OPEN CALL:CuratorLab Applications 2021/22 at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design

Degree exhibitions are some of the most relevant and widely attended art events in many art communities. They also produce a lot of grand hopes, high aspirations and expectations—some of them impossible to fulfill. How to work with and within this entanglement? For the next academic year 2021/22, we invite you to join the team of curators preparing the Konstfack master’s students’ Degree Exhibition 2022. It will include the Master’s degree programmes from the following departments: Fine Art; CRAFT! (Textiles, Glass and Ceramics, Jewellery and Corpus); Spatial Design; Individual Study Plan in Design and Visual Communication. Through a mix of dialogues, studio visits, feedback, crit sessions, group work, field trips and seminars, we will delve into the ideas and visions of over 85 graduates across these fields.

We will also ask questions around the possible ways of presenting the diverse educational setting and opening up the process rather than only celebrating its final results. How can we combine the intimacy of learning and failing and the array of materials and techniques within a situated context of a given space-time? How to understand—paraphrasing Audre Lorde—our interdependence in relation to our own individual power and creativity? How to negotiate between students’ desires for self-expression and the curatorial impulse to identify narratives? How to refrain from the reenactment of old hierarchies and think of a unique place of art schools in the ecosystem of art and beyond it? How to combine the large scale production with a setting that benefits all graduates? How to work professionally, efficiently but critically within the frameworks of an established institution? And finally how to manage a shared budget and work with deadlines? Join us to work with this beautiful impossibility.

CuratorLab is a one-year international curatorial course. We are exploring radical approaches to engagement, debating pertinent issues of our times, having collective fun and practicing horizontal learning. CuratorLab is the oldest curatorial education in Sweden, established in 1999, and remains a platform open to everybody with curiosity to challenge and present new curatorial practices.

The situation with Covid-19 is still an important issue in relation to this open call, therefore, CuratorLab may need to consider both physical and online variations of the Degree Exhibition 2022, hoping for the first!

Course leader: Joanna Warsza / Guest lecturers: Maria Lind and Anne Klontz / Guest seminars by: Shaon Chakraborty, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti (DAAR), Samuel Grima, MINT (Emily Fahlén and Asrin Haidari), Michele Masucci, Bella Rune and many others / Curatorial assistant: Vasco Forconi

We will meet four times per year for 10 days sessions (with some online meetings in-between).

Early September 2021: Introduction to Stockholm, Konstfack, the Degree Exhibition history, first round of studio visits (overview) with the 2022 MA students, site visits, possible common study trip concluding with team and programme selection.
November 2021: Second round of studio visits for teams to meet with their selected programme, individual meetings and workshops about the Degree Exhibition process (budget, working with students, Konstfack procedures and premises, online exhibition catalogue, external locations, etc).
Early March 2022: Meetings with MA students about their degree projects, workshops around practical details (placement of works, budget, materials, online exhibition catalogue, external locations).
April 2022 (online): Each team will need to plan a meeting with their programme to show students the placement of their works. Start to develop public programme of events.
Early May 2022: Building, installation and opening of the Degree Exhibition, implement public program (the exhibition is usually open to the public for 10 days).

You do not need to be based in Stockholm, however we encourage those who are to apply. Attendance during all the sessions is necessary.

The deadline for applications is January 15. To apply go to the Konstfack website.