Ivor Stodolsky and Marita Muukkonen (Perpetuum Mobile): Frontline Curating
Talks on Curatorial Practice
The world is going to the dogs - pardon, lovely canines! - that seems to be the only thing everyone can agree on. Fault-lines are being torn open, and the resulting hatred allows the worst forms of corruption of the human spirit, mutual exploitation, and pollution of the planet. Truth is on life-support, civic space is shrinking, the climate crisis is hitting, and decency is under attack from all sides. Their greatest defenders are falling first.
How to curate in the midst of this madness?
How can one not curate metaphorically about topics, but directly from the frontline: with the artists and environmentalists who put their basic rights at risk to defend others? PM’s residency platforms Artists at Risk (AR) and Ecologists at Risk (ER) grew out of artist-in-residency practice as a peer movement. At the same time, since 2007 PM’s curatorial practice sees itself as “a conduit and engine to re-imagine historical, theoretical and practical paradigms in fields which often exist in disparate institutional frames and territories.” That includes connecting real-world politics and art, the institutional sectors of human rights and art, the physical territories of ecology and art.
How can curators, artists, and art institutions be active agents in countering inegalitarian, anti-democratic, authoritarian and eco-destructive forces, and stand with those on the frontlines of change?
Ivor Stodolsky and Marita Muukkonen, Perpetuum Mobile (PM)’s exhibition practice began with an experimental-historical inquiry into dissident and non-conformist art in the late-Soviet period, and how to re-open the archive to re-write canned history: The Raw, the Cooked and the Packed. This led to the Re-Aligned Project, which predicted and advocated for a political turn. Real-world curatorial “interventions” in (frontline) political space followed: The Arts Assembly (Manifesta), The Perpetuum Romani Pavilion (Venice), Back to Square 1, To the Square 2... Creating a nomadic institutional form for this type of engaged curating - closely related to our work at AR - the The Artists at Risk (AR) Pavilions have intervened at biennials from Athens to Venice. With Ecologists at Risk (ER), we strive to defend the frontline defenders in the biggest crisis yet to come.