Serbia
WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO?—WCSCD was initiated in 2018 in Belgrade as an educational platform focused on 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 hope 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 us is also situated in the places where our collaborators struggle to work under similar conditions. We are also with many bodies that experience and fight against the extraction of natural resources and exploitation of humans and more than human worlds.
Our Vision
We dream and practice contemporary culture as a political movement that stands 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. We dream of an instituting model that is attentive to humans and more than human worlds, asking ourselves 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
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 practicing towards sustainable art institutions
