Session 1

QAYYEM Programme in Curatorial Research:
On Curating, Collectivity and Learning

1-6 May, Amman, Jordan

In May, Qayyem explored the effects of collectivity on knowledge production and pondered over curatorial collaboration as a tool that challenges institutionalised relational forms. Together again, and through various group exercises, Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson invited participants to explore questions of cooperative practice, collaboration and collective working methodologies with respect to the curatorial. In parallel, Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili grappled with the hegemony of the exhibition form and, alongside the participants, attempted to tackle the possibility of curating the non-exhibition.

All sessions were held at the MMAG Foundation campus in Jabal Amman (30 Othman Bin Affan Street).

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS

2-4 May 2019

Together Again! A Curatorial Workshop on Cooperative Practices

Co-investigators: Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson

Through a combination of writing, project presentations, seminars and lectures, participants will explore questions of cooperative practice, collaboration and collective working methodologies with respect to the curatorial.

2 and 4 May 2019

How to Curate the Non-Exhibition?

Co-investigators: Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili

Lately, we have been thinking about the hegemony of the exhibition form and how it has become the de facto medium of the dissemination of art objects and ideas. The exhibition must be rethought, in an age where the abundant economy of images, the mass production of aesthetics and the reign of the display of commodities makes us deem visual signifiers as consumables and become desensitized toward them. If we consider the exhibition as a means (instead of an end), it will begin to transform and merge with and into other forms. What happens when the exhibition is not at the centre of the curatorial? How can we decentralize the exhibition at the art institution? What other forms of dissemination are there other than the exhibition? What other forms of knowledge could this decentralization allow for? What kind of audiences does this generate?

TIMETABLE

Wednesday, 1 May 2019

10am-6pm

WELCOME TO AMMAN

Registration and informal get-together with the participants and co-investigators.

Thursday, 2 May 2019

10am-6pm

Collaborative Practices

10:00am A reflection on long-standing collaboration in-and-out of exhibition.

11:00am Dialogue with participants

11:30pm Co-operative Curating, Attentiveness and Escape (We Are the Centre/Our Day Will Come). 
Presentation: PO’N 

12:30pm Dialogue with participants

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Friday, 3 May 2019

11am-3pm

TOGETHER AGAIN! A CURATORIAL WORKSHOP ON COOPERATIVE PRACTICES
Participants reflect on own practices of working with others

11:00am Political Imaginaries and Exhibition/Non-Exhibition Dynamics
Presentation: MW

12:00pm Dialogue with participants

Six participants present a single project where there is some significant issue of collaboration, co-working, partnership or cooperation—either positive or negative—at stake.

1:00pm 3 presentations & discussions
2:00pm 3 presentations & discussions

Saturday, 4 May 2019

10am-6pm

HOW TO CURATE THE NON-EXHIBITION

10:00am Part 2: HOW TO CURATE THE NON-EXHIBITION. Led by: LK & YK

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TOGETHER AGAIN! A CURATORIAL WORKSHOP ON COOPERATIVE PRACTICE 

3pm Workshop: Writing as a collective form of exhibiting.
Facilitated by PO’N

This group writing workshop invites participants to work together and consider the physical, elemental and spatial properties of materials, as well as consider their modalities, form, texture and affects. How can we write about exhibitions and artwork? How can we describe them and how much description is needed, if at all? Can writing be a form of exhibiting and a method of production, inscribing works in the working?

Each participant must arrive with a short piece of existing writing ‘about writing’ by any author to read aloud (3 minutes max.)

Sunday, 5 May 2019

4pm-9pm

ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION

4pm-6pm Round-table discussion between all co-investigators.
Moderated by Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu.


Photos by: MMAG Foundation, Maxime Gourdon