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The Institute for Critical Curating
(ICC) 1. Function and outputs
The Institute ICC is based in Germany, is international in outlook and is accessible through the website www.curating.org. The program of the institute and its projects are related more broadly to international contemporary art, art criticism and art theory. The ICC focuses its production primarily within Europe, but is also open to projects that involve broader geographic, political and national discourses.
The ICC is a GBR (Gesellschaft des
Bürgerlichen Rechts)
The practice of making exhibitions is in a state of constant change. A growing number of contemporary exhibitions show how new curatorial ideas, strategies and experiments continue to question the institutional and ritualised exhibition forms, which found their high point in the 1980's and are still in many cases prevalent today. Tied to these developments, the traditional role of artists as primary producer and curator as selector, connoisseur and scene-setter are changing too. In relation to this observation it is possible to talk of contemporary art as a discursive formation (Foucault) or as a field (Bourdieu), inside which the protagonists are engaged in an ongoing and ever-changing process of positioning themselves. The spectrum of curatorial positions today spans from that of the artist-curator, through individual curators renowned for their strong signature-style and authorial approach, to collaborative groups who foster teamwork as a tool for blurring traditional hierarchies within project production. In the light of this broad and varied field, the ICC sees its primary function as explanatory. It aims to 'bundle' and make more easily workable, information that is difficult to find and once found difficult to navigate. This function is also served by the ICC as a platform for the production of discursive projects. The web-site brings the ICC's knowledge to its public in the form of a navigation-tool offering a starting point for theoretical and practical research, not only for associated curators but also more broadly for all involved in art and culture work. The ICC does not seek to construct a closed narrative around curating, but rather opens itself to divergent positions within the field of critical, socially and politically engaged practice in this field. It aims to provide a framework and context within which such practices can be presented and better understood. The institute actively values the contradictions provided by such an overview, indeed such fractures, conflicts and interruptions are key to the institutes enquiry, identifying as they do the key problematics which can be examined to reach new knowledge. In this sense the concept of 'critical' curating is in itself not a unified one. It is subject to historical change, just as the discursive formation of the visual arts is subject to constant transformation. Curating is in this constellation understood as a practice that simultaneously acts upon, influences and changes the materials and methods with which it communicates. The ICC describe a curatorial practice as critical on the one hand in terms of its handling of content. Examples of this can be exhibitions that engage with political themes addressing mechanisms of social exclusion, such as feminism, urbanism, post-colonialism or the critique of globalised capital. On the other hand critical curating can also denote a formal or structural approach that questions or challenges classical exhibition formats such as the 'white cube', or traditional institutional hierarchies. These practices include those involved with interventionist projects, new strategies for art in the public space, the debate around art as service, and the questions surrounding other alternative sites of 'mediation'.
The work of the ICC is intended for the following publics:
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