COURSE ON CURATING. RUTH NOACK: PLEASE COME AND TAKE A STROLL WITH ME…

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Please come and take a stroll with me. A stroll down memory lane of 1990s exhibition making
How did we get from the spirit of the smallest events –i.e. self-organised evenings of discourse and art– to a concept of exhibition making that informed a large-scale exhibition a decade later? And can any of these self-taught practices be used today?

Please read (pieces of) either:

Teresa de Lauretis, Desire in Narrative, in: Alice Doesn’t. Feminism. Semiotics. Cinema, 1984.

Stephen Heath, Narrative Space (1976), in: Questions of Cinema, 1981.

These are hardcore theory texts typical of the time; very inspiring to us, but difficult to read and understand. I would like people to adopt an attitude of pleasure at reading these texts and trying to glean from them those nuggets they might find useful for themselves, rather than attempting to master these texts. I would also invite people to share these nuggets with the others.

To take part and be sent the texts for the course, please contact bulegoa@bulegoa.org

Ruth Noack, author, critic, lecturer, exhibition maker, studied art and art history. She has been designated Executive Director of The Corner at Whitman-Walker in Washington DC. Noack was curator of documenta 12 (2007). Exhibitions include Scenes of a Theory (1995), Things We Don’t Understand (2000), The Government (2005) (with Roger M. Buergel), Not Dressed for Conquering – Ines Doujak en Loomshuttles/Warpaths (2012), Notes on Crisis, Currency and Consumption (2015). Her sketch exhibition Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life (Athens, Prague, Bejing 2018) opens at Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart on October 18, 2019. Research topics are Ghosting the Nation and A Museum in a School. She was head of Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London in 2012-13. Noack has taught widely, e.g. at the Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem in 2015-2019. Next to articles and scholarly essays, she has written Sanja Ivekovic: Triangle (Afterall Books) and edited Agency, Ambivalence, Analysis. Approaching the Museum with Migration in Mind (2013).