Workshops
English / Deutsch

1.10.–1.11.2020

How now to gather

bb11 Curatorial Workshop

For the 11th Berlin Biennale’s Curatorial Workshop How now to gather, a working group of fourteen Berlin-based, early-career curators, educators, and other practitioners was formed through an open call and they were invited to eight gatherings. They all are first-generation or second-generation newcomers to Berlin, come from the Rising Majority or situations characterized by a lack of support.

As the group comes together in close dialogue with the curatorial and artistic propositions of the 11th Berlin Biennale, the four-week-long Curatorial Workshop responds to the urgency of enacting structural change in Berlin’s institutions, and of generating long-lasting support structures, safety nets, and strategies for establishing city-wide cross-institutional alliances. The global and local pandemic conditions, and the growing Rising Majority, Black Lives Matter, #LeaveNoOneBehind, and #unteilbar movements inform the gatherings, as do strategies of vigilance towards right-wing populist or neo-fascist groups as they attempt to occupy Berlin’s public and political arenas.

Participants in the 11th Berlin Biennale Curatorial Workshop are working together with nine workshop facilitators—also Berlin-based cultural practitioners—and the 11th Berlin Biennale curators for in-depth consideration of the works in the four Berlin Biennale venues. The group explores different working processes and protocols for gathering; share, develop, and adapt tools for engagement; and consider practical methods of movement-building, accountable research protocols, and ethical relation-building as they reflect on curatorial practice.

Participants

  • Asya Yaghmurian
  • Ayasha Guerin
  • Bengisu Çağlayan
  • Jumoke Adeyanju
  • Luise Leon Elbern
  • Maithu Bùi
  • Moshtari Hilal
  • Nuno de Brito Rocha
  • Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein + Eirini Fountedaki Raphael Daibert
  • Sarnt Utamachote
  • Sophya Kallista Frohberg
  • Viviane Tabach

Facilitators

  • Ana Teixeira Pinto
  • Duygu Örs
  • FCNN – Feminist Collective With No Name (Dina El Kaisy Friemuth/Anita Beikpour) with Neda Sanai
  • Övül Durmusoglu
  • siddhartha lokanandi
  • Sinthujan Varatharajah
  • and the curatorial team of the 11th Berlin Biennale: Agustín Pérez Rubio, Lisette Lagnado, María Berríos, Renata Cervetto

Writer and translator Mayra Rodríguez Castro has been invited to accompany the working group—to witness, record, and reflect on the gatherings.

The Curatorial Workshop was developed—in collaboration with institutions and people across the city of Berlin—by curator, educator, and writer Pip Day at the invitation of the 11th Berlin Biennale’s curatorial team. Her projects as curator and museum director, such as Spatial Practices in Revolution, Sovereignty, Non-Extractive Listening, and Study, are characterized by long-term research and collaborative action within the settler-colonial contexts of Tiothia:ke/Mooniyaang/Montréal and Mexico City. She recently moved to Berlin.

The Curatorial Workshop is organized by the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in cooperation with Allianz Cultural Foundation, BMW Group, Goethe-Institut e.V., and Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa). Thanks to the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme/gkfd for providing space for the 11th Berlin Biennale Curatorial Workshop group to meet.