Modules
Introduction to Course Modules, Course Structure
In each term schedule, we indicate to which module the lectures are related. In the process, the lecturers will present a synopsis of the respective area of expertise. The comprehensive reading list, the introduction as well as group talks will communicate the overall connection of the offered seminaries and workshops. Mentors will focus and guide the specific interests of the students up to the larger independent theoretical and practical assignments.
M1. Project Work
We conceive curatorial projects as multi-authored, comparable to film productions or NGOs. Project work is developed in different stages: concept, research, organising, publishing, evaluating and financing. In shared projects, we try out unusual formats and contexts. In addition, individual projects are advised through mentoring sessions. Art administration is part of this module, as well as art and law. In the second year of the master’s programme, intensive work on a curatorial project is part of the practice-based programme. This will be accompanied by a thesis. The thesis could alternatively prepare a proposal for a PhD.
Participants also learn how to support each other and how to share individual and situated knowledges. They will encounter all phases of curatorial and editorial work, from the initial concept to budgeting, production and evaluation. The students will be able to use cultural analyses as a profound theoretical background.
M2. Historical Perspectives on Curatorial and Artistic Practices
With the Age of Enlightenment, art lost its ‘sacred’ character, gained ‘exhibition value’ (Walter Benjamin) and became an independent, autonomous domain. In the 20th century, another change took place; the single piece of work was no longer the centre of attention but instead the broader connection between significant works—‘From picture to art system’ (Beat Wyss). In contemporary art, the different forms that have developed since the 20th century now intersect: the historical avant-garde (Dada and Surrealism) began to use everything and everyday experiences as art, and art became a complex conglomeration. These concepts and art forms do not only differ in appearance, but also in the constantly changing perception of art objects, the community’s relationship to art, the viewer’s perception and the artist as author. These changed concepts also impact other forms of representation such as ethnographic, historical or science exhibitions. Historical perspectives are important insofar as the changes over time inform us about power relations in a society and about different conceptions of being in the world as being singular/plural.
Traditional and experimental exhibition designs show how the viewer is addressed: as emotionally charged or specifically rational, as a subject of education, as a single viewer or as a collective. Through different artistic or curatorial institutional critiques, the hidden parts of exhibition-making can be addressed. Artists and curators have experimented with designs in exhibition-making. Part of a historical perspective is to understand how media became relevant generally and in curatorial practice.
M3. Contemporary Discourse in Exhibition-Making
Exhibition-making takes up issues in contemporary societies and offers new ways to think about specific topics. Through these areas of research and of representation, exhibition-making is part of, or can be part of, social change. This includes feminist practices, environmental thinking, decolonial practices, social justice, urban development and public space. What does anti-racism and inclusion mean in relation to curating? New topics are evolving—for example, how care and curating are related, what queer curating means, how a decolonial perspective on curating should be reflected in the formats, how environmental thinking is presented or publicly discussed through curating, how film curating contributes to the overall projects or how and if other societal groups are involved in a specific demand to come together in a chain of equivalence. Workshops and talks will offer possibilities to be involved in contemporary discussions. If one wishes to be part of a social change, in what way does this mean to also think about new forms and media of representation? Do topics related to radical democracy have an influence on the institution and does this change the way curators and artists work together? Further goals: in this module, we will learn how the content and form of exhibition-making are related.
M4. Academic Writing—Curatorial Writing
For a curator, it is important to get to know different forms of writing: to write for a catalogue, to conduct an interview, to write a scientific text, to write an article or to write a press release all might need different forms and levels of language. To get to know different styles of writing and to re-introduce academic writing is one of the goals of this module. To argue in cultural analyses, to know how to cite and how to summarise and paraphrase. Additionally, for every curatorial project’s research, understanding how to conduct research in archives and libraries and through networks is important for cultural producers.
M5. Mentoring
Each participant will be able to book mentoring sessions with the lecturers and programme leaders and get advice that is tailored to the projects and needs of the specific student. We are aware that, in further education and a cohort with diverse backgrounds, it is necessary to have this individual element of support as an important part of the programme.
M6. Curating and Publishing
As part of curatorial practice, publishing is particularly important, as this can be understood as a platform of intensive exchange about curating. Publishing can furthermore be used as a specific form of meaning production, in other words, as a curatorial practice in itself. The curatorial discourse unfolds not just in the exhibition space with its media agglomeration, but also through written and visual arguments, with images and commentaries on exhibitions. Connected to publishing are practical skills like organising material, conducting interviews, processing the material with a designer and devising budgets for publishing.
M7. Curatorial Theory and Cultural Theory
Reading and discussing theory is crucial to understanding the world in which we live. We will also discuss in what way we can relate theoretical texts to the practice of cultural production. In some cases, a philosophical text is embedded in the history of thought; in other cases, theory is closer to a ‘usage’ in a more direct productive way. To some extent, cultural theory is related to the possible ‘application’ which it may allow without diminishing its complexity. Therefore, theory can help to provide a looking glass for economic realities and power relations and their connection to the ideological sphere.
M8. Digital Media
It is commonplace now that despite how incredibly young digital media in fact are, they have nevertheless upended all aspects of our daily life—all infrastructure, all ways of communication, all production processes. It is more than obvious that these profound changes and turmoil, with their material infrastructures, their image production, their ideological constructions and their acceleration, have changed and influenced all ways of living, of being and of being-with, from dating to voting to the exchange of goods and money. Literally everything is now influenced by the digital space, and what is more, processed through algorithms, which, of course, have racist, gender-specific, class-related and nationalist undercurrents.
Digital media also allow us to broaden curatorial possibilities enormously, into film curating, new media curating, AI and curating and so forth. The connection of these still different public spaces of curating to the architectural and institutionalist exhibition space is gaining more and more influence on the human senses and our understanding of the world. “The historicity of human senses,” as Marx once mentioned, is also part of the development of the arts and curatorial practice.
M9. Excursions and Study Groups
Studio visits and attendance at symposia and special events are also part of the offer of the programme. For example, we have organised visits to the Venice Biennale and documenta. We also organise visits to get to know the lively Berlin art scene, visit the meetings of residencies in Berlin and organise trips in Europe and beyond. The students will prepare for the excursions and studio visits in study groups.
M10. Curatorial Project
In the second study year, students build upon the theoretical and practical input of the first year. They will draft and create a curatorial project, with a professional proposal, concept, budget, artists/participants list, cooperation partners, institutional affiliations and evaluation.