CuratorLab 60, credits, 2024

Call for 2024/2025: CuratorLab at MINT Stockholm

For the 2024-2025 academic year, we invite you to join CuratorLab for collective research and work in collaboration with MINT Stockholm

Mint + CuratorLab
Mint operates in the basement of the Workers' Educational Association in Stockholm (ABF). During the 1960s it functioned as an important center for transdisciplinary culture in Sweden and internationally, hosting an art gallery, a jazz club, an experimental sound studio, a progressive cinema and more. Building on the legacy of the experimental sound history from this period, Mint invites CuratorLab participants to develop projects where visual art and sound art are linked and explored. Together with invited experts, we will during the course create a series of projects that will explore and produce ephemeral listening sessions, performances, publications and investigate the politics of listening.

Mint is a non-profit exhibition space situated in the Workers' Educational Association in central Stockholm, initiated in 2019 by curators Emily Fahlén and Asrin Haidari. Focusing on contemporary art and poetry, Mint is embracing experimental practices, cross-generational encounters and site-specific interventions. As the practice of a museum relates to – and is in dialogue with – its collection, Mint allows its program to be inspired and directed by the history of the building and its events, struggles, organizations and cultural expressions.

The course will be realized in collaboration with MINT and led by the guest lecturer Emily Fahlén and the new CuratorLab Course Director Marti Manen.

About CuratorLab
CuratorLab is a one-year international curatorial course at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. We are exploring radical approaches to engagement, contributing to the pertinent conversations of our times, practicing curating beyond exhibition making and applying horizontal learning. One of our leading questions is how to understand — paraphrasing Audre Lorde — our interdependence in relation to our own individual power and creativity? Thus, every year for last decade we have been working on a shared topic where everyone contributed in their own way. CuratorLab is open for everyone interested in collective curatorial work,thinking beyond the white cube, and keen to form a solid research group sharing the language of art.

Under the guideance of Joanna Warsza, in recent years participants have performed advocacy as a curatorial form at the Visible Temporary Parliament; co-edited a reader on love and revolution in the legacy of the Bolshevik revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai, re-staged the "Operaist Trial 1977-78" with the artist Rossella Biscotti, or developed the projects on art and the climate in Sápmi. Joanna Warsza’s contract ends in the summer of 2024, and a new director, Marti Manen will start in August 2024.

Marti Manen (Barcelona, 1976) has worked intensively with independent and institutional curatorial practice. He has curated exhibitions at the Museo de Historia Natural (Mexico City), Aara (Bangkok), Tabakalera (San Sebastian) Konsthall C (Stockholm), CA2M (Madrid), and Fabra i Coats (Barcelona). Manen was the curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, and curated Momentum10 (Biennial in Moss, Norway, 2019). In the 1990s, he curated five years of exhibitions in his room located in a student flat in Barcelona. Since 2018 Marti Manen is Director of Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm.

Marti Manen has published books including Salir de la exposición (Leaving the Exhibition) (Consonni), Contarlo todo sin saber cómo (Telling everything not knowing how) (CA2M), and When Lines Are Time (Miró Foundation Barcelona).

More on www.curatorlab.se

Course director: Marti Manen Guest lecturers:  Emily Fahlén and many more contributors

Course Syllabus: KOY030

Language of instruction: English

Entry Requirements
Bachelor’s degree of 180 credits, or higher, in fine arts, art history, critical studies, curatorial studies, architecture, crafts and design, and/or equivalent work experience in independent curatorial practices or within institutions for at least three years. And proficiency in English equivalent to Swedish upper secondary school course English 6/English B. Read more about the language requirements here.

Selection
The selection is based on an overall assessment of the applicant’s previous relevant work experience, motivation, project proposal and portfolio, and possible interviews.

How to apply to CuratorLab 

1. Apply at universityadmissions.se (for Swedish speaking applicants: antagning.se)
When applying to Konstfack you submit an online application to the Swedish central application website www.universityadmissions.se (antagning.se for Swedish speaking applicants), and send qualifications to support the entry requirements to universityadmissions.se (antagning.se for Swedish speaking applicants).

2. Upload files to konstfack.se
You will also need to upload files electronically via Konstfack's website. These files will be used in the selection between eligible applicants.

Submit one PDF file including to konstfack.se:

1. One page of written bio, including your interests in the topic

2. One page describing possible ideas for your collaboration-contribution

3. Documentation of relevant working experience (max 3 pages).

Technical specifications
File format: PDF
The PDF documents must not be password protected.

Note that the project proposal functions as a presentation of your ideas and fields of interest, it must not be realized in this exact form during the course.