Curatorview [Alfredo Cramerotti]

Valletta Campus of the University of Malta

28 August – 1 September 2017

Conceiving and understanding “research” as a form of curating – namely, organizing
connections and defining touchstones in contemporary visual culture by means of my
work as a writer, speaker and project organizer – the 5-day curatorial course will focus on developing a discourse, or a statement through works of art, which of course can also overwhelm or enhance the project’s rationale.

As curator, I act as meta-artist; the work undertaken is less about the “what” and
more about the “how”.

PART ONE
Keynote speech: Beyond and Besides Me: The Curator as Meta-Artist.

Presentation of three curatorial drafts recently delivered: Michael Takeo Magruder’s “De-Coding the Apocalypse” at the King’s College Cultural Institute London (2014/15); Marinella Senatore’s “The School of Narrative Dance” at MOSTYN (2016); and Shezad Dawood’s “Leviathan” at Palazzina Canonica Venice (2017). An insight into the themes and approaches to these exhibitions, the conversations with the artists, the “research outcomes” in relation to space, mediation and diffusion as a form of research.

PART TWO
Research Module 1: The Social, Humanitarian, Historical, Scientific as Art.

What does beauty has to do with, for instance, migration, climate change, social cohesion, mental or physical conditions? What is our understanding of aesthetics
in relation to ethics? How do we tackle themes that lend themselves awkwardly to a
presentation in the (critical) visual realm?

PART THREE
Research Module 2: The act of thinking, planning, resourcing,
delivering, closing and finalising your next exhibition or curatorial project.

Speculations. Three type of curating (from Cook / Graham):

Project making as exchange / trade show: the modular model, based on one incarnation of a multilevel event structure / platform with the possibility to scale up / down elements of the project without affecting its overall coherence (curator as filter / stylistic editor)

Project making as broadcast: the distributed model, based on “exhibitions” where different curators create their own infrastructure / agency or occupy existing platforms to circulate art and the process of curating itself (curator as node / translator).

Project making as software program / data flow: the iterative model, based on change from one venue to another (or one exhibition to another) each time – growing around a selection of key works (curator as maker / producer / managing editor)

PART FOUR
The Pitch (one day): Poster(ing)

An “exhibition of ideas” where curators can get an inkling of what has been taking place in other workshops. A collective poster session during which participants present a diagrammatic idea of their individual concept / project to each other, and particularly to participants and curators in other groups, informed by both feedback and speculations of the days before.

The Valletta 2018 International Curatorial School, Malta is organized by Raphael Vella with the participation of Alfredo Cramerotti, Sebastian Cichocki, Mick Wilson, Bassam El Baroni, Fulya Erdemci, and Maren Richter.