The poetics of crisis: critical perspectives in curatorial and artistic research
The educational event is based on a series of 2 lectures and 2 workshops on curatorial research, organized by George Enescu National University of the Arts, Iasi, endorsed by ICMA – Institute of Multidisciplinary Research in Art, UNAGE and Vector Studio.
Location: Faculty of Visual Arts and Design in Iasi (Romania)
OUR OPTION
The Iasi Arts Summer School aims to generate debates on relevant topics for today’s research in visual arts, while providing international networking opportunities. Our goal is to foster critical thinking about curatorial and artistic research today in an informal, more relaxed and stimulating environment.
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
The international experimental educational event in the field of curatorial research consists in 2 advanced lectures and 2 open workshops addressing to MA/PhD students and a wider range of art practitioners and audiences..
The Advanced Lectures are given by Carolina Rito and Inês Moreira who will mediate modes of creative and critical practices from different curatorial research backgrounds and frontlines.
The Open Research Workshops will be conducted in a collaborative tandem between the guests and scholars from the host university (UNAGE) Cristina Moraru and Cătălin Gheorghe.
THIS YEAR’S TOPIC
In a convulsive time of diversification and acceleration of crises (emanating from conventional and informational wars, climate cataclysms, contested forms of energy production and speculative distribution, food scarcity and poor quality, pandemic proliferation, financial engineering schemes, neocolonial rearticulations, etc.) there is a need for a poetic reading and rewriting of the entangled situations in which we live. The poetic engagement of those working in the arts field could make the difficulties and pressures we face at the beginning of the 21st century clearer and perhaps even more approachable and surmountable.
The function of a poetics is usually associated with the satisfying labour of structuring the experiences (as observations and explanations) under the claims of epistemological assumptions, aesthetic categorisation, and political envisions in order to provide an orientation map to navigate between worlds, sharing a common language.
If we presume that the unavoidable crises can be also analysed from curatorial and artistic research perspectives in order to expose reasons, infrastructures, and consequences of situations that produced these crises, we can become more knowledgeable about the world in which we live in, but also engaged in overwriting the conditions of thinking and making a commonly accepted reality.
Conventionally, a poetics of crisis would identify aspects and actions of current situations (dominant epistemologies, recurrent aesthetics, and realpolitiks). Alternatively, it would also create the opportunities for different kinds of emancipations and transfigurations.
Location
Located in Iasi, the most northeastern city in Romania, only 20 kms far from the Eastern border of the European Union, The National University of Arts in Iasi is the oldest art academy in Romania.
Despite its peripheral location, Iasi is the former capital of the Kingdom of Moldavia, a city rich in history and with a rapidly evolving economy and cultural life. During the 2000s, it was the home of the first biennial of contemporary art from Romania, Periferic.