Antonia Majaca

In her talk 'Against Curating as Endorsing' Antonia Majaca will introduce the genealogy of the figure of curator in the production of liberal consensus after the WWII and discuss it further, in the context of the global, multicultural, neoliberal optimism from the 1990 on. She will consider the role that the 'independent curator' - as the emblematic 'confidence man', has played in the slow 'death of the intellectual' and suggest a schizo-analytical spell for both the curator and the art institution which might help us conjure up the image of curator anew.

Antonia Majaca is an art historian and curator based in Berlin where she is currently acting as one of the curators on the long-term project 'Kanon Fragen', initiated by Anselm Franke at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. She is the research leader at the IZK Institute for Contemporary Art at the Graz University of Technology where her upcoming artistic research project, 'The Incomputable', developed in collaboration with Goldsmiths University in London, will be exploring the intertwined histories of psychoanalyses and cybernetics. Feminist Takes – the ongoing collaborative investigation Majaca instigated in 2016, considers the relation between the Non-Western avant-garde cinema, psychoanalysis and feminist theory, and has so far been presented at G-MK, Zagreb; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham and Tranzitdisplay, Prague. In collaboration with Angela Dimitrakaki and Sanja Ivekovic, Majaca recently instigated a collaborative aural intervention 'Art of The Possible: Towards the International Antifascist Feminist Front', and co-curated the discursive program 'Women's Work in Revolt' for documenta 14 in Athens (2017). Other recently curated conferences include 'Knowledge Forms and Forming Knowledge – Limits and Horizons of Transdisciplinary Art-Based Research' at the Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz and 'Memorial For(u)ms – Histories of Possibility' for DAAD and HAU - Hebel am Ufer Theater, Berlin. Her earlier work includes numerous publications and exhibitions co-curated with Ivana Bago through Delve – Institute for Duration, Location and Variables that they co-founded in 2009.