A series of online seminars: Time for Cultural Mediation?

Date

Schedule

18:00–20:00 (Moscow time)

Place

Online

DESCRIPTION

This series of online seminars linked to the publication of the Russian edition of Time for Cultural Mediation by Carmen Mörsch et al. offers a framework for educators, curators, and researchers of pedagogical practices from Switzerland and Russia to address questions of art mediation raised in the publication and to share their takes on mediation’s possibilities, goals, and functions. The Russian edition will be published in early 2022 and will be freely available online. 

The term “art mediation” has come into use in Russia relatively recently and arguably in connection to the large-scale international art event Manifesta 10, which took place in St. Petersburg in 2014. Since then, the practice of art mediation has become widespread: the format has been used at Garage (since 2015), at the Ural Industrial Biennial, and at many other venues and events. However, until now Russian cultural workers have not reached a common understanding of the term “art mediation.” Each practitioner interprets the concept in their own way and many issues pertaining to the meaning of the notion and its inherent problematics have remained largely unaddressed. Therefore, one of the goals of this series and of the forthcoming Russian translation of Time for Cultural Mediation is to understand what Russian and Swiss educators mean by this term and to think together about mediation’s features and particular characteristics.

The online seminars will revisit some of the key ideas elaborated by Mörsch and situate them within the specific conditions of art educational practices in Russian and Swiss today. Considering the context in which the practice of mediation came into use in Russia, it seems worthwhile to question the use of this term in relation to the educational processes taking place outside institutions of contemporary art. Are there any conceptual or methodological differences between mediation in more conservative cultural institutions and mediation in museums of contemporary art? What are the goals of art mediation and what are its most important functions in bothtypes of institutional space? These questions will form the starting point for a series of discussions between researchers and practitioners of art education from Russia and Switzerland. 

The program of the seminars consists of two sections, titled “What does art mediation do?" and "Who does art mediation?” —an explicit reference to the eponymous chapters Time for Cultural Mediation. Each section consists of two sessions. The first session is focused on speakers' papers and discussions, while the second invites the audience to participate in collective practices under the guidance of the speakers.

The publication of the book and the supporting program were organized by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art with support from the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

HOW TO TAKE PART

The seminars will be held online via Zoom in Russian and English with simultaneous translation and will be streamed on the Garage YouTube channel.

Admission is free, but advance registration is required.

The practice-based session on December 1 will take place in English.

BOOK PUBLICATION AND PROGRAM PREPARED BY

  • https://garagemca.org/en
  • https://uralbiennial.ru/en
  • https://xn--80afcdbalict6afooklqi5o.xn--p1ai/
  • https://prohelvetia.ru/en/swiss-arts-council-pro-helvetia/
Schedule

Introductory session

In this session, program curators Alina Belishkina, Daria Malikova, and Marina Romanova will discuss the idea behind the series, its themes, and the guest speakers. They will also touch upon the relevance of the publication of the Time for Cultural Mediation at this moment and explain how the sessions will be organized. Carmen Mörsch, co-author of Time for Cultural Mediation, and Anastasia Mityushina, Public Program curator at Garage will join the discussion and share their views on art mediation today, ten years after the original publication was launched. 


About the speakers

Carmen Mörsch is Professor for Art Education at Mainz Academy of Arts, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany. Her interests lie in re/constructing histories, concepts, and practices in art education starting from a queer-feminist and post-colonial/critical race perspective. From 2008 to 2018 she was head of the Research Institute for Art Education at Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland. Since 2011 she has led the PhD program Art Education at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Together with Nora Landkammer, she forms e-a-r (education and arts research) collective. She is a member of the network Another Roadmap for Arts Education, which unites colleagues who seek to analyze and develop art education collaboratively with an emancipatory and decolonizing perspective.

Alina Belishkina is an educator, artist, and curator. She studied on the Curating and Mediating MA program at Aalto University, Helsinki and at Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in St. Petersburg. Since 2011 she has taught contemporary art theory at various institutions in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In her pedagogical practice she follows the principles of collective knowledge production and incorporates artistic strategies borrowed from gallery education legacies. Alina curated and participated in a number of international and local projects (Research Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale, BBX crit sessions as part of the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 4th Moscow Summer curatorial school, and many others).

Daria Malikova is an educator and art mediator. She has MA in psychology and art history and is the lead specialist in the department of special projects of the Ural Branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Since 2015, she has curated the mediation program of the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art and in 2020 she launched the School of Mediation, an educational program for regional cultural workers aiming to introduce them to current practices in the field of audience development, art mediation, and community building. She was a member of the research group and co-author of the publication “Something New and Unexpected: Research of the Audience of Contemporary Art in Russia” (2017–2018) and a member of the Laboratory of Industriality (2019–2020). 

Anastasia Mityushina is a curator and informal education practitioner. In 2004 she graduated from the Faculty of Art History and Theory at Moscow State University. She has worked at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art since 2010, first as head of Education Department (2010–2014) and then as Public Program Curator. She has been published in Moscow Art Magazine, ArtChronika, and the online resource ArtGuide. She is a guest lecturer at the Higher School of Economica (Moscow) and RMA Business School (Moscow), and a teacher at the charitable foundation Shalash (Moscow).

Marina Romanova is Public Programs Manager in the Education Department of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. She has a master’s degree from the Department of Museology of the Faculty of Art History at the Russian State University for the Humanities, where she majored in sociocultural projects. She has a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Communication, Media, and Design at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow), with a major in political journalism. She is the author of socio-cultural projects related to art mediation and podcasts in the museum.

REGISTRATION

Date
Wednesday, November 3
Time
18:00–19:30 (Moscow time)