“Slow Spicy Curatorial Practices” assembled a team from Zurich and Hong Kong to formulate, share questions, urgencies and working curatorial practices, in the hope of cooperating with other existing or upcoming formats and spaces. Referring to the etymological sense of “curate” (lat. curare – to take care of), the team attempts to extend the action of ‘taking care’ to hospitality, sharing, and caring, in order to enable a collaborative space.
The team compares the act of making art with making food — which both require combining and processing ingredients, handicraft and traditions to experiment and create something new; both form the basis of an existing culture, which in turn is required to built upon these foundations.
To find a common culture, to care for it and to share & grow it, we will break down large issues and themes into simple ingredients and work with them, as with sourdough (flour and water). In the past, sharing your sourdough literally meant “sharing a culture,” from person to person, node to network; from individual to collaborative connectivities. By taking the metaphor of sourdough, the team shed new light on curating – one that lets ideas grow collectively, across disciplines and distances. Collaboration itself is based on shared interests. Currently, we are asking ourselves how to produce such interests and what kind of topics can we find to work with?
Based on the fermentation of sourdough, the group shared and discovered shared cultural practices and values, invited participants, links and actions to care and curate the future (in art projects or elsewhere). Thus, curating assumes shape. So if we aim to produce exhibitions, we need to agree on formats such as displays, performances, excursions. We are very much at the beginning of what could ultimately be a play, or another form of collaboration. We have been exchanging and will continue to exchange idea on the emerging topics, which we hadn’t been talking or thinking about before. Curating is about doing and about reflecting on what needs to be done.
Funding granted by Dossier Committee: CHF 4000