Venue | Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts,
Level 4 + 5, Pfingstweidstrasse 96
Time | March 21–April 13, 2015
Curated by Elke Krasny
Installation view Red Min(e)d, Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, 2015.
Red Min(e)d is self-identified as a «feminist curatorial group» active with(in) and beyond the post-Yugoslav space. The four members are Jelena Petrović and Katja Kobolt, Danijela Dugandžić Živanović, and Dunja Kukovec. Starting from shared experiences of transitionality from the Socialist Federalist Republic of Yugoslavia to post-socialist globalization and based upon shared beliefs in curating feminist knowledge, friendship, and solidarity, the group started Red Min(e)d and their ongoing Living Archive project in 2011. The Living Archive produces and shares knowledge on the intersections of feminism and contemporary art in the post-Yugoslav context.
«We have been working on the basis of solidarity and consensus. We are four and we are constantly shifting power between us (…) we have been building a truly safe space of belonging. Living Archive editions took place in Zagreb, Vienna, Stockholm, Sarajevo, and Ljubljana.» The Living Archive is an exhibition laboratory and a public interactive archive with several (non)working stations such as: a Audio/Video booth that documents and presents live artists talks, discussions, and interviews, the Perpetuum Mobile with a growing collection of video and other media art, and the Reading Room where one can fill out the feminism and art Questionnaire, and since the Sarajevo edition there is also the Curatorial Forum.
«What we have known since the first edition of the Living Archive is that most artists, curators, and authors, just like each one of us, have no salaries, no health insurance, have no savings, have no studios, no security and no plans for future. They produce hungry, tired, love sick, homesick, lonely, with friends, using the equipment and skills of their friends and giving their lives, time and energy to produce art knowing that most of the people around them believe that art is just a commodity.»
In 2013, Red Min(e)d were nominated as October Salon curators. Initiated in 1960 by the City of Belgrade, the Salon is the oldest and most prestigious institution of contemporary visual art in Belgrade. «We searched for a public museum or a gallery in Belgrade that would be big enough to host over 40 artistic positions, have at its disposal an operating license to be able to welcome the public, be open and available in autumn and have heating and electricity in the whole building.» They found neither a museum nor a gallery. They decided that the 54th October Salon would take place in the former KLUZ department store and factory, originally built as a military salon, currently owned by Zepter. The exhibition No One Belongs Here More than You appropriated the precarious space of a so-called private-public partnership afforded within the conditions of neoliberal predatory capitalism. During the October Salon exhibition they made manifest «the labor of art and the labor of curating.»
For the exhibition «Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party in contemporary feminist thought» Red Min(e)d contributes a new work demonstrating their curatorial methodology. Their contribution comprises the following elements: Perpetuum Mobile Screening Act of Instinct by Elin Magnusson, video documentations of the two Living Archive Forums, No One Belongs Here More Than You and Creating The Feminist Archive Means Facing The Real To The Most Extent, and a wall paper based upon Saša Krekoš original visual identity developed for the 54th October Salon: No One Belongs Here More Than You integrating quotes from The Living Archive Questionnaire.
*Photos by Elke Krasny http://www.elkekrasny.at/archives/2327
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