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Issue 8
Eds. Dorothee Richter and Rein Wolfs

Institution as Medium. Curating as Institutional Critique? Part 1

The symposium Institution as Medium. Curating as Institutional Critique?, organised by the Kunsthalle Fridericianum and the Zurich Postgraduate Program in Curating (Institute for Cultural Studies, Department of Cultural Analysis, Zurich University of the Arts) was opened with the provocative question in how far it is possible to exercise institutional critique by curating exhibitions.

"Institutional critique" is a term designating artistic practices and positions such as those of Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser and Hans Haacke. The question is: how can a practice that intends to radically show the conditionality of art, its financial entanglements, and its function as a means of distinction be related to institutions and curators' activities therein? Is this not a contradiction in terms? The aim of the symposium was to explore these contradictions as well as the possibilities and limitations of critical curatorial practice.

Contributions by
Dorothee Richter, Rein Wolfs, Oliver Marchart, Irene Grillo and Maren Brauner, Stih&Schnock, Maria Lind, Søren Grammel,Olga Fernández
** Carte Blanche San Keller