1 November
18:00 - 19:00
Hajnalka Somogyi, Talk topic: «SELF - ORGANIZATION»
19:00 - 20:00
Adrian Notz, Talk topic: «The Organization of Our Selves Selon des Lois de Dadá»
The Autumn School of Curating, 3rd edition
«SELF - ORGANIZATION» (Online)
Course leader: Hajnalka Somogyi (HU)
ECCA – The European Centre for Contemporary Art Cluj-Napoca and Art Encounters Foundation Timișoara are looking for participants for the 3rd edition of The Autumn School of Curating, taking place online between 1 November - 7 November, 2021.
The Autumn School of Curating is an engaging seven-day seminar led by curator Hajnalka Somogyi, aiming to give young curators access to an international platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange and learning. Over the course of six days, the participants will participate in activities and conversations with international artists and curators on the theme of SELF-ORGANIZATION as a proactive form of institutional critique.
“Self-organized initiatives present not only art but also an operative model that reflects the ideas and values the founding group consensually, or, at any given moment, antagonistically stands for. Even though these groups or platforms are commonly perceived as being created and maintained in opposition to standard institutional policies and practices (as they indeed mostly are), challenging the status quo, one should also understand the complex net of interdependencies that exist between institutions, the market and self-organized initiatives, and recognize the potential of long-term strategic alliances formed by the latter group”. (Hajnalka Somogyi)
The two organisers – an institution in the making (ECCA) and an independent cultural initiative (Art Encounters Foundation) – propose a collaborative mode of working and an exploratory approach to a variety of operating models. The theme of this year’s curatorial school expresses our common interest in the complex dynamics between institutions and self-organized initiatives.
“In an environment of decreasing confidence in art institutions, both in the East and the West, institutional critique sometimes takes a proactive or projective form, that of self-organization. Of course, self-organization is older than institutions themselves: substantially bottom-up, it constitutes the gathering of a certain number of individuals around a set of common interests and goals that they decided to act upon. Thus, it makes an absence in the art establishment explicit: an absence of possibilities, discourses, practices, forms, values.
More often than not, the how is as important as the what, if not more so: self-organized initiatives typically operate in flat hierarchies and experiment with commonist, non-extractionist models, challenging traditional capitalist organizational and economic structures. To self-organize is to create a common, open space of expression, exchange and production that is self-regulated and self-governed. […]
It is also necessary to speak about the dangerous tenuity of the line between the freedom and self-empowerment that participation in such structures promises, on the one hand, and self-exploitation and precarity that serving them demands, on the other.” (Hajnalka Somogyi)
Read here the whole context-argument of the The Autumn School of Curating 3rd edition «SELF - ORGANIZATION», written by Course leader Hajnalka Somogyi.
Invited speakers and conversation partners
Hajnalka Somogyi
course leader
bio & talk summary
Matthias Einhoff
bio & talk summary
Mihnea Mircan
bio & talk summary
Adrian Notz
bio & talk summary
Kasia Redzisz
bio & talk summary
Anne Szefer Karlsen
bio & talk topic
Farid Rakun
bio & talk summary
Răzvan Anton
bio & talk topic
Mihai Iepure-Górski
bio & talk topic
Magda Radu
bio & talk summary
Diana Marincu
bio & talk summary
The Autumn School of Curating is free of charge and open to international candidates
About the organizers
is an independent cultural initiative, founded in 2015, oriented towards supporting the contemporary art scene in Romania. The Foundation’s activities follow three main directions: organizing the Art Encounters Biennial and the permanent exhibitions program, fostering education and audience development through public programs and developing a solid series of artistic and curatorial residencies.
The European Centre of Contemporary Art (ECCA)
strives to discover and foster artistic ideas for the future, emerging from three areas of artistic and curatorial work:
researching, learning and creating. ECCA is part of Cluj Cultural Centre, a non-governmental organization for culture and sustainable development, which believes that culture makes cities present and human. Their mission is to mobilize culture for social transformation and sustainable development.
Calendar of public talks
6 November
18:00 - 19:00
Adrian Notz, Talk topic: «Republica Bănățeană»
19:00 - 20:00
Hajnalka Somogyi and the participants of The Autumn School of Curating 3rd edition «SELF - ORGANIZATION»
Testimonials
Espen Johansen
Spending a week or so with my fellow participating curators was incredibly inspiring. I learned a ton from them, both in terms of curatorial practice and thinking but also in terms of the societal conditions in which they operate.
Joanna Warsza
Cluj was for me a place where mittle Europa is not the nostalgic lost concept, but a thriving culture. The experience of running a course at the invitation of CCC made me realise: Contemporary art needs to be like Cluj, the more nationalistic the governments get, the more international we need to stay, in particular the Eastern Europeans who need places to relate to each other, which are not necessarily in the West.
Adrian Notz
I had the great honor and pleasure to lead the 2020 Autumn School of Curating pandemic edition, which meant, that we met online. This was a great opportunity because the participants were from all over the world, from Bangladesh, Kolkata, Palestine, via Romania to Texas and Colombia. It was a highly inspiring, touching and impressive experience to spend a week together online and to actually be able to form a group and even to some extent change some of the participants lives, works and initiate new projects. Even without being in Cluj or Timisoara I could experience a vibrant and emerging artistic spirit in the Carpoathian vortex and Pannonian basin of which I was and am happy to have tasted it, a bit.
Calendar
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Target participants
Young professionals in the field of curating and writing, with at least 3 years’ experience in the field.
Registration period
August 24 – September 30, 2021
The selected participants will be announced by October 8, 2021.
How to apply
In order to apply please fill in this online form with your details, a motivation letter and a narrative biography, stating your interest in the topic of the Autumn School of Curating.
apply here
apply here
The Autumn School of Curating is free of charge and open to international candidates. The courses will be held in English. Availability for the entire course is required. For any inquiries about the program, please write to us at ecca@cccluj.ro.