TRIUMF AMIRIA. The Museum of Queer Culture [?] is nearing the end of a first phase, but it promises to have an eventful last month. Despite the dramatic situation at the moment, the system won’t allow projects to be put on hold. Thus, keeping in our minds and souls thoughts of peace, disarmament and demilitarization, we invite curators and artists at the beginning of their journey, but not only, to sign up for the performative-participatory and #ongoing Positive Tension (curating kit) workshop proposed by the artistic collective Apparatus 22.
The event will take place on Sunday 13 March, starting at 6pm, in the exhibition “Dot by Dot” at Kunsthalle Bega (Calea Circumvalațiunii 10, Timișoara), a new visual intervention part of TRIUMF AMIRIA. The Museum of Queer Culture [?], curated by Kilobase Bucharest.
About Positive Tension (curating kit) in the words of Apparatus 22:
Is it possible to fit a marathon, a party, a performance and an alternative workshop into a paper bag?
Apparently so, and the proof is Apparatus 22’s Positive Tension (curating kit) – a brown paper bag containing several hundreds of probably the biggest confetti ever produced, accompanied by a set of technical instructions that are not lacking in humour.
All of these ingredients are preparing, as part of TRIUMF AMIRIA’s educational programme, a critical thinking project since the confetti bubbles in luscious colours are inscribed with over a hundred questions about curating.
Positive Tension (curating kit) takes the form of a confetti explosion that lays 130 diverse questions on the floor – from the fundamentals to some that don’t often appear in academia, from analytical questions to those that require intuitive answers, from the abstract to the very specific – on countless topics (including myths, taboos and rules) about curating and the relationship with the public, artists, institutions, legacies, ethics, new ways of working in art, the future, etc. and all of which turn the performance work into a workshop and a marathon of critical thinking.
Ready to party? Ready for the marathon? Ready for a workshop that draws on queer methodologies and also brings to the table queering practices of museum/art institutions?
Positive Tension (curating kit) is an Apparatus 22 artwork with questions formulated by Apparatus 22 and contributions by Geir Haraldseth, Levi Easterbrooks, Matt Hanson & Ludovica Parenti, Alen Ksoll, Tereza Jindrová and KILOBASE BUCHAREST.
Positive Tension (on curating) has been presented at the Stedelijk Museum together with De Appel CP, Amsterdam, Yarat Academy in Baku, Domino in Cluj, DuParc Residence Torino, Villa Empain (Brussels), Artport Tel Aviv, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Curatorial studies MA) , ecm – educating/curating/managing. | Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Closer Art Centre (Kiev), at Cité internationale des arts (Paris) – European Curatorial Futures of C-E-A / Association française des commissaires d’exposition, School for curatorial Studies Venice, Swimming Pool Projects (Sofia).
The work is part of the Positive Tension series in which the Apparatus 22 collective uses questions as a strategy to trigger critical thinking processes.
Apparatus 22 is a transdisciplinary art collective, initiated in January 2011, in Bucharest, by its current members – Erika Olea, Maria Farcaș, Dragoș Olea – together with Ioana Nemeș (1979 – 2011). Since 2015 the collective has been working between Bucharest, Brussels and SUPRAINFINIT, the utopian universe imagined by them.
Apparatus 22’s works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, in institutions and organizations such as: La Biennale di Venezia 2013, MUMOK, Vienna (AT), Contemporary Art Gallery of the Brukenthal Museum Brukenthal, Sibiu (RO), BOZAR, Brussels (BE), Museion, Bolzano (IT), Kunsthalle Wien (AT), Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest (RO), KunstMuseum Linz (AT), La Triennale di Milano (IT), Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (BE), Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (DE), TRAFO Gallery, Budapest (HU), Futura, Prague (CZ), Ujazdowski Castle – Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (PL), Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest (RO), Onomatopee Eindhoven (NL), TIME MACHINE BIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART, D-0 ARK UNDERGROUND, Konji (BIH), Osage Foundation (Hong Kong), Progetto Diogene, Torino, (IT), Closer Art Centre, Kiev (UA), CIAP, Hasselt (BE), Barriera, Torino (IT), Art Encounters, Timișoara (RO), Suprainfinit Gallery, București (RO), GALLLERIAPIÙ, Bologna (IT), Lateral ArtSpace, Cluj (RO), Survival Kit festival, LCCA Riga (LV), Autostrada Bienniale Prizren (XK);
performances at MAK, Vienna (AT), Steirischer Herbst, Graz (AT), Stedelijk Museum in cooperation with De Appel CP Amsterdam, (NL), Kunsthal Gent (BE), Yarat Academy, Baku (AZ), Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (DE), Drodesera Festival, Dro (IT), Villa Empain, Brussels (BE), SMAK Gent, (BE) etc.;
Apparatus 22 is also active beyond institutional spaces, through performances in public
spaces, interventions in private spaces and other hybrid forms.