World of Art, Year 13, Series of Lectures
Nora Sternfeld and Luisa Ziaja:
What comes after the show?
On post-representational curating

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 20.00
SCCA Project Room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana, Slovenia

From the 1990s onwards, there was a "reflexive turn" in exhibition theory, in which all the conditions of exhibiting and representing and the associated types of institutional logic have come into focus. Following those more or less thorough institutional critiques and analyses of the conditions of production, in recent years an advanced segment of the field has increasingly been raising the question of curatorial agency. Even presuming there is no external standpoint for criticism, they nevertheless asked the question "What is to be done?" and it underwent a variety of deconstructive turns. The lecture will trace these deconstructive turns and will relate them to developments in the visual and performative arts of the last decades that have not only questioned the representational but thwarted and undercut its logic. In this light it will ask what kind of shadows post-dramatic theatre and postrepresentational art have shed on the format of the exhibition in order to think the very act of the curatorial differently.

Nora Sternfeld is an art educator and curator. Part of trafo.K, Office for Art Education and Critical Knowledge Production (with Renate Höllwart and Elke Smodics-Kuscher) and of schnittpunkt. exhibition theory & practice. She currently teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and is co-director of ecm – educating / curating / managing – Master Program in exhibition theory and practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She was a lecturer at the Viennese Art School, the Art Academy Kassel, the Zurich University of the Arts and the University of Education in Vienna. Curatorial projects have been: Plakate und Kommentare, IG Bildende Kunst, Vienna 2009 (w/ Toledo i Dertschei), Nothing for us. Everything for everyone. Strategic Universalism and Political Drawing, IG Bildende Kunst, Vienna 2007 (w/ Toledo i Dertschei), Let it be known! Counter Histories of the African Diaspora in Austria,Hauptbücherei am Gürtel, Vienna 2007 (w/ Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur), Summit NonAligned Initiatives in Education Culture, Berlin 2007(w/ Kodwo Eshun, Susanne Lang, Nicolas Siepen, Irit Rogoff, Florian Schneider) and Hidden Hi/stories. Remapping Mozart, a project for Wiener Mozartjahr 2006 (w/ Ljubomir Bratic, Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, Lisl Ponger, Luisa Ziaja). Moreover she is part of the editorial board of Bildpunkt – magazine of the Viennese artist association IG Bildende Kunst and publishes on contemporary art, education, politics of history and anti-racism.

Luisa Ziaja is an independent curator and author based in Vienna/Austria. Since 2006 she is co-director of the postgraduate master program ecm – educating / curating / managing at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She is part of schnittpunkt. exhibition theory & practice and currently works on the research project Post-Communist Past. Representations of communism in exhibition contexts of art and contemporary history (2009–12). Recent exhibitions include re: ex-post. Critical Knowledge and the Post-Yugoslavian Condition (2010, Open Space, Vienna), Recollecting. Looting and Restitution (2008/09, MAK, Vienna, w/ Alexandra Reininghaus), Have The Cake And Eat It, Too. Institutional Critique as Instituent Practice (2008, Kunsthalle Exnergasse Vienna, w/ Charlotte Martinz-Turek), De-Revolution (2006, Galerie IG Bildende Kunst Vienna, w/ Berthold Molden), Hidden Hi/stories. Remapping Mozart, a project for Wiener Mozartjahr 2006 (diverse spaces, w/ Ljubomir Bratic, Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, Lisl Ponger, Nora Sternfeld). From 2001 to 2004 she was assistant curator and exhibition coordinator at Generali Foundation Vienna. She was a lecturer at Technical University Vienna (2008/09), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2004/05), and Vienna Artschool (2004–06). She has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogs, anthologies, and magazines on contemporary art, politics of history, exhibition theory and practice informed by current socio-political questions.

The lecture by Nora Sternfeld and Luisa Ziaja / ecm – educating / curating / managing ( Master Program in Exhibition Theory and Practice, University of Applied Arts Vienna) is part of a partnership project World of Art (Models of training and collaboration in contemporary arts) co-funded by the European Leonardo da Vinci Programme.

[Published April 12, 2011]