OnCurating issue 26: "Curating Degree Zero / Curatorial Research"
Ed. Dorothee Richter and Barnaby Drabble
With contributions by Ellen Blumenstein, Sabeth Buchmann, Sergio Edelsztein, Felix Ensslin, Avi Feldman, Brian Holmes, Elke Krasny, Dorothee Richter

Issue 26 of OnCurating, related to the Zurich-based Curating Degree Zero Archive, concentrates on Curatorial Research.  

Contemporary curating exists as a media conglomerate: the production of meaning is achieved through a combination of artworks, photographs, commentary, publications, design, gestures, music, film, press releases, websites, and interviews. It is situated in a specific political and cultural context. To analyse these complex situations, we need a variety of approaches. The undertaking to discuss curating on a profound level also inspired the conferences "Curating as a Glittering Myth," "Curating as a Social Symptom," "Curating as a Revolutionary Force?," and "Curating Everything (Curating as Symptom)." The ironic title of "Curating Everything" already proposed reading the activity of curating as a social symptom. We presume that the contemporary urge for a curatorial position has an imaginary side: the wish to gain authorship and agency as an illusionary closure in an overall unsteady and precarious labour situation for cultural producers.

OnCurating.org is in cooperation with the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ZHdK, DKV, ICS, Center of Further Education.


Open Curating Studio: Gasthaus zum Bären / Museum Bärengasse
Ed. Dorothee Richter 
With text contributions by Barbara Basting, Roberto Nigro, Dorothee Richter, 
Sigrid Schade

Documentation of the Open Curating Studio Programme at Gasthaus zum Baeren / Museum Baerengass, held in Zurich from January 2014–March 2015, with events, discussions, screenings, performances, talks, and meetings.

By Dorothee Richter, the Postgraduate Programme in Curating and the webjournal www.on-curating.org. Assistant curator: Mirjam Bayerdörfer.

For the list of artists and participants please visit the books section of oncurating.org.

Curating is undoubtedly a new discursive formation, as defined by Michel Foucault, which has rapidly developed since the 1970s. We are aware that we are also part of this instituting process, with the developing of an Archive, with the Postgraduate Programme in Curating at ZHdK, and with the PhD platform, a cooperation between the University of Reading and our publications. This formation is instituted in hierarchical formations and power relations. Therefore we strive to open up processes, to question what instituting and de-instituting means, and to make our thoughts, struggles, and research accessible.


OnCurating.org is in cooperation with the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ZHdK, DKV, ICS, Center of Further Education.

Originaly published by art&education