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Anna Kontopoulou

Curatorial Talk

6 November 2020 18:00 - 19:30
Online

Watch it via the Curating Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/pp.curating

This discussion will highlight the radical potentials of curatorial research practices that don’t necessary conclude with the production of exhibitions, but instead aim to produce long-term participatory projects as informed by participation-action-research (PAR), Institutional Analysis, Militant Sound Research methodologies (Ultra-red), as well as Paulo Freire’s grass roots emancipatory pedagogy project. How can artists/ curators work with grass roots and community-based groups on urgent social issues of our times without subsuming their surplus into institutional discourse? How do we create relationships between words and actions? What is the role of the curator in this maze of contradictions?

Anna Kontopoulou is a researcher, curator and educator working across cultural institutions, pedagogic spaces and community groups in an attempt to move away from curatorial authorship and towards a collectivising of research-actions. She is a Lecturer in Art at Reading School of Art and leads the Widening Participation and Outreach programme for the School of Arts and Communication Design (Departments of Art, Typography, Film, Theatre and Television) in Reading. Her upcoming book Curation of Autonomy looks at the ‘value form of participation’ and the ways in which this gets subsumed into capitalist circuits, to fit its purpose within ‘culture’. The book also provides insights into the role of the curator as the interlocutor of this exchange. Notable collaborations include: Reading Assembly: Power (2020) & Reading Assembly: Movement (2019) (Tate Exchange, UoR), I CARE (Ultra-red/ Reading International), The Democratic Table (Tate Modern), Democracy and Community (BP Art Exchange/ Tate Galleries), Honk! If Your Body’s Not Yours (ICA Student Forum), New Terms: Radical Education Workshops (ICA Student Forum), Stasis (TAF: Metamatic, Athens), New Contemporaries Moving Image 1968-2011 (LUX/ BNC), Young Contemporaries 1968: The Hornsey Light Sound Workshop (ICA), The School of Echoes: Cardew Object (Ultra-red/ Raven Row/ ICA).