After more than a year of working together on this Issue of Collective Curating in Performing Arts at the end of the editorial process, the co-editors made a move to respectively propose post-curatorial questions to one another. Through self-provocation to the collective/ collaborative process, we again reflected on the power structure of curatorship, practices of collectivity, and what urges us to advocate collective/collaborative curating in today’s (performing-) arts ecosystem, through this introductory and/or retrospective dialog.

Gwendolin Lehnerer: I would like to begin the Q&A session with a quote from Amanda Piña, which I kept reflecting on throughout the process of working on our issue of Collective Curating:

As we seek to adapt to a burning planet, we must rethink how we live, perceive, and experience the world. What role do our collective bodies play in this social, political, and spiritual transformation? (Amanda Piña)[1]

In reference to Amanda Piña's quote, where we are asked to consider our relationship to a "burning planet," I wonder how we can and must transform the infrastructures of art and curating so that collective curation becomes a necessity rather than just a challenge. What tools or changes in our practices do we need to advance this transformation and better integrate the collective body as an active part of this change? In other words, how can we foster the collective in these processes?

Sigrid Gareis: I personally believe that expectations are set too high when one posits the “healing of the world” as a central task of art. While there is corresponding expertise in art and curation, it has its limits. Nevertheless, considering the “burning planet,” we all need to examine our habits, behaviors, and certainties—both personally and institutionally—a necessity that continues to be underestimated despite ongoing crises. With its unique imaginative power, art is particularly capable of developing and testing future forms of life as models—a potential that should be brought more into focus. Since the problems we face are planetary, it is ultimately clear that they can only be addressed through joint (collective or collaborative) efforts. In practice, this urgency necessitates not only a profound and critical rethinking of cultural infrastructure (material, personnel, and institutional) but also to highlight the utopian strength of art and curation.

River Lin: From an Indigenous-centric perspective, the notion of a "burning planet" by Amanda Piña sees an ecological urgency to enact radical care collectively. Indigenous Peoples have performed a networked body and internet of things since ancestral times to the present, as they have always lived in community-based structures, both spiritually and socially. This collective caretaking in curatorial practices, for me, means rethinking the collective action of community engagement, whether in institutional or grassroots realms. To perform the collective curation, what is essential is to first shift a top-to-bottom hierarchy and manner of bureaucracy towards an infrastructurally horizontal body. This kind of work requires much more effort because the notion of progression has long trained and inhabited us. As long as decision-making cannot be deconstructed in a collective setting, we will not be able to approach collective thinking and making of curation.

Nicole Haitzinger:

“Thus the curatorial question is how to adjust your questions and concerns to the reality, or what are the curatorial strategies that can communicate to the reality, or transform it?”[2]

 What other practices (quotidian, political, socio-cultural, e.g.) outside the field of performing arts show similarities to practices of collective curating, and how could these be adapted and integrated into collective curatorial processes?

RL: During the Lunar New Year in Chinese-speaking communities, family members and their relatives living and working everywhere would get together (again) at home. To prepare for the celebratory feast of New Year's Eve, everybody would work together despite the fact that they might not be acquainted with each other, or that some of them have had a difficult year. This situation of temporary community shows a gathering-driven collective action for a social ritual from the past and present. This cultural custom often reminds me that, when I create and hold events and spaces for colleagues, artists, and audiences as a curator, in a collective setting I am no longer an individual but a part of a community that I am associated with and responsible for others. Therefore, curation is formed, as curation has always been alongside many others or community members.

GL: In my opinion, we can learn from various sources, such as the women's rights movement, political organizations, and, in particular, from ecosystems that surround us or of which we are a part. The beehive exemplifies this idea. Recently, I discovered how bees make decisions without a leader. When a new queen is needed, many bees search for locations and return to share their findings. Instead of a single decision-maker, a decentralized voting system occurs bees advocating for a site are circled by others, and the majority determines the hive's new location through a dance ritual. Bees' dance rituals show alternative communication, suggesting we can also learn to collaborate. There are many forms left to explore, with the body and arts playing crucial roles.

SG:

I work alone because I don’t believe in consensus. If you have a group, then you have to find a consensus, and I don’t think that in the consensus decision, you find exciting work. Exciting work is in the extremes that you cut out if you have to agree with other people. (Frie Leysen)[3]

 The "grande dame" of festival programming, the highly esteemed curator Frie Leysen, who died in 2020, surprises us with this very pointed statement. While working on this publication, I often imagined the rationales that could be used to counter her arguments and convince her of the importance of collective curation.

GL: Frey Leysen argues that seeking consensus can hinder extraordinary work, diluting creativity through compromise. For me, collective curation doesn't require consensus to be compelling. Engaging with diverse perspectives fosters creative processes. Marta Keil notes that collective curation is often misunderstood as conflict-free, yet it involves discomfort and power struggles. Simply including a group doesn’t resolve issues; decisions remain exclusive, and conflicts emerge. Thus, collective curation embraces these challenges, leading to creative paths unattainable through solitary efforts. A feminist lens suggests that consensus can be radical, fostering solidarity among divergent voices. Ultimately, compelling work can stem from collaboration, as various perspectives can create unique avenues beyond individual curation.

NH:

Dear Frie Leysen,

We didn't meet in person, yet your reputation remains strong, as shown by Sigrid's question in our editorial collective. Your generous curatorial work in Belgium and globally, along with your commitment to DeSingel and Kunstenfestivaldesarts, has significantly impacted the cultural memory of curating performative arts. However, your militancy for art—evidenced by the resignation from the Wiener Festwochen directorship—led to a certain intransigence, distancing you from others. You stated, "To play a decisive role today and in the future, the festival must rethink its vision and structure,"[4] emphasizing the need to leave established ways of thinking. Your frequent use of exclamation marks and the word "must" in interviews reflects this urgency. Ten years ago, you were right that the Wiener Festwochen needed to shift its approach, which it did by appointing Milo Rau as artistic director in 2023. In many ways, you have been ahead of your time while showing resilience regarding two aspects currently affecting our curatorial world amid multiple crises.

You resisted gender issues in this interview: "DM: Are gender politics and sexual discrimination still an issue for women in culture today?" "FL: I don't know. It’s relevant if you think so. It never was for me. I never paid attention to it." Your radical rejection of art's social function: "Every artistic project must have a social aspect. I don't agree. An artistic project doesn’t need to have a social function or impact. I refuse to defend art with social arguments." (ibid.)

I mention this in more detail because my arguments for collective curating focus on negotiation and recognition of dissent, rather than consensus. Even if you are not convinced by gender sensitivity and social practices in curating, curatorial colleagues could introduce these elements to diversify art institutions and festivals. This would signal the rehearsal of democracy, which is under threat. The interview title Searching for the New Generation might not seem like a small utopia. A constellation of collective curating could have allowed your radical curatorial perspective to constructively engage with the next generation's concerns. "C'était une femme extraordinaire, d'une très grande force, qui s'est toujours battue pour la création artistique" (She was an extraordinary woman, of great force, who always fought for artistic creation), said Daniel Blanga-Gubbay, one of your successors at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, who respects your position yet embodies a later curatorial generation's model of co-curation.

RL: Artist-collectives are increasingly empowered by cultural institutions to challenge or transform existing frameworks in their events through curatorship, as seen with ruangrupa at documenta fifteen, Raqs Media Collective at the 2020 Yokohama Triennale, and (LA)HORDE at Ballet National de Marseille. Instead of viewing this as a mere alternative model, what does it mean for artists to assume institutional leadership and curatorship in a collective context? What new discourses and shifts does it introduce? How can artist-collective curators create new artist-led productions and influence arts ecosystems?

SG: In the Western hemisphere, artist collectives that engage in curation have primarily emerged in the visual arts, while curatorial roles in theatre are generally a more recent development. Historically, institutionalized theatre has been predominantly led by individual artists in municipal theatres across Europe and, notably, artist-led institutions have been common in South America and Africa.

In Europe, the rise of curatorial roles in the performing arts strongly correlates with the internationalization of the sector in the late 20th century, characterized by a dense festival structure and independent production houses. As a result of this development, expertise has shifted from aesthetic and artistic issues to aspects of international knowledge, networking, and the increasing significance of art mediation and marketing.

Today, both artist-led and curator-led models coexist in European theatre. From my experience with artist-curators at Tanzquartier Wien—whom we systematically invited as a corrective to our curatorial work—I observed strong hospitality, collaborative efforts, greater artistic risk-taking, innovative formats, and the impact of friendship in curation. Each side gained valuable insights from this collaboration.

I appreciate the growing emphasis on collective leadership discussions in theatre a lot. My experiences have shown that blending curators and artists at the leadership level is an ideal approach for the future. This could effectively balance the risks associated with collectivity and responsibility while better addressing the challenges of our time.

NH & RL: Artistic collectives sharing curatorial roles in institutions and festivals represent a recent phenomenon in a globalized world, rooted in various historical precedents like modern European art academies and the 1930s Archives Internationales de la Danse, as well as the independent scene from the late 20th century. Unlike these past alliances, today's performative arts are envisioning new structures alongside queering practices. This includes exposing power dynamics, initiating institutional critiques, exploring entangled histories, demanding pluralization of the arts, and practicing hierarchical decentring. Our thesis here is that collectives composed primarily of artistic positionalities work on collective worldmaking. This means that a possible (art) world is imagined together and in unison, producing an identifiable artistic (and perhaps also aesthetic) signature. In contrast, transdisciplinary curatorial collectives, which are composed of people from professions close to the arts and, above all, from professions distant from the arts and labeled as such (from civil society, from political activism, from the health and welfare sector, from politics, from the climate protection and sustainability movement, from technology, from cosmic mediators such as "shamans"), are marked by the social and ethical relevance of a way of being together and of coordinated action in a world that is splitting apart. The two types of curatorial collectives cannot be clearly distinguished; the transitions are usually fluid: together they form a relational ecosystem that potentially makes not only the arts, but also our world(s) more livable

Closing Remarks and Outlook on Behalf of the Editors

The exploration of collective curating has powerfully shown us, in its depth and complexity, how crucial it is to question and reshape the established power structures within the art world. In the contributions from our authors and co-editors, it becomes clear that collective processes are much more than creative collaborations––they are a powerful tool that interrelates ethical, political, and ecological dimensions, while also establishing "curating in ecosystems" as a sustainable approach.

The discussions in this issue highlight that collective curating is not merely a form of cooperation, but rather a way to address the most pressing issues of our time. It provides a means to bring social justice, ecological responsibility, and political engagement to the forefront, sparking meaningful change.

As editors, we are deeply convinced that collective curating will play a central role in the future of the art world. It offers the opportunity to create a more inclusive and just art landscape––one that faces the complex challenges of our present with courage and responsibility.

On behalf of the editors,
Sigrid Gareis, Nicole Haitzinger, Gwendolin Lehnerer, and River Lin

Sigrid Gareis is curator and social worker. She was co-director of the Salzburg Curation Course in the Performing Arts, founding director of Tanzquartier Wien, Akademie der Künste der Welt and involved in the founding of several European festivals.

Nicole Haitzinger is a dance and theater scholar, professor at Paris-Lodron University Salzburg, and co-leader of the university course Curating in the Performing Arts. She curates and dramaturgs international projects.

Gwendolin Lehnerer, cultural and theatre scholar, is a research associate at the documenta Institute in Kassel and co-leader of the University Course Curating in the Performing Arts. She also works as a freelance dramaturg and curator in Vienna, Munich, and Berlin.

River Lin is a Paris-based Taiwanese artist working with live art, dance, and queer culture. He is Curator of the Taipei Arts Festival, Co-Curator of Indonesian Dance Festival, Guest-Curator of 2025 Lyon Dance Biennale and Co-Artistic Director of Something Great, Berlin.