Curating in the Global World (tentative)

The PhD project deals with curatorial practices and community-based art on a global context with a focus on techniques and methods of governance.

The thesis will take into account general and generalising concepts of globalism, and scrutinizes different strategies of global constructions in contemporary art institutions, curatorial practices outside of institutions and group-based art productions of the backdrop of the idea of post-national culture. Canonical exhibitions and large-scale events (Biennales) with an attempt to relate to a global sphere and art institutions working on a global scale or with a global concept in mind, but also community-based art networks and cultural producers on a post-national level function as research material.

The theoretical part of the research will outline critical cultural theory of governance, and here especially postcolonial theory in regards to curatorial practice: How can postcolonial theory shape / renew exhibitionary formats? What can be displayed / represented within an exhibition format, what knowledge can and cannot be produced with exhibitions?

The practical part works on the interview project “CURATING – Explored with a Camera. A Research-Based Digital Platform on Curatorial Practice.«, headed by Dorothee Richter. The body of 70+ interviews with international curators will be evaluated in terms of postcolonial, global and geopolitical dimensions of curatorial practice through the interview corpus with an output as an artistic/curatorial exploration by means of relating the statements in a filmic essay form. The research result aims to find answers to curatorial knowledge formation in postnational settings of culture and art.

Ronald Kolb works as a designer (www.biotop3000.de), lecturer, and film-maker in Stuttgart and Zurich. He studied Visual Communications (MA) at Merz Akademie, University of Applied Arts, Design and Media, Stuttgart, Germany and runs a design and research studio with an emphasis on publications and web design i.e. for Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, ifa (Institut for Foreign Affairs, Germany), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Badischer Kunstverein, ZKM, and so forth. He was an Associate Professor at Merz Akademie, University of Applied Arts, Design and Media from 2009–2015 and is now Scientific Researcher at the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ZHdK. He is Co-Publisher of the web journal On-Curating.org and honorary vice chairman of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart since 2014.
His PHD project is a research on concepts of globalism in cultural and curatorial practices with a focus on prototyping global communities.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dorothee Richter, Prof. Dr. Sarah Owens