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Deadline CfP: 6 July 2025

Symposium Date: Friday 21 November 2025

Venue: PUBLICS, Helsinki

Organisers:

Patrizia Costantin (Lecturer in Curating and MA Art and Media Programme Director, Aalto University) and (Associate Professor & University Curator, Leeds Arts University).

Curatorial Matters: on research methodologies invites curators, artists, and theorists to explore the evolving role of the curatorial as a site of critical practice and knowledge production. As curatorial practice increasingly expands beyond exhibition-making into domains of research, pedagogy, and institutional critique, there is a growing need to articulate and examine the methodologies that underpin curatorial inquiry.

Building on foundational propositions within curatorial discourse (Rogoff, 2006; Lind, 2012; O’Neill and Wilson, 2010, 2015; O’Neill, Wilson and Steeds, 2016, Martinon, 2013, von Bismarck and Frank, 2019, von Bismarck and Meyer-Krahmer, 2019, Sheikh, 2019) that conceptualise the curatorial as a mode of knowledge production—situated, relational, performative, and embedded within discursive, institutional, and pedagogical contexts—the symposium explores what forms of research and engagement emerge when the curatorial is understood not merely as a mode of presentation, but as a method of inquiry—interdisciplinary, speculative, embodied, affective, and often unfinished. How do curators navigate and negotiate the systems of knowledge they inhabit, inherit, or co-produce? How can curatorial strategies shape, contest, or reimagine the spaces and the conditions under which knowledge is produced, shared, and valued?

This gathering opens space for methodological pluralism and reflection, bringing together diverse approaches to curatorial research practice that call into question dominant narratives and institutional logic, and propose new forms of solidarity, co-authorship and world-building. With a focus on ecological, technological, and socio-political questions that shape contemporary conditions, the symposium invites a dialogue on how curatorial research navigates —and intervenes in—these entangled epistemic, political, and ecological terrains.

The event will feature keynote presentations from Chiara Cartuccia and Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu. Chiara Cartuccia is a curator, writer, and researcher based in London. She is currently engaged in long-term research around the Mediterranean as invented/inventive geography, focusing on the ramifications of practical Mediterraneanism(s) in Euro-Mediterranean contexts. Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu is a curator, writer, and educator working on constructive critiques of civilization, sustainability of intersectional futures, and practices of togetherness. She specializes in transgenerational feminist queer monographies, context responsive large scale exhibitions and project development for young generation artists. She co-leads the Art in Discourse programme at Braunschweig University of Art.

We invite 20-minute presentations (papers, visual essays, performative contributions, etc.) on curatorial practice as a site of research, critical inquiry and knowledge production. We encourage early and mid-career curators/researchers to submit.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, curatorial approaches that engage with:

- Curatorial methodology as research practice 

-Situated, embodied, and relational approaches to curating

- Institutional critique and reimagining organisational structures

- Temporalities of the curatorial: duration, slowness, incompletion

- Interdisciplinary collaborations and curating across fields

- Epistemic resistance and alternative modes of knowledge production

- Ecological entanglements, climate imaginaries, and curating in response to environmental crises

- Collaborative, dialogic, and co-authored curatorial processes

- Failures, frictions, and the politics of unfinished projects

- Narratives for worldbuilding

- Methodologies for curatorial research as a site for technological critique

>>> Please send your proposal to curatorialmatters2025@gmail.com by 6 July 2025.

The pdf/word document should include: the title of your proposed presentation, a 250-word abstract, 5 keywords and a 150-word biography. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 31 July.

For any queries: curatorialmatters2025@gmail.com

This event is is part of PUBLICS Parahosting programme and is supported by the Department of Art and Media, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University.

Unfortunately, we cannot support contributors’ travel costs, but we will be happy to provide an invitation letter to support one’s funding application.

Publication

Following the symposium, we plan to develop an edited volume and/or special issue featuring extended versions of selected presentations. Participants will be invited to submit full-length articles, which will undergo a double-blind peer-review process. We are currently exploring publishing opportunities, and more details will be shared with participants after the symposium.

References

Bismarck, B. von, & Frank, R. (2019). Of(f) our times : curatorial anachronics. Sternberg Press.

Bismarck, B. von, & Meyer-Krahmer, B. (2019) Curatorial Things. Sternberg Press.

Lind, M. (2012). Performing the curatorial: within and beyond art. Berlin: Sternberg Press.

Martinon, J.P. (2013). The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. Bloomsbury Publishing.

O’Neill, P., & Wilson, M. (2010). Curating and the educational turn. Open Editions/De Appel.

O’Neill, P., & Wilson, M. (2015). Curating research. Open Editions.

O’Neill, P., Wilson, M., & Steeds, L. (2016). The curatorial conundrum : what to study? what to research? what to practice? LUMA Foundation.

Rogoff, I. (2006). Smuggling: An Embodied Criticality. eipcp.net

Sheikh, S. (2019). ‘Curating and research: An uneasy alliance’ in Ed. Malene Vest Hansen, Anne Folke Henningsen, Anne Gregersen, Curatorial Challenges: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Contemporary Curating. Routledge.