Translation and Publication

Publication is a priority for ICE. Publications will be accessible and multi-lingual, with an emphasis on the translation of key texts.

Already published:
ICE Reader 1: Curating Critique (Revolver Frankfurt am Main, 2007);
Anatomy Acts (Birlinn Edinburgh 2006)

Curating Critique
ICE Reader 1

Concept:
Contemporary art is changing under the influence of new social necessities, new technologies, the blurring of traditional roles in cultural work and the widespread effects of economic globalisation. With these changes have come new contexts and new audiences for art and over the past years an increasing critical interest in the terms of its display and mediation.

The publication Curating Critique focuses on issues of criticality and experimentation in the field of curating contemporary art. It addresses to what extent existing curatorial strategies are able to accommodate changes in contemporary art and asks what new forms of practice are emerging between traditionally defined roles of artist, curator, critic and academic.

As the title suggests, the publication raises critical questions about the current state of curating, about the increase in popularity of mega-exhibitions and the resultant emergence of ‘star-curators’, about the possibilities and impossibilities of independent or extra-institutional practice, about the questions surrounding the teaching of curating in art academies and the new position of the artist/curator, curator/artist. Equally its contents look at how exhibitions themselves can be seen as sites or tools for critique, questioning ideas such as autonomy, engagement and context in an era increasingly marked by trans-cultural curating, neo-liberal cultural policy, a growing critique of globalisation, and changing attitudes to concepts of ‘public space’.

Bringing together critical and theoretical texts, project descriptions and interviews, the reader is intended for those with either a practical or academic interest in the field of exhibition-making, the publication is planned as a resource book for arts and cultural professionals, fine-art and curating students and all those interested in issues of display and mediation.

The fact that ICE preferably deal with different discourses especially within the Anglophone and German research traditions becomes evident with this first ICE Reader, it brings together basic texts from both approaches, which, as we know, are often significantly at variance.

Content:
Marianne Eigenheer – Foreword
Barnaby Drabble and Dorothee Richter - Curating Critique, Introduction
Sarat Maharaj - Merz-thinking
Beatrice Von Bismarck - Curatorial Criticality
Per Hüttner and Gavin Wade - Interviewed by Barnaby Drabble
Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack - Words from an exhibition
Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt - False Economies
Maria Lind - Interviewed by Paul O'Neill
Oliver Marchart - The Curatorial Function
Dorothee Richter - Exhibitions as cultural practices
Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham - Interviewed by Barnaby Drabble
Marion Von Osten - Producing Publics
Sarat Maharaj and Gilane Tawadros - We were nobody
Ute Meta Bauer - Interviewed by Marius Babias
Walter Grasskamp - The White Wall