Archives: Artists

Meet the Curatorial Resident

Can you tell us about your background and how you got into curating?

I grew up in the countryside in southern Germany in the area that is called Odenwald. I moved to Berlin in 2016 for my bachelor’s. I did Media and Communication studies and Theater studies and then I did the master’s in Applied Cultural Studies and Cultural Semiotics.

But maybe to go back to the countryside, because where I grew up, there was not so much art around. In my family, we didn’t go to art museums. This was something I then explored here.

Back there, the only contact I had with artistic expression was at the local dance school. I spent a lot of time there and was privileged enough to be dancing there quite excessively. When I look back now, I think this was like a flight into a different space where I could express a part of me that I couldn’t express in normal life.

It’s like I had a voice there that I couldn’t show in other spaces. I think voice in this case is actually interesting because dancing normally is not the space where you speak so much. But I had a ballet teacher, and she said that not everyone’s preferred form of expression are verbally spoken words and that there are many ways to express yourself and that’s all right. I found this very true to myself.

In the bigger picture of my life, this experience intrigued my interest in art and artistic expression as well as its political dimension. Now with the background of the cultural theory I am interested in the political potential that lies in this artistic expression where it’s a different form of expression. It is not only logo-centric, not only based on reason, but also takes the sensual and aesthetic experience into account. Another thing that I got interested in is spaces and how social spaces and social structures form the way we experience ourselves, our surroundings, how they form us and how we form social space.

I think in curating, these two interests are connected, how you conceptualize a space and which experience you enable through that and also connecting it with the artistic expression of the artist and putting this together in one room.

Can you tell us a little bit about the exhibition you’re working on right now?

The exhibition project that I’m working on at GlogauAIR is based on the research I did for my master’s thesis. So it comes from a theoretical background. I got the idea for it through an encounter I had in a club in Berlin. I was dancing next to a person and it was a really nice vibe and so I said – it’s so much fun dancing next to you – and the person replied, “when the body is queer, I feel free”. I really liked what they said and I started thinking about it – what’s the relationship between queerness and freedom and how can this feeling be felt in this space and not in others? I thought more about how we act in those spaces and how we relate to one another in those spaces and in clubs in particular. I thought that inside this club anomalies and differences are not so much compared to one another and they are not so much brought in a hierarchical order but they are standing next to each other. This enables people inside the space to move more freely and to express themselves more openly

because we are not compared to a norm that we have to fulfill. I started working on this idea on a theoretical level and now in the residency I’m coming back from these theoretical thoughts bringing it back into a space and making it into something that can be experienced, in the form of an exhibition.

I think the starting point is this binary division of human characteristics into a male public sphere of competition and a female private sphere of reproductive care. Historically this is based on the way patriarchy has built itself up and the public sphere formed itself as male dominated. The characteristics that are useful in this competition-led public sphere are all these things that make you stronger against someone and bring you up in the hierarchy. On the contrary, all the characteristics that help to regenerate, to heal from the competitive way of relating, that are not against each other like care and vulnerability, are more in the private sphere, which is in this historically grown construct traditionally more female. The ones who fit in the best in this construct are the most “successful”, everybody who doesn’t is lost in this hierarchy.

What I would like to make accessible or experienceable in the space would be first the deconstruction of this construct. By deconstructing this binary system the characteristics become a richness from which we can draw to build new constructs.

I will start in the first room with an introduction and show this entanglement of the components and then lead to the next room by deconstructing it and giving the more oppressed, private sphere the female-labeled characteristics a space and show them as a strength. So we’re leading through a tender and vulnerable space of care and then reaching into the third room this open end where I would like to show that freedom is not only being freed from something – old structures etc, which comes from being against, resisting against something, but also freedom is to be free to – Being free to create something new, new structures and new ways of being with one another.

Can you tell us a bit about your process while working on the exhibitions? What gives you inspiration? What are some challenges you face?

As I said, my work is coming from a theoretical background and now I’m moving it into a real space. For the thesis, I also wrote an exhibition concept, but that was completely fictional. So I had all the possibilities imaginable. But now I think the challenge is to come from this theoretical concept and this fictional space that I created, to bring this into a real space that has limits.

I started with just walking through the space and looking at how different parts of the narrative that I would like to tell could fit into these three rooms. And then I did some thinking about how I would like the viewers to walk through and what I want them to experience. I started imagining what they see and what they feel in this space. The storytelling helps, you keep a story in your mind and then you follow it. I am just thinking now, that maybe my dancing background has something to do with the way I get inspired by moving through space with a narration in mind.

For me it is the hardest part, the path from the idea to the real thing. You need to let go of many things. And sometimes it’s very sensitive. Especially when you look for artworks that

fit, they maybe don’t tell exactly what you want to tell and then you have to open up to what they actually tell and what you could use from that to build the bigger picture.

I think that’s challenging for me. Because it’s also the first time that I actually curate something.

And is it your residency as well? How is it going?

I really like it. It’s a very nice experience. I didn’t study at an art school so this is the first time that I’m in an artistic working environment. I’ve done some internships in cultural institutions where I had contact with the artists as well. But it’s different to be actually in a creative situation. Not just working administratively. I think it’s very inspiring because I realize it’s a different way of talking about art when we do studio visits or even talking to the artists here at GlogauAir. It’s an inside view you get from practicing, understanding how artists work. I really like that I get this perspective now as well.

Who are some artists, writers, curators who have influenced your curatorial practice?

I think it’s probably writers who inspire me. I really read a lot in the last few years.
I would like to include some quotes of these writers in the space and to lead through the space with those quotes. Because that’s where the idea came from. I don’t like it so much when in exhibitions, there’s like a huge text and you first have to understand and then you go through the space. Sometimes those words are just too big for what you see in the exhibition or they take away a feeling. I will use some quotes by Lola Olufemi. She’s a queer futuristic writer and I like the way she writes. She writes poems and in the same book she just swaps from the poetic to theory and then to fiction. I really like the way she connects theoretical ideas with artistic style of writing. I also like the theoretical thoughts of Bini Adamczak because she looks at society and the way we relate to one another, how the social structure is organised by the binary division into male/female public/private spheres and how a transformation of the societal constellation is possible. That also informed the exhibition a lot.