MG+MSUM

International conference | Museums for the Future
26 May 2023 | 10:00–18:00
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Cover photo: Everyone is afraid of backers, but I am grateful, an apartment exhibition. Curator - Kateryna Iakovlenko. August 2022, Irpin city. Photodocumentation made by Artem Chernichko / BirdinFlight. 
 

Museums for the Future 
International conference

Friday, 26 May 2023, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. | Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, +MSUM

Participants: Yazid Anani, A. M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah; Zdenka Badovinac, MSU Zagreb; Marianna Dobkowska, Ujazdowski Castle CCA, Warsaw; Andreja Hribernik, Kunsthaus Graz; Kateryna Iakovlenko (on line), Kyiv; Goran Injac, Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana;  Iva Kovač, City of Women, Ljubljana;  Natalija Majsova, UL Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana; Pablo Martinez, Madrid; Tanja Petrović, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana; Nora Prekazi, Museum of Mitrovica, Mitrovica; Bogna Stefanska, MSN, Warsaw

Concept: Bojana Piškur, Adela Železnik

Moderators: Bojana Piškur, Igor Španjol, Adela Železnik

Many art institutions around the world are finding it increasingly difficult not only to carry out their usual “business,” but even more to openly support political causes and movements, raise social issues and so on. One of the characteristics of right-wing conservative cultural politics everywhere in recent years has been the demand for art and cultural institutions to remain “neutral,” which prevents any criticism, dissent, or positioning on the part of a museum, and maintains the status quo of art institutions as colonial institutions of exclusion. But is it even possible to remain “neutral” in situations like war, armed conflicts, and neo-colonialism, along with new forms of economic and political dependency, right-wing politics, and consequent ideological pressures and ecological and health crises? How do museums operate under such circumstances? Our time of political change and social upheaval demands that such questions be answered and dilemmas resolved.

In his famous essay from the early 1990s, “On the Museum’s Ruins,” the American art historian and activist Douglas Crimp describes art museums as sepulchers of artworks. This international conference, organized at a time of recurring crises, presents museums and art institutions that have been destroyed physically and/or symbolically, focusing – instead of on their destruction and ruins – on that vital part of museum institutions that continues to work for the good of the artists and the wider community, despite and in the face of often impossible circumstances. In this way it underscores that radical hope rises from the ruins.

The most important questions that will be discussed are: How can an institution resist attacks on its critical stand and beliefs? How can it recover from the systematic undermining of its values and infrastructure? How can institutions be rebuilt and solidarity networks repaired and re-established? What is a “museum for the future”?

The conference will consist of three panel discussions, entitled “Art Institutions in Times and Zones of Conflict”, “Art Institutions as Generators of Change” and “A Solidary Cultural Landscape”.

 (Conference brochure with program .pdf)

PROGRAM 

10:00 – Welcome

10:15–12:15 Art Institutions in Times and Zones of Conflict
10: 15–10:35 Yazid Anani, “The Politics of Placeless Museums”
10: 35–10:55 Marianna Dobkowska, “Employees on the Museum Ruins”
10:55–11:15 Nora Prekazi, “Beyond the Obstacles: The Cultural Significance of the Museum of Mitrovica”
11:15–11:25 – Coffee break
11:25–11:45 Kateryna Iakovlenko (online), “Art During the War: How Museums, Exhibitions, and Artworks Can Tell the Story”  
11: 45–12:15 – Discussion moderated by Bojana Piškur 

13:30–15:30 Art Institutions as Generators of Change
13:30–13:50 Pablo Martínez, “Queer Counter-Apocalypses for Museums Yet to Come”
13:50–14:10 Bogna Stefańska, “L'Internationale as a Network of Support”
14:10–14:30 Zdenka Badovinac, “Collection as a Verb”
14:30–14:50 Andreja Hribernik, “Kunsthaus Graz– a Laboratory, a Museum and an Experiment”
14:50–15:00 – Coffee break 
15:00–15:30 – Discussion moderated by Adela Železnik

16:00–18:00 A Solidary Cultural Landscape
16:00–16:20 Goran Injac, “Different Practices of Solidarity in the Mladinsko Theater, Ljubljana”
16:20–16:40 Iva Kovač, “The How of Feminist Curating”
16:40–17:00 Tanja Petrović, “Solidarity After Yugoslavia”
17:00–17:20 Natalija Majsova, “Development and Maintenance of Monuments to Futuristic Pasts: a Critical Reflection”
17:20–17:30 – Coffee break
17:30–18:00 – Discussion moderated by Igor Španjol

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

1st PANEL: Art Institutions in Times and Zones of Conflict

The experience of working in extreme situations, be it the permanent conflict in Palestine or war in Ukraine, as well as conservative right-wing governments preventing freedom of speech and violating human rights.

Participants: Yazid Anani, Marianna Dobkowska, Nora Prekazi, Kateryna Iakovlenko 
Moderated by Bojana Piškur

Yazid Anani, “The Politics of Placeless Museums” 

Placeless museums can be a term used to describe several artist-led initiatives that proposed alternative notions of museums as a critical stance outside of the traditional institutional museum framework. Such local artistic interventions lack the sense of a fixed place or a typical sustainable institutional structure, facilitating a discourse on the contemporary notion of museums and their critique. The talk covers three main projects: Picasso in Palestine by Khaled Hourani, the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind by Khalil Rabah, and the Communist Museum of Palestine by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri. 

Yazid Anani is Head Curator and the Director of the Public Program at the A. M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah. Between 2007 and 2016 he served as a professor at the Department of Architecture and the Master Program in Urban Planning and Landscape at the Birzeit University, Palestine. He curated and co-curated several projects including: Outside the Archive, Subcontracted Nations, Zalet Lisan, “The Facility”, “Weed Control” and 5 editions of the Cities Exhibition. Anani has researched and published internationally on topics related to architecture, art, urban transformations, and colonial spaces. 

Marianna Dobkowska, “Employees on the Museum Ruins”

How to continue work on the Museum ruins? Is it even possible? What are the personal costs of such work? How and for whom are we doing it? Is it necessary? In her talk, Marianna Dobkowska, curator, long time employee and representative of the workers union at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, will cast light on the conditions of work in art institution, problems of the current moment as well as possible preservation and survival strategies.

Marianna Dobkowska is an art historian and curator co-running a residency program of the Ujazdowski Castle CCA in Warsaw. Her practice draws from the fields of the visual and performing arts, education and activism. Her selected curatorial works include the Re-Directing: East seminars (2011–2020), the Social Design for Social Living (2016) exhibition at the National Gallery of Indonesia in Jakarta, and the exhibition-meeting Gotong Royong. Things We Do Together (2017–2018). She co-edited Things We Do Together. Post-reader (Mousse Publishing and Ujazdowski Castle, 2020). Together with Sebastian Cichocki, Bogna Stefańska, and Jakub Depczyński she is curating Konteksty. Postartistic Congress in Sokołowsko, Poland (2021–), and with Sebastian Cichocki, the Postartistic Assembly part of the Gwangju Biennale Pavilion (2023). She is a founding member of the Office for Postartistic Services. She lives and works in Warsaw, Poland. 

Nora Prekazi, “Beyond the Obstacles: The Cultural Significance of the Museum of Mitrovica”

The Museum of Mitrovica is an example of the challenges faced by museums in Kosovo due to the absence of proper infrastructure, buildings, human resources, and financial support for managing collections and education programs. Although state institutions have been functioning in Kosovo since 2007, museums remain neglected without any state strategy to organize and open them to the public. As a result, there is a lack of state guidance on managing museums, including buildings, collections, and curating exhibitions, let alone expanding educational activities.

The Museum of Mitrovica in Kosovo is a culturally significant institution that has faced numerous difficulties since its establishment. Regardless of the lack of proper infrastructure, funding, and management, the museum has persevered and become a cultural center in Mitrovica City. While the lack of a proper building to house the museum's collections remains a major challenge to further progress, the museum continues to operate and provide an open space for civil society, artists, students, and art lovers, demonstrating the resilience and cultural significance of this institution beyond the obstacles it faces.

Nora Prekazi Hoti, born in Mitrovica (1986) graduated from the Faculty of Ethnology within the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prishtina. She completed her MA studies in Ethnology within the Institute of Anthropology and Art Studies in Tirana, Albania. She was also a short time scholar of the Museology studies in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Mrs. Prekazi Hoti has over eleven years of work as an ethnology curator at the Museum of the City of Mitrovica, and is also the founder and leader of the Dhemetra Foundation in Mitrovica, as well as the Director of the Zana Literature Festival in Mitrovica. Nora is also a social activist and poet.

Kateryna Iakovlenko, “Art During the War: How Museums, Exhibitions, and Artworks Can Tell the Story”

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian art has been at risk: many museums were forced to evacuate works or quickly hide them in storage, while permanent exhibitions have been moved to cellars, and permanent collections placed in temporary shelters. Furthermore, the approach to art shows has also changed: large productions with a grand narrative have been replaced by exhibitions reflecting on the war, focusing on the individual, everyday experiences of artists. Due to the full-scale invasion, the artists’ approach to producing artworks has transformed. The materiality of art is shaped by insecurity, the artists’ searches, and a new attitude toward things and artifacts. 
In her paper, Kateryna Iakovlenko will reflect on the key changes in Ukrainian artistic processes in 2022, and show how art can help intellectuals to discuss questions related to violence and memory.

Kateryna Iakovlenko is a Ukrainian visual culture researcher, writer, and curator focusing on art and culture during sociopolitical transformation and war. Her publications include the book Why There Are Great Women Artists in Ukrainian Art (2019) and Euphoria and Fatigue: Ukrainian Art and Society after 2014 (special issue of Obiegmagazine, coedited with Tatiana Kochubinska, 2019). Currently, she is Cultural Editor-in-Chief of Suspilne.media (Kyiv) and a visiting scholar at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (2022–23).

Bojana Piškur works as a curator in Moderna galerija. 


2nd PANEL: Art Institutions as Generators of Change

Institutions’ ways of surviving in complex political situations, mutual solidarities and new forms of networks. 

Participants: Pablo Martínez, Bogna Stefańska, Zdenka Badovinac, Andreja Hribernik
Moderated by Adela Železnik

Pablo Martínez, “Queer Counter-Apocalypses for Museums Yet to Come”

In times like the present, with the continuous loss of rights and permanent threat to all forms of life with the rise of the far right, not only in parliaments but also in the media in an active contest for cultural hegemony, we might come to think that rather than aspire to “institutions for change” we should settle for “institutions for preservation” of the freedoms already won. We might be tempted to think that there really is no alternative, either to the loss of rights or to the ecological collapse, as proposed by the dystopian discourses that show a clear picture of the apocalypse. An interesting proposal to the contrary would be to nurture a museum of queer and feminist counter-apocalypses that builds new horizons to come. To learn to glimpse among the ruins of this decaying world what images of the future can be collectively built from the present. In order to do this, it is important to think of the museum not only as an agent of outward change, but as working, fighting and resisting so that it can change its interior, which is often a space of institutional violence, profoundly hierarchical and not at all democratic in its decision-making.

Pablo Martínez works as Margarita Salas researcher at the Institute of History of CSIC (Spanish Council of Scientific Research). Over the last decade, his institutional work has sought to challenge the limits of the museum in order to imagine an eco-social institutionality. He was Director of Programmes at MACBA (2016–2021), and prior to this he was Head of Education and Public Activities at CA2M (2009–2016). Between 2012 and 2015 he worked as an associate professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He holds a PhD in art history, for which he carried out an investigation into the images of the crowds taken at the funeral of Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti. He has edited books, curated performances, activated collective processes of creation, accompanied artists in residence and curated exhibitions. He has also negotiated with neighbors, protested against the extension of the MACBA building, moved chairs, placed bottles of water, made applications and danced until sunset. His current research and practice are oriented towards the ecological crisis and the role of art in the construction of a new hegemony that might enable a less violent and more just transition. He tries to go out dancing whenever he can.

Bogna Stefańska, “L'Internationale as a Network of Support”

In many European countries, we are witnessing the long-term negative effects of far-right politics, which affects not only the rule of law, social cohesion, democracy and freedom of speech and expression, but also art and culture. In countries like Poland and Hungary, the long-term staff of public art institutions are being replaced by government puppets. What happens to such institutions that have become propaganda apparatuses? How can we protect them and maintain their valuable work? How and what do we build on their ruins? In her talk, Bogna Stefańska will discuss L'Internationale, an international confederation of museums, art organizations and academic institutions, as an example of a network of support in the face of different crises – not only in terms of the social and political sphere, but also challenges such as climate, economy, migration and war. She will discuss how the international exchange of ideas as well as working, struggling and thinking about the future together can help sustain endangered institutions.

Bogna Stefańska is an art historian working at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. She is the project manager of the current L’Internationale program Museum of the Commons. Towards a Healthier Art Ecosystem. She is also a co-founder of the Office for Postartisitc Services – a para-institution that encourages experiments with using artistic tools beyond the artworld. 

Zdenka Badovinac, “Collection as a Verb”

Last year in spring, after the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb had been in storage for more than three years, we decided, together with the curators of the museum, on an ad hoc project-in- process. We named it Collection as a Verb and it replaced, as a process, the concept of the permanent exhibition of the collection. 

The concept of permanence is somehow related to the idealistic idea of the museum, which began to collapse in the 1960s, when first the interests of art and then gradually of the museum turned to the material conditions of work.

The Collection as a Verb project is no longer under the complete control of the museum and its curators, but is now an open project where the participants learn from each other; it is an interactive process where the past begins to move when we move, when the agent of the verb moves. Collection as a Verb also speaks of the museum as a verb, as both the museum and its collection only exist through their use. A museum as a verb does not allow the total institutionalization of different contexts and narratives, but is open to freer relations in which the weaker are given an active role. By “the weaker” we mean not only individual people and their communities, but also subordinated systems of knowledge, unknown histories, marginalized geographies, and even non-human agencies.

Zdenka Badovinac is a curator and writer. She was Director of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana (MG+MSUM) from 1993 until 2020. In 2022, she was appointed Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. Her most recent exhibition is Sanja Iveković, Works of Heart (1974–2022), Kunsthalle, Vienna (2022). Her most recent book is Unannounced Voices: Curatorial Practice and Changing Institutions (Sternberg Press / Thoughts on Curating, 2022). She is one of the founders of the European confederation of museums L’Internationale. Between 2010 and 2013 she was President of CIMAM, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.

Andreja Hribernik, “Kunsthaus Graz – a Laboratory, a Museum and an Experiment”

Kunsthaus Graz is a laboratory, a museum, and an experiment. As such, the institution is situated at the intersection between so-called starchitecture projects and spatial and architectural experimentation. Its exhibition spaces, through their design, counter the established white cube assumptions and demand new ways of reading and understanding. The Kunsthaus as an exhibition hall, which in the past was oriented mainly towards a certain Western and Central European art space, is rethinking its position after twenty years of existence. This is happening in the context of the redefinition of the museum as such, its role in society, and the potential of an institution that has understood itself as an experiment, an utopian space from the very beginning.

Andreja Hribernik first worked as a curator at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig (2007–2009) and as a project coordinator at Moderna galerija (MG+MSUM) in Ljubljana (2009–2013). In 2013 she became the director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška (Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti - KGLU), serving until the end of 2022. Since January 2023 she has been the director of Kunsthaus Graz. She graduated in Political Science – International Relations from the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana and, in 2016, obtained her PhD in the Historical Anthropology of Art from the ISH Postgraduate School of Humanities in Ljubljana. In her work, she addresses the issue of the complex position of museums as intertwined historical and geopolitical spaces where contemporary art questions and addresses present conflicts and struggles. In 2017, she was appointed as the curator of the Slovenia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She has curated several exhibitions; the most recent include the Beyond Borders project dealing with the topics of borders, migrations, hybrid spaces, and hybrid identities, and the Collections for a Solidary Future exhibition.


Adela Železnik works as a curator for public program in Moderna galerija. 

3rd PANEL: A Solidary Cultural Landscape

Local organizations and projects related to or part of the post-Yugoslav context. How to create a more closely related and solidary cultural landscape in the region and beyond.

Participants: Goran Injac, Iva Kovač, Tanja Petrović, Natalija Majsova
Moderated by Igor Španjol

Goran Injac
, “Different Practices of Solidarity in the Mladinsko Theater, Ljubljana”

The lecture will discuss different practices of solidarity in the Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana, Slovenia. The Mladinsko Theatre is a Slovenian public institution financed by the Ministry of Culture and the City of Ljubljana. It is also the only public theater in Slovenia insisting on politically relevant programming and a contemporary repertoire reflecting both social and political contexts. In addition to examples of art practices, the lecture will show different problems in structural changes of the institution itself, and its cooperation with independent artists and NGOs.

Goran Injac, performing arts curator, dramaturge and researcher. He cooperates with different international theater and art festivals, repertory theaters and independent theater companies. Until 2014 he lived and worked in Poland, where he curated the program of the National Stary Theater in Krakow and the East European Performing Arts Platform (EEPAP). Since October 2014 he has been the artistic director of the Mladinsko Theater in Ljubljana, Slovenia. As a dramaturge he works internationally with different theater directors.

Iva Kovač, “The How of Feminist Curating”

The City of Women is an organization in Ljubljana that has been running an international festival with the same name since 1995. With its focus on women* the association has brought together interdisciplinary art and theoretical positions and built networks between people and organizations locally and internationally. With its focus on feminist politics delivered through the plethora of artistic programs, the City of Women practices situated solidarity. Working with communities, building and nurturing regional and international artistic platforms, building and maintaining advocacy campaigns, and participating in local organizing of the independent art scene are all integral parts of the organization’s mission to support women* in the arts and promote intersectional feminist politics. 

*The term woman and other words written in the feminine grammatical gender are used inclusively and address anyone who identifies with the female gender, as well as non-binary, trans-, a- and intergender people.

Iva Kovač is a curator and visual artist. Since 2021, she has been the programming director of the Association for the Promotion of Women in Culture – City of Women. She has been a member of the art collective Fokus Grupa since 2012. Between 2010 and 2012, she was the head of the PM and Prsten galleries of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists in Zagreb. From 2013 to 2015, she curated and headed the program of the SIZ gallery in Rijeka. From 2017 to 2020, she was the program selector and organizer of activities of the art organization GSG in Rijeka, where she founded GSG – Magazine for Contemporary Art and Social Issues in 2018. Her recent work focuses on the remnants of colonialism and coloniality in SE Europe.

Tanja Petrović, “Solidarity After Yugoslavia”

In her contribution Tanja Petrović will consider the possibilities and impossibilities for solidarity after the disastrous end of the Yugoslav socialist project, and the destruction of the infrastructure that previously enabled the collective feelings, actions and imagination that are at the heart of solidarity. She will first outline the most important characteristics of solidarity that emerged in the framework of Yugoslav socialism, and look at the ways it was understood, interpreted and historicized. She will further reflect upon the interpretational limits we face looking back at the collective and collectivist political projects from the point of view of their aftermath, and outline the main discursive frames and underlying affective economies that have prevailed in the post-Cold War world. These economies make it difficult, if not impossible, to understand the collective socialist solidarity as authentic, sincere, and driven not by pragmatism, but by a future-oriented, shared belief in the possibilities of creating alternatives through political being and acting. Finally, Petrović will ask what means and possibilities for solidarity are left to individuals, groups and institutions in the post-Yugoslav landscape marked by the ruins of the collective infrastructure and the lack of possibility for utopian imagination.

Tanja Petrović is a principal research associate at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She is interested in the uses and meanings of socialist and Yugoslav legacies in post-Yugoslav societies, as well as in cultural, linguistic, political, and social processes that shape the reality of these societies. She is the author and editor of several books and a number of articles and essays in the fields of anthropology of post-socialism, memory studies, masculinity, gender history, heritage studies, linguistic anthropology, and labor history. Among them are her monographs Yuropa: Jugoslovensko nasleđe i politike budućnosti u postjugoslovenskim društvima (Yuropa: Yugoslav Legacy and Politics of Future in Post-Yugoslav Societies, Fabrika knjiga 2012; German translation published by Verbrecher Verlag in 2015), an edited volume Mirroring Europe: Ideas of Europe in Europeanization in Balkan Societies (Brill Publishing 2014), Srbija i njen jug: Južnjački dijalekti između jezika, kulture i politike (Serbia and its South: Southern Dialects between Language, Culture and Politics, Fabrika knjiga 2015), as well as Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People’s Army (forthcoming with Duke University Press).

Natalija Majsova, “Development and Maintenance of Monuments to Futuristic Pasts: A Critical Reflection”

Exploring the parameters of solidarity as a dimension of collective action in contemporary societies, Felix Stalder (2013) has argued that “the social, communicative, complex, and networked dimensions of the production process are mutually reinforcing, creating dynamics that are so strong that they can break down existing organizational boundaries and expand into the social.” Building on this argument, which stresses the significance of social production, this presentation examines solidarity as a productive texture. Drawing on recent (retro)futuristic artistic initiatives in the post-Yugoslav space and attempts at their institutionalization, the presentation critically assesses in what ways the relationship between the transnational and local infrastructures of shared resources, collective and individual agency, responsibilities, and care is entangled with solidarity as a fabric that is key to the cultural landscape.

Natalija Majsova, PhD, is an associate professor and researcher at the University of Ljubljana (Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Cultural Studies). She teaches courses ranging from creative writing to theories of culture and cultural memory studies. Her research focuses on popular culture, (post)socialism studies, (tech)nostalgia and heritage interpretation. She regularly publishes in international and Slovenian academic journals, and has authored two books about outer space, film, and utopias. Her book Memorable Futures: Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age was published by Lexington Books in 2021. She is the co-editor of the Social Science Forum journal, and an occasional film critic and essayist.

Igor Španjol works as a curator in Moderna galerija

Language: English
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