World of Art, Year 13, Series of Lectures
Joa Ljungberg and Edi Muka:
Curatorial strategies: two stories
Dreams, Failures and Achievements - Navigating through an institutional desert
Two Nordic power stations for art

Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 7pm
SCCA Project Room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Joa Ljungberg, curator from Malmo, and Edi Muka, artist and curator from Tirana, have been a part of the World of art school one way or another already for more than a decade. It seems that for the same decade they have also been independently or in tandem, building their own curatorial practice, split between the art scene of Albania and the one of Sweden.

On this occasion they will holistically introduce diverse curatorial strategies and tactics, as well as different nature of institutions in the two environments, in double lecture with the help of different projects, they realized within the last decade.

First story, Dreams, failures and achievements: navigating through an institutional desert, will introduce an experiment to create independent art institution in Albania, in context of total absence of state-funding help and rough neoliberal market economics that is guided by profit. It’s almost twenty years now that Albania exited it’s dictatorial past and enthusiastically joined the new world order, that forbidden fruit - democracy and market economy - widely propagated as the bright future of humankind.

Talking from the perspective of today’s Albania, this lecture will tell the story of an attempt to build an independent art institution in a context of a total lack of governmental support and a hard core, profit driven, neoliberal market economy.  As an art institution still without its own address, Tirana institute of contemporary art - TICA is an ongoing story of achievements and of failures, both important to learn from.

Other story, Two Nordic power stations for art, will be devoted to curatorial practice and program of two very different Swedish art institutions (accidentally both are placed in former power stations): newly opened Modern Museet in Malmo and Roda Sten in Goteborg.

Moderna Museet, Malmö	Röda Sten, Gothenburg

Joa Ljungberg is co-founder of Tirana institute of contemporary art - TICA. She studied history of art on Uppsala University (Sweden) and Warwick University (England), and also curatorship on Goldsmith College University of London (England). At the moment she works as curator of museum Modern Museet Malmo, which recently opened up on utmost south of Sweden.

Edi Muka is a curator at Roda Sten Kunsthalle, Goteborg, he is co-founder and curator of Tirana institute for contemporary art - TICA, a co-founder and manager of Tirana international biennale of contemporary art - TICAB. He lives and works between Tirana and Malmo.

More about lecturers

The World of Art programme is supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Ljubljana - Department for Culture.

[Published August 27, 2010]