their hypothetical curatorial concept based on collected proposals from their work contexts. They will be encouraged to speculate and imagine a programme, taking into account real data and figures.
is a producer, curator, activist, and lecturer with a background in art history, cultural policy, and cultural management. She actively participates in initiatives and projects related to self-organization, the commons, bottom-up cultural policy, curating, international cultural cooperation, contemporary dance, visual arts, and museums. She co-founded Station Service for contemporary dance and Nomad Dance Academy, Druga scena, the cultural centre Magacin, the association of the independent cultural scene in Serbia, and the Platform for Theory and Practice of the Commons.
is a cultural producer, researcher and curator at the intersection of dance, theatre and visual arts performance, art history, cultural policy, independent cultural scenes, and feminist and environmental (curatorial) practices. She works as a freelancer and programme director of Lokomotiva, Skopje. Currently, she is a co-researcher for the NADA Digital Archive of Dance and Performance, co-curator of the exhibition Dancing, Resisting, (Un)working and the Performance Platform Festival in Skopje, curator of the international school Curating in Context, and co-mentor of the Critical Practice (Made in Yu) and Re-Imagine project.
is a cultural worker committed to critical theory, art and socialist feminism. She is a mentor at SNDO Amsterdam and a guest professor at HZT Berlin. She was an editor of the TkH [Walking Theory] platform and journal for many years, working on independent cultural scenes in Yugoslavia. Her most recent works are the book Toward a Transindividual Self: A study in social dramaturgy (2022) with Bojana Cvejic and the dramaturgy for the documentary film Landscapes of Resistance (2021) by Marta Popivoda.
In English