Curating Change

What does it mean to curate a design project in the frame of Climate Change? What are our responsibilities as curators, researchers and designers? How can we participate in challenging old assumptions and build novel narratives that go beyond a purely  human-centred understanding of the world? Curating Change proposes to look at curation as an act of care and activism, a process through which we can shape meaningful worldviews that take into consideration all beings and an instrument with which to raise critical questions and mediate issues linked to the current environmental and social crises.

The starting point of the workshop will be a series of vegetal-related pieces from the Dresden State Art Collection and plants from the  botanical gardens of Pillnitz Park. Nourished by conversations with local specialists – Museum’s curators, gardeners, historians – we will study the stories of these artworks and plants, attempting to deconstruct and reframe them in light of contemporary reflections such as plants’ objectification and the idea of plants as intelligent and sentient beings, and as humans’ relationships with non-humans.

The first part of the workshop will be dedicated to the creation of new artifacts – these could be a poem, a video, a set of illustrations, a family of objects, or an installation, depending on the sensibility of each one – that offer original interpretations of the original objects of study and that add a critical perspective on the past. The second phase of the workshop will be about making sense together of what was created and finding a way to present it to the public in a dynamic and engaging way (e.g. exhibition, talk, guidebook) at the end of the course.