Curatorial Practice

Ellen Blumenstein

'Curating as an expanded practice'

In her presentation, Ellen Blumenstein will look at models beyond exhibition formats to explore modes of curatorial work that add to the continuing debate and contextualizing of artistic and cultural production. She will start from her practice as an independent curator and co-founder of The Office www.theoffice.li, and founder of Salon Populaire www.salonpopulaire.de/ to develop the idea of art as a particular form of thought that brings together intellectual and sensual modes of thinking - at the intersection between the production, presentation and mediation of knowledge in the field of art,
Salon Populaire is a meeting point for conversations on art and neighboring topics, for the convergence of different ideas, positions and contexts. Envisioned both on the basis of and as a departure from the history of the salon, it is a place at which knowledge is generated and exchanged. As a semi-public space it enables multiple scenarios, spanning the privacy of an apartment to the public of an institution.

Ellen Blumenstein is an independent curator, member of the curatorial collective THE OFFICE and founder of the venue Salon Populaire in Berlin. Between 1998-2005 she worked as a curator for KW Institute for Contemporary Art, where she realized the exhibition project "Regarding Terror: The RAF-Exhibition" (with Klaus Biesenbach, Felix Ensslin, 2005). Since, she curated the exhibition "Between Two Deaths" at ZKM in Karlsruhe (with Felix Ensslin, 2007) and the summer academy "Agulhas Negras — On the necessity to Discuss Social Functions of Contemporary Art" in São Paulo/Campos do Jordão, Brazil (2008). In 2009, she worked with the collection of conceptual art at CGAC in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) to put together the exhibition "The Human Stain". Most recently, she was the curator for the Icelandic Pavilion at the Venice Biennial (Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson) and curated the Graduate Show at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2011).
More: http://www.theoffice.li/

Organized by
Postgraduate Program in Curating

Zurich University of the Arts

http://www.curating.org/



Hosts of "Curatorial Practice"

Kunsthaus Zürich

Migros Museum

Wäscherei