Experimental Institutionalism: Rethinking infrastructures and curatorial practice
Speakers: Biljana Ciric and iLiana Fokianaki
This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies, which delves into the artistic, curatorial, organisational and institutional models in which artists, curators and producers reflect and shape the role of contemporary art practice.
This series has been developed in response to the significant impacts on practice, movement, cultural production, display and community gathering in 2020, and reflects a desire to strengthen and retain international connections in the face of radical limitations on travel, movement and collaboration.
Engaging local and international experts, this series touches on the changing roles of artists, curators, writers, funders, educators and institutions, as they intersect with wider global economic, technological, environmental and political contexts.
What similarities and alliances can be drawn across borders, and how do we work and learn differently in response to the specificities of locality, place, culture and community? Can we work better together? What futures are possible or likely for the contemporary art ecology?
Biljana Ciric is an interdependent curator. She is currently conceiving inquiry for first Trans- Southeast Asian Triennial in Guang Zhou Repetition as a Gesture Towards Deep Listening. She was the co-curator of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennale for Contemporary Art (Yekaterinburg, 2015), curator in residency at Kadist Art Foundation (Paris, 2015), and a research fellow at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Høvikodden, 2016). Her recent exhibitions include An Inquiry: Modes of Encounter presented by Times Museum, Guang Zhou (2019); When the Other Meets the Other Other presented by Cultural Center Belgrade (2017); Proposals for Surrender presented by McAM in Shanghai (2016/2017); and This exhibition Will Tell You Everything About FY Art Foundations in FY Art Foundation space in Shen Zhen (2017).
iLiana Fokianaki is a writer and curator based in Athens and Rotterdam. In 2013 she founded State of Concept Athens, the first non-profit gallery in Athens that promotes Greek and international artists through solo exhibitions, but also invites international curators to create exhibitions that comment on the current socio-political landscape of Greece and beyond. The institution has worked with artists such as Laure Prouvost, Hito Steyerl, Basim Magdy, Keren Cytter among others, most of whom had never exhibited in Greece before. State of Concept is also focusing on a pedagogical programme that enables Greek art students and artists through free consultations, to further their studies and develop their projects. It has also been operating as an open platform that hosts fellow curators and artists for talks, events and presentations. In 2016, together with Antonia Alampi she founded Future Climates, a platform that aims to propose viable futures for small-scale organizations of contemporary art and culture, which manifested in Athens in March 2017 with a three-month program.