ecm diskurs 41: Gegenöffentlichkeit organisieren

Book Launch as part of Vienna Art Week

Welcome address: Barbara Putz-Plecko (Vice Rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna) and Matthias Beitl (Director of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art)
A conversation with Ivet Ćurlin (WHW, Director of Kunsthalle Wien) Nora Sternfeld (documenta Professor at Kunsthochschule Kassel and /ecm-director team, Vienna) and Lorena Vicini (researcher, Sao Paulo and documenta Studien Kassel)
Isa Rosenberger (artist, Vienna) on the art installation
Moderation: Beatrice Jaschke (/ecm-director team, Vienna)

Gegenöffentlichkeit organisieren. Kritisches Management im Kuratieren
Eds. Matthias Beitl, Beatrice Jaschke, Nora Sternfeld
Edition Angewandte, de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2019

Over the past 20 years, economic criteria and considerations have gained increasing significance in the exhibition world, affecting organizational forms, production conditions, and decision-making processes. Today more than ever, economic concerns determine how institutions act, what they collect and show, how they present themselves, and how we imagine them. In reaction to this, a critical discourse developed in the 1990s that analysed power relationships and logics of value determination. In the meantime, widespread interest has arisen in the practical question of how the criticism of economic dominance of public institutions could have concrete, practical consequences within those institutions: How could museums and exhibiting organizations be organized differently? And how do we want to work? The publication Gegenöffentlichkeit organisieren. Kritisches Management im Kuratieren gathers contributions anchored in both theory and practice, which reflect on organizational structures and working conditions, formulate other suggestions, and refuse to settle for a state of affairs where critical thought is combined with uncritical action.

Authors: Matthias Beitl, Dieter Bogner, Martin Fritz, Valeria Graziano, Henna Harri, Stefano Harney, Beatrice Jaschke, Laurence Rassel, Barbara Steiner, Nora Sternfeld, Wolfgang Tobisch, Lorena Vicini

With an artistic contribution by Isa Rosenberger.