Symposium*

2020

SYMPOSIUM*

Educational U-turn. Who else is producing knowledges in culture?

Education has become not only a permanent subject of artistic expressions, but also a separate area of curatorial activity. The "educational turn” in curating criticized the commodification of education from the perspective of contemporary art. It challenged the place of educational practices in museums and other cultural institutions.

The Symposium revisits the issues raised by the "educational turn" in order to respond to the today’s challenges and address the relationship between educational and curatorial practices in their inseparable and often unequal relations. The Symposium revisits the issues raised by the "educational turn" in order to respond to the today’s challenges and address the relationship between educational and curatorial practices in their inseparable and often unequal relations.

We ask, what is the purpose of education in a museum, gallery and other exhibition spaces today and what opportunities do we have for joint and equal work in this field of knowledge production? Finally, who are these "we" - curators, teachers, public?

In 2020 symposium will be organized in the form of a pop-up website. Symposium* represents a research project that uses the web platform as a tool for mediation, contextualization and as a space for critical expression. Translated into an online format, the project represents a meeting place that is impossible in shared geographical coordinates nowadays.

symposium*

Texts

Translations of texts by leading practitioners and researchers of educational processes in culture and art, including articles by Amanda Cachia, Janna Graham, Bernadette Lynch and others. In addition, the curators prepared a glossary of terms used in international educational discourse and offer their translation and interpretation.

Discussions in a form of a correspondence

Discussions in the format of correspondence, in which the participants are Russian and international researchers, curators, educators and artists. Participants will exchange letters on topics set by the Symposium* curators.
Correspondence will be available on 10 November

Voice messages

Podcasts from the Symposium* speakers, each of which can be commented on and discussed with the authors.
The first voice message will be available on 11 November

Workshops

Workshops by Suzana Milevska, art historian, theoretician and curator (North Macedonia) and Dora Garcia, artist and professor at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo (Norway). Participants will be able to take part in workshops directly on the website of the symposium*.

Workshop by Suzana Milevska: Paradoxes of Participatory Art
16 November

Workshop by Dora Garcia: Comrade, Comrade Love or how to change the institution from the inside
The workshop consists of three online meetings:
16 – 18 November

Registration is closed

EVENTS

19 November
17:00 – 18:30

Discussion of voice message by Françoise Vergés:
Decolonial Feminism as a Working Methodology

Online (Zoom-conference)

Registration

19 November
19:00 – 20:30

Discussion of voice message by Nora Sternfeld:
The Museum as Commons. A dialogue on para-institutional practices, alternative archives and radical education

Online (Zoom-conference)

Registration

20 November
16:50 – 18:00

Discussion of voice message by Pablo Helguera:
On Audiences, Symbolic and Actual Practices

Online (Zoom-conference)

Registration

20 November
20:00 – 21:30

Discussion of voice message by Laurence Rassel:
Who, why, what for and under what conditions? Interrogating the institutions from the feminist perspective

Online (Zoom-conference)

Registration

25 November
19.00

Discussion "I am tired. I am leaving". Why is it hard for us to work in cultural institutions?

Participants: Alexander Ivanov, Maria Mkrticheva, Maria Sarycheva, Nadezhda Chernyakevich

Online (Zoom-conference in Russian)

Registration

If you need assistance to register to any of the events of the symposium* – please contact our coordinator Natalia Schipakina by email: nshipakina@gmail.com

SYMPOSIUM* PARTICIPANTS

Pablo Helguera

artist and educator

Nora Sternfeld

professor for art education at the HFBK Hamburg. documenta professor, Kunsthochschule Kassel (2018 - 2020)

Felicity Allen

artist and curator

Laurence Rassel

director of ERG (École de recherche graphique - School of Graphic Research, Brussels

Bernadette Lynch

researcher and fellow at University College London (UCL);

Françoise Vergès

independent researcher and activist

Carolina Rito

professor of creative practice research at the Center for Arts, Memory and Communities at the University of Coventry

Dmitry Vilensky

artist and educator, founding member of Chto Delat' (What is to be done) art group

Suzana Milevska

art historian and visual culture theorist based in Skopje, Northern Macedonia

CURATORS OF THE SYMPOSIUM*

Alina Belishkina

Curator, artist and educator. Lives and works in St. Petersburg and Helsinki.
Studied at the curatorial studies program (Curating, Managing and Mediating Art) of Aalto University, Helsinki.
From 2011 to 2016 Alina taught theory and practice of contemporary art in various educational programs in St.Petersburg and Moscow. She curated and participated in various international and Russian exhibitions and projects: BBX Crit Sessions 2018 (Berlin), Venice Biennale 2017 (curator of the public program of the Research Pavilion of Finland); Under the ground of our times: (de)construction of collectivity in and through collection, Pori Art Museum, Finland, 2017; 4th Moscow curatorial summer school (V-A-C), among many others.
Her current research interests include the effects and affects of curatorial gestures, documentation as an interdisciplinary and speculative practice, and the issue of production of spaces of commonality.

Joana Monbaron

With a classical academic background in art history, the experience of teaching and working as an educator and organiser in cultural institutions led Joana Monbaron to question and unlearn some intellectual and professional automatisms too often taken for granted. Looking critically at the structures of cultural institutions and the way they shape the production of legitimate knowledge, she is interested in the disruptive and transformative potential of situated educational projects in (and from) the art world that reconsider cultural and political categories with (and from) the experience of the marginalised.
From 2015 to 2018, Joana Monbaron developed with Alexander Ivanov “Tracings Out of Thin Air,” a long-term collective research programme addressing the complex conditions of norm, ability, and dependency in art in collaboration with artists living in a closed residential care institution, which culminated in a publication under the same title edited with Marina Gržinić and Aneta Stojnić. In 2018, she conceived a general approach to education and interpretation for the first Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art and is currently working as Education & Learning coordinator at Manifesta 13 in Marseille.

Yana Klichuk

In her professional experience, cultural manager and educator Yana Klichuk combines research, curatorial and mediation practices. She advocates principles of power balance and equal footing in collective processes of knowledge production, as well as mutual respect and common sense in temporary collaborations and cultural mediation. Since 2015 Yana leads the Education and Mediation Programme of International Biennial Manifesta, together with local teams, setting up mediation strategies in the biennial's host cities: Zurich (Manifesta 11, 2016), Palermo (Manifesta 12, 2018), Marseille (Manifesta 13, 2020), Prishtina (Manifesta 14, 2022). Previously she studied and worked in St Petersburg.