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WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? 2018 Call for Applications Author of the project: Biljana Ćirić, in collaboration with Supervizuelna / Visual identity: Saša Tkačenko Application deadline: April 30, 2018 Start date: September 2018 Duration: September 7 – December 7, 2018 Final exhibition project: January 2019 The first international course for emerging curators to take place in Belgrade, Serbia, will be held from September to December 2018, and will draw upon the unique local and regional context as a critical source of knowledge. Participants will be engaged in a rigorous itinerary of extensive studio visits, research visits to public and private institutions and collections, along with a series of closed door workshop sessions led by both international and local mentors of the program. The program aims to situate curatorial practice within the specific contextual framework of the region, while also providing insights to the wider international framework related to exhibition-making practices on both a theoretical and practical level. Over the course of the three month-long program, international cultural producers will conduct specific workshops related to different aspects of curating, offering participants the opportunity to individually and collectively consider the different institutional aspects that often frame curatorial endeavors. For the culmination of the course, participants will propose a collective exhibition and will also be tasked with working on the accompanying publication. The Belgrade-based artist Saša Tkačenko has been commissioned to develop the visual identity for the project, as well as to conceive how to best document the project and the final exhibition in book format. Niels Van Tomme, director at De Appel in Amsterdam (a contemporary art institution that runs a pioneering curatorial programme since 1994), will give an inaugural lecture in June about the prominent role the Curatorial Programme takes within De Appel’s institutional context (final date to be confirmed). The primary mentors for the course include Dorothea von Hantelmann (Bard College, Berlin); Antariksa (co-founding member of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia); the Flash Art Magazine editorial team (Flash Art is a bimonthly magazine focused on contemporary art, based in Milan); Elena Filipović (director of Kunsthalle Basel); Tara McDowell (director of curatorial practice at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia); Maria Lind (director of Tensta konsthall, Stockholm); Matt Packer (director of EVA International); Hou Hanru (artistic director of MAXXI Rome, Italy); and What, How & for Whom (a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia), among others. Application requirements: Applicants must be 35 years of age or younger No prior degrees in art or art history are required The course fee of 300 € (international participants will be assisted with finding accommodation in Belgrade an accommodation rate is approximately 150 € per month) Applications should include the following items as a single WORD or PDF document, sent by email to what.could.curating.do@gmail.com with the subject line Curatorial-course-Belgrade by April 30 2018: CV/Portfolio Letter of Interest (500 words maximum, explaining why you are interested in curatorial practices) Project Description(300 words maximum, an urgent project you would like to develop) Based on the quality of the submitted documents, 15 participants will be selected to attend the course. Selected applicants should plan to arrive in Belgrade no later than September 7, 2018. The final list of the participants will be announced in May 2018. After the run of the program, three attendees who have been recommended by program mentors will have an opportunity to submit a proposal to the Ming Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai for their curatorial research residency (in 2019). The course is long term project initiated by Biljana Ćirić together with Supervizuelna, with the following institutions as project partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, GRAD—European Center for Culture and Debate, EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial and Zepter Museum. Project was supported by: Goethe Institute in Belgrade, Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado, Embassy of Sweden, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, EU Info Centre; Eugster || Belgrade, Zepter Hotel. Media partners: EUNIC Serbia, RTS3.

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Program Participant Activities 2024 Glossary l(a)unch: gender issues On WCSCD educational programme | Collective reflections Walking as a Way of Knowing – Belgrade Regenerative living-creating spaces for the multi species co-existence Celebrating Resilience and Solidarity Glossary l(a)unch: a passage between collecting and transforming 2022 Program Participant Activities 2020/21 Series of texts developed by participants of WCSCD 2020/2021 program as a response to Bruno Latour text What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model? 2019 To be enjoyed endlessly – a zine final project by WCSCD2019 curators Seda Yıldız and Ewa Borysiewicz Reading of the biggest image in Belgrade The WCSCD 2019 Salary Spreadsheet: Expanding the Conversation Around Salaries in the Arts < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

WCSCD 2020/21 open call Call Opens: February 6, 2020 Call Closes: March 8, 2020, promptly at 17:00 The 2020 program will run from August 1 to October 29, 2020. WCSCD continues to value and emphasize forms of curatorial practice that are active at the margins of the mainstream art world, yet that contribute to the global perspective. This is accomplished primarily through reflection on the local context and efforts to rethink how to meaningfully contribute to the production of curatorial discourses. This is can also be read as an attempt to de-colonize art and its many discourses more broadly. The program maintains an international purview, while proposing consideration of what it means to be international within the abovementioned theoretical parameters. This is in part accomplished through the invitation of the 2020 mentors for the program, including Ekaterina Degot (Director and Chief Curator of steirischer herbst), Lisa Rosendahl (Associate Professor of Exhibition Studies at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and Curator of GIBCA – the Gothenburg biennial in 2019 & 2021, Chus Martínez (Director of the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, Luca Lo Pinto (Director of MACRO in Rome), Suzana Milevska (Curator and a visual culture theorist), Jelena Vesic (Independent curator, writer, and lecturer – based in Belgrade), Xiang Zairong (Scholar), Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez (Independent curator, editor and writer), and ruangrupa (Artistic directors of Documenta 15) among others. For this iteration, the curatorial program WCSCD2020 will have a specific focus on women curators or directors of institutions with ties to the former Yugoslavian cultural field from the 1970s, which challenged mainstream approaches to art. Program participants will conduct interviews, engage in archival practices around their research into these practitioners, all while thinking about modes of archiving in and of itself and discussing different curatorial histories. Each participants’ research practices will be shared and contextualized through different public forms of expression during the program. s. The research conducted as part of WCSCD 2020 will create an archive around these practices, which will be made accessible through publication and open source online content. The aim will also be to discuss these artists’ contributions towards the creation of an “art system” in the region. As the educational-curatorial platform WCSCD enters its third year, it is of note to point out that the majority of attendees of the program thus far have been women, with enrollment of only 20% men. Similar art educational programs around the world share these experiences, and in university contexts as well—women outnumber men in the study of Art History. This poses an important question on the role of gender in relation to curatorial practices and positions within different institutions of art. By revisiting the historical moments cited above, we intend to contextualize and reflect on the current situation within our working contexts as well.Over the past two years we’ve seen the rise of an international movement, the #metoo campaign, thanks in part to the many brave arts professionals who went public with their experiences of harassment and violence, which is now part of the public domain. Yet, the gender imbalance between different work areas and roles within the art system is still very much present today. These observations, along with many others, have led us to tailor a project that will look at the “notion of the curatorial” through a gendered lens and within the context of the ex-Yugoslavian cultural field. Criteria for consideration: Applicants must be 35 years of age or younger No prior degrees in art or art history are required The course fee is based on the monthly average salary of the country from which you hail, for which you are a passport holder (we use online reference of most recent average salary data of successful applicants) Please note that the fee does not include accommodations or travel costs. International participants will be provided assistance with finding accommodations in Belgrade—such accommodations are approximately 180 EUR per month. The standard course fee also does not cover travel and accommodations for research trips. Successful applicants should prepare an allowance of approximately 300 EUR to cover these additional costs. How to apply: Applications should include the following items as a single Word or PDF document, sent by email to what.could.curating.do@gmail.com with the subject line: Curatorial-Course-WCSCD 2020 by March 8, 2020: CV/Portfolio Letter of Interest (500 words maximum, explaining your interest in curatorial practices and specific research interests) Description (300 words maximum, the working methodology you propose with regard to the project, taking into consideration the role of archives, ways of designing and testing new methodologies for implementation, and gender-related research) Based on the quality of the submitted documents, up to 15 participants will be selected to attend the course. Selected applicants should plan to arrive in Belgrade no later than August 1, 2020. The final list of participants will be announced the first week of April 2020. The final curriculum of the program will be confirmed in May 2020 and shared with the attending curators at that time. This year WCSCD introduced the possibility for distant education and participation in the mentoring session with price 400 euros for program duration for more information how to apply for it pls write to us with subject WCSCD online program WCSCD is proud to also announce the advisory group who will help us shape the program, the members of which include: Matt Packer, Director of the Eva International Biennial; Ares Shporta, Director of the Lumbardhi Foundation; and Andrea Palasti, a Novi Sad based artist. The WCSCD curatorial course is a long-term project initiated by Biljana Ćirić, with the support and collaboration of the following partner institutions: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; EVA International—Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art; and Zepter Museum, among others. The project is supported by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Austrian Cultural Forum; Institut français de Serbie, Swedish Embassy in Belgrade and Hestia Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau among others. For more information regarding the application process and/or invited lecturers for the 2020 program, please refer to the website: www.old.wcscd.com . For other queries, please send to the following email address: what.could.curating.do@gmail.com .

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Lecture by Patrick D. Flores and launch of the WCSCD book Launch of the What Could/Should Curating Do? book together with Sasa Tkacenko, Katarina Kostandinovic, Neva Lukic and Sinisa Ilic, followed with a lecture by Patrick D. Flores When: May 13, 2019, 18:00 Where: Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade What Could/Should Curating Do? is proud to announce the inaugural lecture for the 2019 program by Patrick D. Flores, titled Singapore Biennial 2019: Some Political Inspirations. The presentation will speak to the methods undertaken and conceptual impulse to convene a biennial in Singapore, noting the lively cultural and social milieu of contemporary art in Southeast Asia and the ethical demands involved in evoking this liveliness. Patrick D Flores Patrick Flores, Artistic Director of SB2019 explains: “It may be said that the world is troubled. To sense such a state of flux is to acknowledge the situation and begin to face it. For Singapore Biennale 2019, we ask: What are the possibilities for art, the artist, and the audience in light of this trouble? What are the responsibilities of the artwork, its making, and its experience in the prospects of future action? As we believe, every effort to change the world for the better does in fact matter. SB2019 puts its faith squarely in the potential of art and its capacity to rework the world, as expressed in the Biennial’s title: Every Step in the Right Direction.” About the speaker: Patrick D. Flores is Professor of Art Studies in the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines, which he chaired from 1997 to 2003, and Curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila. One of his many publications, The Exhibition Problematic and the Asian Dislocal revisits the conceptual conditions that prompt students of the history of exhibitions and the future of their making to ask questions about notions of history and futurity through the proposition of the exhibition. Previously, Flores curated the Philippine pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015, the exhibition Position Papers at the Gwangju Biennale in 2008, and served as one of the curators of Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art at the Japan Foundation in 2000. He also co-curated South by Southeast, an exhibition of contemporary art from Southeast Asia and Southeast Europe, organized by the Osage Art Foundation in 2015. A respected art historian, Flores was a guest scholar of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2014. Some of his other publications include Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008). Joining this inaugural lecture for the 2019 program, the first volume in the What Could/Should Curating Do? publication series will also launch, which is co-published with Orion Art and conceptualized by Sasa Tkacenko and Biljana Ciric. What Could/Should Curating Do? Visual by Sasa Tkacenko Photo by Hu Yun The interest for What Could/Should Curating Do? to publish this series came out of the necessity to develop a scholarship for the curatorial course that was first established in 2018. The series also simultaneously serves as an archive of the discourses produced around the course on an annual basis, thereby engaging with questions of how to archive something that is still in development. These volumes are one possible solution to be further shared and explored. With this mind, the WCSCD publication series developed into a kind of annual reader related to the curatorial discourses that grow out of the program’s different workshops, initiated by the invited guest mentors to the program. At the same time, this effort also encourages the attending, emerging curators to produce and contribute their own writing. Neva Lukić and Katarina Kostandinović / Photo by Hu Yun Collaged view on Didactic exhibition by Siniša Ilić / photo by Hu Yun Perfromance by Saša Tkačenko Neva Lukić and Katarina Kostandinović / Photo by Hu Yun Collaged view on Didactic exhibition by Siniša Ilić / photo by Hu Yun Perfromance by Saša Tkačenko The first volume includes contributions : Neva Lukic, Katarina Kostandinovic, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Elena Filipović, Tara McDowell ,Maria Lind, Matt Packer, Mia David, Hou Hanru, What, How & for Whom, Jasna Jasna Zmak, Kirila Cvetkovska, Ruri Kawanami, Vera Zalutskaya Niels van Tomme, Sinisa Ilic, Milena Joksimovic, Agustina Andreoletti, Tjasa Pogacar, Boba Mirjana Stojadinovic, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Branislav Dimitrijevic and Biljana Ciric. During this special evening, WCSCD will also announce the curators who have been accepted into the WCSCD 2019 course, and highlight the partners for the WCSCD 2019 program as well as new artist commission. The curatorial course is a long term project made possible with the support and collaboration of the following partner institutions: Project patron: Wiener Städtische; Partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; EVA International—Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art; Center for Promotion of Science and Zepter Museum, among others. The project is supported by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgrade; the Austrian Cultural Forum; Heinrich Boell Stiftung; Hestia Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau; and EUNIC Serbia, Media partners Before After and Designed. < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities Precarious Improvisation: The Past and The Present, maybe The Future | WCSCD 2020/21 Annual Lecture Series The curatorial program What Could/Should Curating Do is proud to be continued in 2021 with public program through lecture series The eighth talk in the 2020/21 series is titled: Precarious Improvisation: The Past and The Present, maybe The Future by Zairong Xiang Date: March 17, 2021 Time: 12:00 pm Belgrade / 10:00 pm Melbourne / 07:00 pm Shanghai / 6:00 am New York Registration: Link One of the most widely used tools for survival by the improvised majority of the world is that of the quick-fix or make-shift, be it jugaad in India, gambiarra in Brazil, or to some extent shanzhai in China. These are at once embedded in traditional space-time and specific to the condition created by neoliberal global capitalism. Not merely a socioeconomic and anthropological phenomenon of improvisation, quick-fix methods across the world emerge from an onto-epistemology of profound connectivity of things and an ethics of pervasive permissibility. In this lecture, we will look at different registers of improvisation anchored in artistic practices and critical and curatorial reflections, from quotidian knowledge to ingenious improvisation, from communitarian politics to capitalist appropriation; and discuss what lessons can be learnt (both from and against) these theory-practices, especially in the context of an all-exposing pandemic. About Speaker Zairong XIang is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Associate Director of Artat Duke Kunshan University. He is author of Queer Ancient Way: A Decolonial Exploration (punctum books, 2018). Chief curator of the “minor cosmopolitan weekend” at the HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2018), he is also the editor of its catalogue minor cosmopolitan: Thinking Art, Politics and the Universe Together Otherwise (Diaphanes 2020). He is co-curating the 2021 Guangzhou Image Triennial tougher with the Hyperimage Group and is working on two projects, respectively dealing with the concepts of “transdualism” and “counterfeit” in the Global South especially Latin America and China. He was Fellow at the ICI-Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (2014 – 2016) and postdoctoral researcher of the DFG Research Training Group minor cosmopolitanisms at Potsdam University(2016-2020). All his writings could be read here: www.xiangzairong.com The lecture is hosted by KHiO in collaboration with the curatorial program WCSCD. WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? (WCSCD) WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? (WCSCD) was initiated and funded in 2018 in Belgrade as an educational platform around notions of curatorial. From 2020 WCSCD started to initiate its own curatorial inquiries and projects that should unpack above -mentioned complexities keeping educational component as a core to the WCSCD. The WCSCD curatorial program and series of public lectures have been initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric. WCSCD 2020/2021 public program series has been done in collaboration with Division of Arts and Humanities, Duke Kunshan University and they co-stream all public lectures. Strategic media collaboration is done with Seecult and they will co-host all public lecture series. Project Partners Media Partner For more information about the program, please refer to www.wcscd.com Project contacts: what.could.curating.do@gmail.com Follow us: FB: @whatcscdo Instagram: @whatcouldshouldcuratingdo < Mentors Educational Program How to Apply >

WCSCD emergency grant for practitioners in Former Yugoslav Region www.old.wcscd.com what.could.curating.do@gmail.com In light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the art community, the What Could Should Curating DO has created 3 grants of 450 euros for artists, curator, art practitioners working on visual arts whose work and livelihood has been affected due to impacted by the economic fallout from postponed or canceled exhibitions and projects. ELIGIBILITY Relief will be provided to practitioners who can demonstrate that they have had an engagement canceled or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in visual arts sector and this is their main form of income Applicants must be individual artists, curators, or an individual representing an artist or curatorial collective , or group. Organizers, organizations, or arts presenters are not eligible to apply. Practitioners based in any former Yugoslav region are eligible to apply including Serbia, Northern Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia. Bosnia and Hercegovina Applicants must be living in the any of the above-mentioned countries PROCESS Please send us your CV portfolio so we can understand your practice (please write in letter head where are you based and year of birth) Please explain how many projects have been cancelled and your situation description in no more than one page The support grant is based of precarity. Application process is open NOW (June 22th 2020) and as soon number of applicants have been received application will be reviewed and funds transferred. Please send your material via email to: what.could.curating.do@gmail.com with subject WCSCD Emergency grant Emergency grant has been supported through the online curatorial program Post-Pandemic Condition with mentors Natasa Petresin Bachelez, Maria Lind and Biljana Ciric

Speaking (with, ‘n, from) Nearby “I don't intend to speak about, just to speak near by.” Using Trinh T. Minh-ha quote we would like to suggest to think of your own position of speaking near by someone or something and what kind of relationality it implies. An invited tutor for this task is Toby Üpson, an art writer currently based in London (UK). His interests lie in ideas around realities and how these (so often framed as this) can be mediated and consumed. Specifically, how realities can be mediated and consumed otherwise. Often drawn to quotidian matter, Üpson uses ekphrastic modes of writing to abound linear understandings of things. In turn, questioning the system that surrounds. Üpson has written for numerous international publications, most recently Art Monthly, Art & Education, FAD_, and Garageland. Intro This is an exercise in close writing. In slowness, and the potentials of ekphrastic prose to resist systemic forms of op- and re- pression. That is the task’s ‘aim’, beyond creative fulfillment, is to use poetic language to get beyond the stereotyped way we receive our everyday existence and to afford an opportunity for a writer, indeed a reader, to escape the streamlined flows of a reality made in and as a disposable commodity. This task seeks to create air. To afford slow breaths. To allow us to think anew from a position of proximity. Here slowness and a collection of written prompts will be used to make sensorial something of a space between the I of the writer and an everyday object before their eyes. And in this way, this task seeks to give new, anomalous, visibility, to something otherwise ‘known’, something overlooked. Further, as a metaphorical excise, the task asks us to consider the critical (not only liberatory but revolutionary) potentials of creative writing, of poetic and indirect language, of slowness, and how these expressions could be applied to everyday life as a way to resist a colonial-capitalist world system, where ‘efficiency’ of movement is foregrounded for wholly extractive ends. The output of this task will be a short 100-word text. Rather than an appendage to an encounter with a thing, my hope is that this exercise will allow you to produce a text that has its own creative agency. A text that provides a reader with a point of departure for their own creative thinking. And, in this way, this text will be something of a creative relay. You will need (exercise equipment) Paper and a pencil, or a pen; or a laptop, or a phone (your preferred writing media) The ability to go into the world. That is, to sit in a cafe or park, for example (this task could be undertaken from within one's home however) Slowness and time. Though the physical output from this task is a short 100 word text, the task itself should be performed with beautiful slowness; with careful and carefilled thinking. Task (exercise instructions) Go somewhere you go everyday or very regularly (for example, a cafe, a park, or a railway station) Sit in this place and notice. What are the small, overlooked, things that constitute the performances of this place? Note these down as a short list. (ie, the teaspoons in a cafe, the benches in a park, the tickets that flutter between hands at a railway station.) Choose one of these small, overlooked, things, and in 100 words describe this.(Please do not name this thing. We do not want 100 words of ‘this spoon is grey.’ This is a rather dull description.) Now, thinking across your senses (sight and smell and sound and taste?) use 100 words to describe how you experience this thing. (ie, ‘It's cold and sleek. Sounding with a clatter as I twist and turn cappuccino foam…’) Stay close to this thing, and also stay close to how you are experiencing this thing at this moment. Note down one association that comes to mind. (This could be a memory, or an analogy, a story, or a theory - try to avoid thinking too academic, however. For example, a teaspoon might remind you of an oyster shell.) Now, use 100 words to describe this association. (ie, why does the teaspoon remind you of an oyster shell?) We are going to shift perspective now. Write down, in 100 words, why this place is everyday, and also mention the performance(s) you enact in this place. (‘I come to this cafe every day. It is a large space in the centre of the city. I always get a cappuccino before work….’ You have 100 words, think carefully.) From this perspective, use 100 words to describe how the thing of your previous attention operates within this space. Also, consider, why is it overlooked, and how does this thing enable you to perform what you do in this place? You should now have a total of 500 words - five sets of 100 word notes - which describe a thing in a space and something of your relation to this. As an exercise in creative editing, take these 500 words and weave them together into a singular text of no more than 100 words. This text can take any form - a single paragraph, a series of short verses, a score or a script - think creatively. (I am asking you to condense a space of relation down into something small and indeed reductive. The aim of this challenge is, however, to make you think about words carefully, precisely; to make you consider how to caress a space of relations (that space between you - a speaking ‘I’ - and an overlooked thing - the thing before your ‘eye’) into existence.) You can now leave this everyday place. (Enjoy the rest of your day!) Additional materials Leonid Bilmes, 2023, ‘Introduction: On seeing prose pictures,’ in Ekphrasis, Memory and Narrative after Proust: Prose Pictures and Fictional Recollection . Bloomsbury Publishing Marcel Proust, c.1927, In Search of Lost Time. Volume 6: Finding Time Again [trans. Ian Patterson], pages 180-207. Penguin Books (2003). Georges Perec, c. 1975, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris Tina M. Campt, 2017, Listening to Images Self-feedback What unexpected happened during your performing of the task? Did something break your shell? How do you envision applying this exercise in an institutional framework (museum/ gallery visit, meeting and artist/ curator)? What change may it bring to your approach? Can you articulate your individual voice - where does it come from, what it aims for?

WCSCD 2023/2024 Educational Program Participants Anna Ilchenko (b. 1987, Sri Lanka) is a curator based in Belgrade. She holds MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London and MA in Art History from the Russian State University for the Humanities. Her curatorial practice is inextricably linked to visual culture studies, and implements interdisciplinary and transhistorical approaches. Over the years her line of work has been related to institutional critique, politics of memory and amnesia, notions of public space, and questions around image production and distribution. Her current interests also include the exploration of a large spectrum of performativity, body and gender issues in the age of Big Tech and queer practice. Recent residency projects and exhibitions include: In their own words: The Next Generation Women Artists Residency(2021–2022); General Rehearsal. A show in three acts from the collections of V-A-C, MMOMA and KADIST (Moscow, 2018); Vladislav Shapovalov. Image Diplomacy (Moscow, 2017); Space Force Construction (Venice, 2017); Process. Case Studies at the Museum. (Moscow, 2016–2017). Anna has lectured on methodologies of art history and artistic practices in museums and contributed articles to several art journals and online platforms. In 2019 she became a research fellow at Delfina Foundation where she further studied various residency programmes and cultural initiatives in London. Based on this research in 2021 she launched a residency programme for artists working at the intersection of theatre, music, dance and video. Asida Butba is co-founder of and a curator at SKLAD, the first contemporary art space in Abkhazia. SKLAD is a self-organized initiative, working at the conjunction of art, education and international cooperation with the aim of providing the best structure to support the capital Sukhum/i’s creative minds in the context of scarce resources and international isolation. Since it’s opening in late 2015 it has been home to 30 local and international art exhibitions and more than 250 public events such as film screenings, artist talks, lectures and workshops. These include In the shade of Big Trees (2022), Back to the Archives (2018), Deletion Marks (2017) and Games in the Open Air (2016). SKLAD has hosted 25 artists from across the globe and from 2016 has worked in partnership with the Swiss Artas Foundation. In the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, SKLAD now has to deal with a much harsher isolation and look for new ways to keep up the exchange. Laura Rositani is an art writer and independent curator from Vicenza, Italy. After a degree in foreign languages and literature, she attended a master in economics and management of art and cultural events at Cà Foscari University in Venice. She collaborated with several galleries, museums and foundations in Paris, Amsterdam, Bologna, Milan and Venice. After her experience at Fondazione Bonotto, she specialized in Fluxus and Experimental Poetry. She is co-founder of the art platform Contemporary Caring and art writer for the independent magazine Mulieris. Mirjana Savic is an artist working within the spaces of sculptural and installation practice. Attending to materials and material determination. Shifting, transforming, sliding. Contained and coming undone. Un-restricting materials and re-contextualising through transformative processes. Materials existing as themselves. Bringing attention to, observing; transformations. Revealing the materiality of materials. Focusing on potentials, on marks, columns, walls, weight, on dust, cracks, expansion, tension, space, bodies moving. Actions and reactions. Actions that ask questions. Stacking, folding, compressing. Interrogating the space. Waiting for what will happen. Transformations, whether they are physically visible or not. What happens when you construct an action (visible or invisible) to be open to the effects of chance? Actions: waiting to happen, in motion, on the verge but never arrive, eventual. Limits that reveal uncertainty, chance. Following a path of resistance. Mirjana has completed her undergraduate degree in Fine Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Her Honours research project at RMIT, 2022, considered a deep material investigation,focusing on actions that question and reveal potentials within structured spaces. I live and create on the unceded sovereign land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging. Andrey Parshikov (b. 1985, Podolsk, Moscow region) is a curator and art-critic, curator in V-A-C foundation, Moscow. He has made numerous (around 30) exhibitions in Russia, US and Europe, including General Rehearsal (in collaboration with curatorial group of V-A-C, KADIST and MMOMA, Moscow, 2018), A Rose Has Teeth in a Mouth of a Beast (APALAZZO Gallery, Brescia, 2015), Underneath the Street, the Beach (Fondazione Sandretto Re-Rebaudengo, Turin, 2015), We Have Nothing that is Ours Except Time (Central Park, Vienna), I Remember It Differently from You (MUZEON park of Arts, Moscow, 2013), Great Repression (White Box gallery, New York, and SB gallery, Paris, 2008), Ultra-New Materiality (MMOMA, Moscow, 2009). He has been a teacher in British Higher School of Art and Design, Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow School of Gender Studies, Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Russian State University for the Humanities. His texts were published in Springerin magazine, Manifesta Journal, Moscow Art Magazine, Art Chronicles magazine, Openspace.ru web-site. He made residencies in Fondazione Sandretto Re-Rebaudengo in Turin. He also made a class of Maria Lind and Juan A. Gaitan in Salzburg Academy. Сurator’s career of Andrey Parshikov began from the keen interest to the systems of creative industries and relations within them (Ultra-New Materiality project). Now, for a few years already, he has been involved in the issues of non-materialistic knowledge and options of its re-appropriation at right-hand discourse. This was the topic of the large exhibition in an ancient castle in Italy — A Rose Has Teeth in a Mouth of a Beast. Within investigation of everything magic and weird in art he also distinguishes the queer-theory issue as the last bulwark of the system as it is (capitalist, androcentric, religious) and post-internet practices which the curator directly relates to sealed knowledge, for ‘telepathy is just the well-developed peer-to-peer technology. < About Educational Program Alumni >

As you go . . . the roads under your feet, towards a new future (If you want to travel, build roads first) About Cells Activities Online Journal Projects Contributors