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WCSCD Defining curating Defining WCSCD Situating Our Vision Our Values Our Priorities Programs & Inquiries Plans 2022-2025 Thinking with. Our Team Defining curating WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO?—WCSCD was initiated in 2018 in Belgrade as an educational platform focused around notions of the curatorial and is a registered civic association. WCSCD was established by Biljana Ciric and these two bodies are deeply entangled and define themselves as she/her. These two bodies are relational and hoping to be transformed by the relationships they are entangled with. Their mode of existence, visibility and opacity in the world is shaped by thinking and walking with an advisory group—which since 2020 has consisted of Matt Packer, Andrea Palasti and Ares Shporta—as an exercise in how to become more than yourself- pluralself (Rolando Vazquez). Defining these two entangled bodies as she/her, we are hoping to engage in larger conversations of deconstruction and of imagining institutions by decolonizing our expectations. What do we mean when we say curating? We understand curatorial practice as walking with. We mean walking not as a way of getting somewhere, but walking with, as sharing time and creating space for unevenness to co-exist. When writing about walking, Canadian geographer Juanita Sundberg separates this into two steps. The first step is positioning, which is locating my body-knowledge in relation to the existing paths I know and walk. Sundberg defines the second step as walking with. “Walking with means ‘reciprocal respect for the autonomy and independence of organizations’ involved in the struggle; in other words, respect for the multiplicity of life worlds. Step two, then, involves learning to learn about multiplicity.” What do we mean when we ask the question What Could/Should Curating Do? We propose this question in order to engage with practices and encourage curating to stay dynamic and responsive in the world around me, anchored in caring with. Situating We are situated in Belgrade, Serbia, where the work of cultural workers is undervalued. A very big part of myself is also situated in the places where our collaborators struggle working under similar conditions. We are also with many bodies that experience and fight against the extraction of natural resources and exploitation of human and more than human worlds. Our Vision We dream and practice contemporary culture as a political movement that stand against that moves away from certain economically bounded locations creating the conditions for us on the margins to participate in discussions where our futures are negotiated and our pasts reflected on. I dream of an instituting model that is attentive to human and more than human worlds, asking myself who I am in relation to others. Our Values Education and new methodologies Ambition and openness to failure as part of the learning process Professional network of colleagues and peers who think together with me Slow modes of working that allow for deeper entanglements Our Priorities Ways of doing based on a pedagogy of positionality Education and methodologies I use in creating new kinds of human Creating citations in art practices from the margins that contribute to the global Ways of working together that are long-term and based on the equal sharing of resources Creating conditions for equal participation within contexts that are economically uneven Contributing to practising towards sustainable art institutions WCSCD existing programs and inquiries 2018-2022 WCSCD’s main program focus is an educational program and long-term inquiries towards decolonizing modes of relationality within the arts. WCSCD’s education program has been run on an annual basis every year since 2018. It is a three-month program for practitioners situated in Belgrade. In 2020 I started the first curatorial inquiry of WCSCD in the form of a long-term research project: As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future looking at the impact of BRI in Central Asia, Balkan, Ethiopia and China. The project is structured around partner cells: Zdenka Badovinac (Ljubljana), Robel Temesgen and Sinkneh Eshetu (Addis Ababa), Public Library Bor (Bor), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), Times Museum (Guang Zhou), Artcom platform (Almaty) and WCSCD (Belgrade). Our plans 2022-2025 My plan is to work with a group of colleagues to bring WCSCD into a new stage of positioning itself. In this phase WCSCD will consider itself in relation to merging the rural and the urban, through an open inquiry into what it means when an art institution becomes a custodian of the land. I am hoping to explore the role of art institutions within rural-urban, nature-culture relations and possible sustainable economies for both. I hope that our entanglement will bring long lasting alliances, bringing like-minded practitioners together to work collectively on deconstructing our methodologies of working within the arts. Thinking with. Since 2020 I have been thinking with Matt Packer (director of Eva International), Andrea Palasti (artist and educator Novi Sad) and Ares Shporta (director of Lumbardhi Foundation) as part of an active advisory group. From 2023 we will continue without Ares as he is starting a new chapter in his life and we thank him for his insight and knowledge. From 2023 we will welcome to the advisory group Amelie Aranguren (head of artistic programming at INLAND’s Center for the Approach to the Rural (CAR) in Madrid and Inland member since 2010.) Besides the Advisory Group we I have been accompanied in thinking and practising with Susie Quillinan and Madeliene Collie through Study Pattern. Our Team Founding Director Biljana Ciric what.could.curating.do@gmail.com Coordinator Ana Dragic ana.wcscd@gmail.com WCSCD previous team members: Sasa Tkacenko, Katarina Kostandinovic, Ana Anakijev, Aigierim Kapar. Defining WCSCD Situating Our Vision Our Values Our Priorities Programs & Inquiries Plans 2022-2025 Thinking with. Our Team

Educational Program Lecture Series Participant Activities Educational Program WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO?—WCSCD was initiated in 2018 in Belgrade as an educational platform focused around notions of the curatorial and is a registered civic association. WCSCD’s education program has been run on an annual basis every year since 2018. Till 2022 it was organized as a three-month program for practitioners situated in Belgrade. From 2023 program is organized as biennial working with program participants over longer period of time. Our participants were young practitioners from different parts of the world including the Balkans, EU, Asia, Central Asia, Russia and Latin America making it a unique program in Europe. WCSCD educational program has been learning through recent years to think what kind of citation could actively produce.Through carefully created mentorship program we are committed to think and practice what kind of knowledge we consider worth and how it gets prioritized creating new citations from the margins. [1] [1] Sara Ahmed, “White Men,” Feminist Killjoys Blog, November 4 2014, www.feministkilljoys.com/2014/11/04/white-men < Mentors Educational Program Menu >

< Back Response to Latour I, Crisis, Production and Closed Communication Katelynn Dunn Divergent Mediums (Isolation and Closed Communication Channels),NYC. April 2020. ‘Culture detaches itself from the unity of the society of myth ‘when the power of unification disappears from the life of man and when opposites lose their living relation and interaction and acquire autonomy.’ [1] Isolation continues every day. It is hard to say when it unofficially started. During this time, people are focused on reflecting, taking it easy and self-care. People use the word ‘mundane’ quite often. Concerning production and the environment there is a positive overall from a global perspective, and that is what Bruno Latour discusses in the article, “What protective measures can you think of, so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?” He says covid-19 is resocialising us in this moment while globalisation and capitalism wane, and we should use it to get ‘away from production as the overriding principle of our relationship to the world.’ [2] Within this experience, the world has been granted eyes to see that we have the ability to change and quickly. Production has halted throughout the globe due to the requirements of our governments. Movement has been blocked, borders closed everywhere, and we are all left to look to state leaders to make decisions about what to do after we slow the expanse of the new and mutating coronavirus. While we wait, we wonder what we should do without or what we could change to make the re-start for a new world a better place. Where are we going? More question and reflection – ‘What are some suspended activities that you would like to see not coming back? Describe why this activity seems to you to be noxious/superfluous/dangerous/incoherent and how its disappearance/putting on hold/substitution might render other activities that you prefer easier/more coherent.’ [3] I am not sure I have the insight to say what we can do without yet. Feeling so close to the pandemic currently and being within the gears of the machine moving it makes it difficult to fully understand the implications. It feels like being in an already moving and working world of its own. The ‘coronavirus system’ is our life now, and we only function within it. Its power has shifted our attention and moved our pieces. We are required to adapt to it, to work with it and to govern it. Feelings of monotony, lack of freedom, lack of control, confinement, these are the feelings and words that come to mind. It is not right. Leisure is fine. Heaviness is not. We are without so much at this moment that there are more paths to thinking of things that we do need, especially from a non-materialistic point of view. You feel the ebb of production in the environment, and it is not necessarily for the better. This is referring to the environment of ideas and its power, not of material production. It is important to be productive in our communication forming connection. It could be developed from having face to face or in person exchanges taking place. If this isn’t the case, it could be just as effective to have digital communication taking place, and then it is the activity between meeting that is most important for connection. One of the issues from this crisis is a decrease in the quality of communication, from a creative standpoint. Currently, we hear and see the same phrases repeated over and over due to absence of overall information available. We receive most information from media outlets as these are one of the main sources of communication while we are distanced from one another. It is mind-numbing and propagandist. We have more creative possibilities in a system with hyper connectivity and communication, because there are more channels to consciousness. Creating is situational. Art is situational. It is most captivating when it happens in orbit, cyclically, and sequentially. Each movement feeds on the one before, or the ones around it, and it continuously changes. It requires a setting for us to deem it relevant, and to stir us into questioning our existence or to take action. The artist forms the structure of their own creative atmosphere. In the current moment, this structure is changing via the virus, and we must find ways to maintain our agency to have control of our art and of our own future. This becomes more difficult in an environment with less information due to reduced overall movement, and most notably in an environment with a dramatically sensed drop in movement. Stopping or interfering with movement is completely averse to decision making power of all people. In our world, movement, or activity between people, is equivalent to power and provides force needed to progress. It also provides the agency to see by allowing for different positions in society and therefore perspectives. ‘If we’re so oppressed, it’s because our movement’s being restricted.’ [4] People may have more time to concentrate on skills of a craft. However, the authority of art will not be felt as strongly. How do we avoid becoming spectators, and blind ones, when movement is blocked? Hyper activity and communication in the globalized world is one that breeds significantly faster connections. This means there is more available information which creates more differentiated connections, language associations and diversity in the world. This leads to a deeply complex and unique evolution of rare ideas. This system proves creativity and is the artist’s world. While it leads to greater ‘pollution’ in the environment of ideas, which could be seen as a negative, the system with less communication and less information means less possibility (i.e. production) for people to contribute to building the world as they see it. It puts the power of thinking, idealizing, and constructing reality in the hands of those who have greater concentrated power, which will be fewer people. Social systems are flattened. This creates more equality and less conflict. However, it also decreases complexity between ideas and the overall need to question existence. To see the larger picture, and to have the ability to make a new system, one must have the connections to see, to have vision. With less production and activity, our vision is minimized, obstructed and reduced comparatively. For artists and critics, what I believe will be the difficult aspect of this problem we are attempting to solve and system we are attempting to restructure is the current notion attached to creativity. To create is to produce, so to be creative is to be productive. To move away from production means to move away from creativity or inventiveness. How will we value art in the new world if we detach creativity from capitalism? Could we have a system of creativity within a non-capitalistic society? Why shouldn’t we value complexity of ideas? What could be a new definition of creative? Will quality of art improve with less people producing? Where will the force to create originate in the future? Katelynn Dunn is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is based on understanding philosophies of experience and image, patterns in society and the human psyche, artist process, power structures and systems and language. [1] Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black & Red, 1983), 180. [2] Bruno Latour, “What protective measures can you think of, so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?,” AOC Media , March 29, 2020, https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/03/29/imaginer- les-gestes-barrieres-contre-le-retour-a-la-production-davant-crise/ . [3] Bruno Latour, “What protective measures can you think of, so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?,” AOC Media , March 29, 2020, https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/03/29/imaginer- les-gestes-barrieres-contre-le-retour-a-la-production-davant-crise/ . [4] Gilles Deleuze, “Mediators,” in Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 121-134. Previous Next

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Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Lecture by Maria Lind / Future Light: or is A New Enlightenment Worth Considering? CURATORIAL COURSE WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? IS GLAD TO ANNOUNCE THE NEW EDITION OF THE PROGRAMME IN THE FOLLOWING 2019 AND THE PUBLIC TALK BY MARIA LIND Future Light: or is A New Enlightenment Worth Considering? MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART BELGRADE MONDAY, MARCH 11 2019 AT 6PM In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, the lecture within the series of public programs about contemporary curatorial practices will be held by Maria Lind (an esteemed curator, writer and educator) and will serve as an extension to the 2018 edition of the curatorial course WCSCD. Based on an on-going research into art, abstraction and opacity, within the presentation Maria Lind will discuss the project Future Light curated in 2015 as part of the first Vienna Biennial at the Museum Angewandte Kunst and elsewhere. ABOUT THE LECTURER: Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator based in Stockholm and Berlin. She was the director of Stockholm’s Tenstakonsthall 2011-18, the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008-2010) and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007). From 2002-2004 she was the director of Kunstvereinand in 1998, co-curator of Manifesta 2. She has taught widely since the early 1990s, including as professor of artistic research at the Art Academy in Oslo 2015-18. She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and other publications. She is the 2009 recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In the fall of 2010 Selected Maria Lind Writing was published by Sternberg Press. The WCSCD curatorial course and series of public lectures are initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric. The lecture by Maria Lind is made possible with the help of MoCAB and the Embassy of Sweden. The WCSCD curatorial course is a long term project initiated by Biljana Ćirić, with the support and collaboration of the following partner institutions: project patron – Wiener Städtische, partners – The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; EVA International—Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art; and Zepter Museum, among others. The project is supported by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgrade; the Austrian Cultural Forum; Heinrich Boell Stiftung; Hestia Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau and EUNIC Serbia among others. * Photo credit: Escaping Transparency at MAK, Vienna, 2015, as part of Future Light. Pablo Accinelli (Buenos Aires/Sao Paulo), Doug Ashford (New York), Claire Barclay (Glasgow), Rana Begum (Sylhet/London), Elena Damiani (Lima/Copenhagen), Shezad Dawood (London), Annika Eriksson (Stockholm/Berlin), Matias Faldbakken (Oslo), Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (Tehran), Ane Hjort Guttu (Oslo), Tom Holert (Berlin), Philippe Parreno (Paris), Amalia Pica (Buenos Aires/London), Yelena Popova (Moscow/Nottingham), Walid Raad (Beirut/New York), Bik Van der Pol (Rotterdam), Haegue Yang (Seoul/Berlin) < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Past Programs 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2020 Program Archive WCSCD 2020/21 Open Call February 5, 2020 Art and the Post-Pandemic Condition – an online curatorial program and support grant for art practitioners May 15, 2020 WCSCD emergency grant announces grant recipients July 16, 2020 WCSCD emergency grant for practitioners in Former Yugoslav Region June 22, 2020

Program Participant Activities Tonight we invite you to encounter a collective archive of the 2022 What could/should curating do educational programme, which took place in Belgrade and other locations around the Post-Yugoslav region, between September and December this year. The departure point for this archive is a proposal by Biljana Ćirić, program curator and facilitator, to consider the means by which the discussions, events, inquiries and relationships developed during this time might be recorded or documented. Archiving is never neutral. Determinations are always made—by individuals, by collectives, by collecting institutions—about what knowledge is worth saving, the means by which knowledge is indexed, housed and cared for, who has access and on what terms. Within the framework of an alternative educational platform—with a loose and evolving curriculum, and no formalised method of assessment or grading—this exercise presents an opportunity to consider what alternative measures we might allow ourselves for the production of knowledge when freed from institutional modes of transmission and circulation. As such, these archives—both individually and collectively—do not simply record a series of shared (and at times differing) experiences. They include questions around how the embodied, linguistic, political, intimate, relational nature of experience and remembering, ranging in scope from the personal, to the national. Each contribution is informed by the “baggage” we carried with us, as a group of individuals from many different geographic and cultural contexts, many of whom had little relationship with Belgrade, Serbia or the Balkan region prior to this course. This “baggage” includes our different relationships to contemporary art’s infrastructures; our different fields of knowledge and networks of relationships; cultural and linguistic differences; differing relations to histories of colonialism, resource extraction and capitalist exploitation; and varying habits of thought, modes of making, inhabiting and formulating questions about the world. Through differing strategies of presentation and circulation, we hope to open up questions about what we have in common, as well as what separates us; what of ourselves is dispersed, and what is withheld. But the physical “archive” we share with you tonight is only a part of a wider set of relationships, experiences, idea exchanges, occasional encounters, gossip and experimenting. Tonight we celebrate the beauty and fragility of these moments. Be our guests at the two tables. Read silently. Read aloud. Whisper. Describe what you see. Share what you feel. Eat. Drink. Embrace. This archive is staged as something living, developing and transformational, ever evolving as our moments with you. Thank you for sharing this journey with us. We hope it’s not the end, but only a stop on the way. WC/SCD 2022 Adelina, Anastasia, Ginevra, Giuglia, Jelena, Karly, Lera, Sabine, Simon < Educational Program Participants >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Lecture by Hou Hanru / Reengaging a contemporary art institution with civic society Saša Tkačenko, Flags from the WCSCD series, 2018. Photo by Ivan Zupanc THE CURATORIAL COURSE WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE A PUBLIC TALK BY: Hou Hanru REENGAGING A CONTEMPORARY ART INSTITUTION WITH CIVIC SOCIETY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART BELGRADE WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2018 AT 6 PM In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, the fifth lecture within the series of public programs organized by WCSCD will be presented by Hou Hanru (Artistic Director of MAXXI – National Museum for 21st Century Art and National Museum of Architecture, Rome, Italy). Following the recent lectures describing new and different perspectives on the theories and practices of exhibition-making, Hou Hanru’s presentation will outline certain aspects of the program developed by Hou at MAXXI, detailing his vision-strategies for the reengagement of a contemporary art institution with civic society in this time of “global crisis.” As part of this, he will also discuss some of the challenges of running a XXI century institution, its complexity, reality, and actions. As Hou explains: “I think that society needs institutions or organizations that can preserve those elements that are supposed to be experimental, complicated, and controversial, while playing a very important part of the knowledge production of today. It’s also very important for museums to be able to provide the conditions that allow intellectually complicated projects to exist. Otherwise we follow the path of the entertainment industry.” ABOUT THE LECTURER: Hou Hanru is a prolific writer and curator based in Rome, Paris, and San Francisco. He is currently the Artistic Director of MAXXI (National Museum for 21st Century Art and National Museum of Architecture), Rome, Italy. Hou Hanru has curated and co- curated over 100 exhibitions in the last two decades across the world. Some notable examples include: China/Avant-Garde (National Museum of Art of China, Beijing, 1989); Cities On The Move (1997–2000); the 2nd Johannesburg Biennial (Hong Kong, etc.) (1997); the Shanghai Biennale (2000); the Gwangju Biennale (2002); the Venice Biennale (French Pavilion, 1999; Z.O.U.—Zone Of Urgency, 2003; and Chinese Pavilion, 2007); the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial (2005); the exhibition and public program of the San Francisco Art Institute (2006–2012); the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007); Trans(cient)City (Luxembourg 2007); the 10th Biennale de Lyon (2009); the 5th Auckland Triennial (Auckland, New Zealand, 2013); Open Museum Open City (MAXXI, Rome, 2014); Transformers: Choi Jeong-hwa, Didier Fuiza Faustino, Martino Gamper, Pedro Reyes (MAXXI, Rome, 2015–2016); Istanbul, Passion, Joy, Fury (MAXXI, Rome, 2015–2016); Please Come Back, the world as prison? (MAXXI, Rome, 2017); Piere Giraldi (MAXXI, Rome, 2017); Home Beirut (MAXXI, 2017–18); Growing in Difference, the 7th Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture (UABB 2017–2018), among others. He is also a consulting curator of Chinese art for the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and co-curator of Tales of Our Time (2016), Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World (2017–18), and One Hand Clapping (2018). He is an advisor for numerous cultural institutions, and frequently contributes to various journals on contemporary art and culture, lectures, and teaches in numerous international institutions. His books include Hou Hanru, Utopia@Asialink, and School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne (2014); Paradigm Shifts, Walter and McBean Galleries Exhibitions and Public Programs, San Francisco Art Institute (2011); On the Mid-Ground (English version published in 2002 by Timezone 8, Hong Kong, and Chinese version published in 2013, by Gold Wall Press, Beijing); Curatorial Challenges (conversations between Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist, in Art-It magazine as “curators on the move,” Japan, 2006–2012, Chinese version, Gold Wall Press, Beijing, 2013); among others. The WCSCD curatorial course and series of public lectures are initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric together with Supervizuelna. The lecture by Niels Van Tomme is made possible with the help of MoCAB and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with the additional support of Zepter Museum and Zepter Hotel. Project partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; GRAD—European Center for Culture and Debate; EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, ’Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation and Zepter Museum. The project is supported by: the Goethe Institute in Belgrade; Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Embassy of Sweden; the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the Embassy of Ireland in Greece; the Embassy of Indonesia; the EU Info Centre; Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council; and galleries Eugster || Belgrade, HESTIA Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau, and Zepter Hotel, Royal Inn Hotel and CAR:GO. Media partners: EUNIC Serbia, RTS3. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

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