Fotofestiwal – International Festival of Photography in Lodz and Parallel – European Photo based Platform would like to invite you to take part in free of charge workshops for curators and photographers.
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
This three-day program is based on collaborative work. Photographers and curators will be working together to explore new ways of developing and installing photo-based projects. Tutors will propose a series of ideas related to the creation and fruition of visual projects. Together with participants they are going to discuss how they function and on what bases, how they make creators act and in which conditions. We are going to listen to each other and share reflections.
How many ways are there to address projectuality in photography? How much room are we going to allow to research, and how much to randomness and improvisation? What kind of collaborations might we consider? What do we feed on? At what stage, and how, are we going to work on structure? What is this yet formless thing going to be, and is it going to be readable, and to whom? What is our work capable of provoking? To what extent is that of our concern? How open is this going to be?
What do we talk about when we talk about curating photography? What do you read when you work specifically as a photography curator? What do you look at? And how do you act, select, point out, or create discourses or agencies? Do you collaborate or edit? Will you tell stories or counter stories? What am I looking at when curation happens?
Where do these two sets of questions meet?
Curator/professor Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger and photographer Federico Clavarino are going to take care of guiding participants through the process, by providing them with theoretical tools, food for thought and critique, but above all by coordinating what is meant to be a very intense group effort. Photographers are going to open up their ongoing projects to analysis and work towards their further development, while curators will have to respond to a specific task that will be given to them before the workshop starts.
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE
The workshops are dedicated to photographers and curators at early stage of their careers or still during their studies, from Central and Eastern Europe, regardless of their age and education. The workshop can be attended by a maximum of 20 participants (10 curators and 10 photographers). Submission to open-call and participation in the workshops are free of charge. Project does not cover transport, accommodation not any additional expenses made by participants.
WHEN AND WHERE
The workshop will start on October 17 (evening) with the arrival of the participants and will end with a joint summary on October 21 (in the morning). During the main workshop days October 18-20 work will be conducted in two separate groups (photographers and curators) as well as in pairs (photographer with curator). Workshops will be held in Łódź. The detailed location will be announced soon.
HOW TO APPLY AND WHEN?
The application should be sent by September 16, midnight (UTC +2), to the email address warsztaty@fotofestiwal.com. The application should be sent in one pdf file not exceeding 20mb and should contain:
– CV documenting artistic achievements or curator’s experience (no more than one A4 page),
– portfolio: for artists, 15-20 photos from ongoing project; in the case of curators, a maximum of 20 photographs of documentation of recent exhibitions / curatorial projects,
– motivation letter justifying the willingness to participate in the workshop: in the case of artists with the description of ongoing project; in the case of curators, with a description of experiences and challenges related to curatorial work (no more than 600 words).
The rules of participation and detailed information on how to apply can be found in terms and regulations document (at the bottom of the page)
TUTORS
Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger
PhD, works as a Professor in Exhibition Studies and Spatiality at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki. Formerly she worked as the Chief Curator at The Finnish Museum of Photography. Rastenberger has extensive experience in exhibition projects, curating practices and the international exhibition scene of the contemporary arts. She is also an artistic co-director and co-founder of ‘The Festival of Political Photography’, which seeks to examine what the word “political” means in contemporary extended photographic practices. This year she seeks for new projects for the festival 2019 under the theme “Potentiality”, which will explore the possibilities and potential of individuals and communities to change the existing conditions without resorting to traditional ways of change-making. Rastenberger’s special interests are new forms of photography as contemporary art, exhibition as critical practice and feministic practices on art field.
Federico Clavarino
Federico Clavarino was born in Turin, Italy in 1984, where he lived until he was 22. After attending a Master Course in literature and creative writing at Alessandro Baricco’s Scuola Holden, in 2007 he moved to Madrid where he started studying photography at BlankPaper School with Fosi Vegue, where he later worked as a teacher until 2017. His first book, “Ukraina Pasport” received the PhotoEspaña Honourable Mention as best book of 2011. In September 2014 the London-based publisher Akina Books brought out his second book, “Italia o Italia”. The work received good reviews from a number of critics and the original photographs were exhibited in 2015 at the International Photography Festival of Rome. In April 2016 Dalpine published his third book, “The Castle”, which was exhibited in various festivals (PhotoEspaña 2016, Les Rencontres d’Arles 2017) and galleries (Viasaterna in Milan, Temple in Paris) around Europe. Another of his current projects, “Hereafter”, received the La Caixa Foundation Fotopres grant in 2014. The work was exhibited for the first time at CaixaForum in Barcelona in February 2017 and will soon be made into a book. He is currently based in Lisbon and works internationally.
The project is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union with support of Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
