The Spring Curatorial Program

Spring Curatorial Program 2022: Art Geographies explores the relationship between art, theory and politics by dealing with borders, maps, myths, landscapes, wars, territories and other planetary phenomena of today’s geographies. Following emancipatory ways of social subjectivation (the politics of belonging) rather than representative modes of geopolitical identification (the politics of identity), the program focuses on critical, decolonial, feminist and material dimensions of planetary co-existence.

Moving from theoretical insights into artistic and curatorial practices, especially those that introduce geography into the realm of political thought and social life through performative voices, visual inscriptions and displays, aesthetic perfections or errors/glitches, the program explores counter-cartographies engaged in critical, participative and discursive investigation of geopolitical borders of identification and exclusion. By presenting various artistic, theoretical and curatorial works and practices through daily seminars, screenings, readings, lectures and discussions, the program thus questions the dominant ways of geopolitical situating of people, earth and its (non)human life.

Motivated by the politics of belonging, but also by the politics of resistance to any geopolitical exploitation of people (contemporary racism) and earth (neocolonial extractivism), this program finally searches for social, political, ecological and ideological imagination of possible future geographies, giving a meaningful insight into politically or socially engaged living practices that connect cognitive with affective, perceptual with representative, and imaginary, but also impossible with real.

Program speakers and contributors (in alphabetical order): Andrea Ancira, Waala Alqaisiya, Aleksei Borisionok, Lana Čmajčanin, Raino Isto, Ruth Jenerbekova, Margareta Kern, Bouchra Khalili, Elke Krasny, Katja Kobolt, Brandon LaBelle, Stephanie Misa, Luis Ortiz, Jelena Petrović, Oleksiy Radynski, Philipp Sattler, Klaus Speidel, Kate Sutton, Steven ten Thije, Madina Tlostanova, Rojda Tuğrul, Françoise Vergès, Slavs and Tatars, Milica Tomić and others.

Curated by:
Jelena Petrović

Program coordinators:
Jelena Kaludjerović
Jelena Petrović

Program assistant:
Nour Shantout

Design: Seth Weiner
Logo: Aleksandra Gustin

Thanks to: Verena Borecky, Michaela Glanz, Tom Engels, Dejan Kaludjerović, PhD in Practice, Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulović, Paul Reiter, Dunja Reithner, Olia Sosnovskaya, Annette Südbeck.

The Spring Curatorial Program 2022: Art Geographies is supported by: FWF Austrian Science Fund, ERSTE Foundation
Austrian Federal Chancellery (Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture),
City of Vienna, Slovenian Cultural Centre SKICA, and realised in the partnership with mumok kino, Depot – Kunst und Diskussion, IZK – Institute for Contemporary Art, Annenstraße 53, Crvena Association for Culture and Art,Ukrainian Institute.

The program will be held in English.