Radical Permanence: Curatorial Regimes of Mobility
19:00–20:30
de Appel, Tolstraat 160, Amsterdam
Image: Institute of Radical Imagination, courtesy of Mao Mollona 2020, Watercolor and ink on paper 210mm x 297mm
To launch the two week Curatorial Programme Summer School of de Appel, which deals with land, ownership and collectivisation, Aria Spinelli will engage in a discussion with Marco Baravalle on the neoliberal genealogy of contemporary curating and the resulting regimes of mobility.
The figure of the independent curator was canonised in the 1990s and is understandable only in the context of accelerating globalisation. This shift in curating brings with it a new vision and spatial conception of the world as an "archipelago of connected islands." This focus aims to reflect on that vision as a contested space between radical critique and neoliberal normalisation, whereby art and curatorial practice can also be interpreted within the framework of emancipatory politics.
The art mode of production compels curators and art workers to adopt a nomadic lifestyle. The romanticisation of this model and the professional identity that it engenders frequently serve to obscure its most problematic aspects, in particular the role of privilege based on class, gender and race, the ecological impact and the resulting spatial regimes of our cities, where art, linked to private global financial capital, participates in the process of the general disappearance of public space. Is it possible to conceive of a different regime of mobility (radical permanence) that, while not reducing itself to stillness or a “localist” option, creates alternatives to nomadic neoliberalism? How can practices of art and curating use radical imagination and create these alternatives?
Join us for the conversation between Marco Baravalle and Aria Spinelli in de Appel on Tuesday 16 July at 7pm. There is a limited capacity for this event, please make a reservation by clicking the button below.
Aria Spinelli is an independent curator and until recently has been a postdoctoral researcher for the NWO VIDI project, IMAGINART, at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam. Her PhD (Loughborough University, UK, 2021) analyses the ways in which curatorial practice is related to social imagination and performativity. Her main area of research investigates the relationships among art, activism, and political theory. A founding member of the artistic and curatorial collective Radical Intention, she was an associate researcher and member of the curatorial team of The Independent project at the MAXXI (National Museum of the XXI Century for art, Rome) from 2018 until 2020. Between 2015 and 2020 she was an external curator at the Pistoletto Foundation (Biella) and BOZAR, Center for Fine Arts (Brussels). She has published extensively in the art field and academic journals, and she is editor of the publication ‘Shaping Desired Futures‘ (NERO, 2018). Between 2009 and 2012 she was curator at the Isola Art Center (Milan).
Marco Baravalle is a researcher, curator and activist. He is a member of Sale Docks, a collective and independent space for visual arts, activism, and experimental theatre located in what had been an abandoned salt-storage facility in Dorsoduro, Venice, Italy. Founded in 2007, its programming includes activist-group meetings, formal exhibitions, and screenings. He is a member of IRI (Institute Of Radical Imagination), a collective inviting activists, artists, curators and cultural producers to share knowledge on a continuous base with the aim of defining and implementing zones of post-capitalism in Europe’s South and the Mediterranean. Baravalle teaches Phenomenology of Contemporary Art at the MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies of NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan), and Curatorship at Ca’Foscari University in Venice.
