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It is with great pleasure that we announce the names of the four young international curators selected by the curatorial board of vessel to participate in our residency program, 2013 :

Cristina Bogdan

Nicoletta Daldanise

Alec Steadman (June 19th - July 10)

Gaia Tedone (July)

Below is a brief biography for each curator as well as the respective proposal for research projects that they will develop during their three-week residency in Bari.

Cristina Bogdan, born 1985 in Bucharest, lives and works in London. She studied Art History and Philosophy at the Sorbonne, and is currently a researcher at the Royal College of Art. She has curated several shows and is a contributor to various magazines, including Notes on Metamodernism and Glass Magazine in the UK and Revista Arta in Romania.

Proposal

In connection with the BIR project, which looks at local fascist architecture, I propose a playful investigation into the place these sites occupy in the collective imaginary. Working with local residents, I will engage them in a game of memory and references, then invite them to discuss and exhibit their findings. The project aims to position itself at the margins of the art world.

Nicoletta Daldanise

(Napoli,1980) After her education as a curator, she collaborated with several projects in galleries, museums and art fairs. Since 2008 she mainly works on socially engaged practices and the independent art scene through residencies, shows, research and her activity as critic for SHAREpro blog and Arte e Critica magazine.

Proposal: “Semina ”

The project is aimed at investigating the potential of political, economic and cultural planning that puts its premise in the dialogue with the community. Analyzing from the historical viewpoint several aspects of the rural development planning, the research will underline possible risks of “rural gentrification”. Working on a deep knowledge of the region through documented crosswalks and interviews with experts (sociologists, anthropologists, historians, architects, etc..), but also the inhabitants of the places to be included in the BIR Art Map, an online archive will collect hard to find information. Taking under consideration the different economic models in the delicate transition from the farm to the township, as well as the spontaneous use of the ruins and the social dynamics associated with them, the project will try to define possible cultural models to be activated dealing with the real identity of the places.

Alec Steadman is a curator and artist. He was a curator in residence at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (2012), where he co-curated The 338 Hour Cineclub. Previously he participated in De Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam (2011/12) co-curating Three Artists Walk into a Bar…, De Appel Arts Center and various locations (2012) and Why Stay If You Can Go? Stedelijk @ De Appel Arts Center (2012). Prior to this he spent 5 years as Head of Exhibitions for Zoo Art Fair and was a member of the artist collective The Hut Project from 2005-2011.

Proposal

Through the residency at Vessel, I’m interested in testing the agency of art practice when it transgresses the gallery as site, set of functions and prejudices, dissolving into everyday life, basing its forms and functions within social reality. I'm interested in examining curatorial models that take risks not just with what they show, but how they work; developing projects that produce active contexts, whose launch marks the start of a process rather than an end, collapsing the divisions between production, presentation and exchange. I am excited to research and develop exhibition forms to challenge a set of practices that imbue their relationship to the audience as part of their material, often by-passing the need for traditional exhibitions to mediate their meeting with a public. Searching for alternative models to represent beyond the moment, work that is born lives and dies in the context for which it was created, without merely flattening the process into static objects.

Gaia Tedone (b. in Bari 1982) is a curator based in London. She holds an MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College, London and was a curatorial fellow of the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. She recently worked at Tate Modern, assisting on matters related to Photography and International Art acquisitions and displays, and was previously an Assistant Curator for the David Roberts Art Foundation in London (2008-10). Past curatorial projects include: Shifting Gazes (Guest Projects, London, 2013), Is Seeing Believing? ( or-bits.com , TRUTH, 2011), Foreclosed. Between Crisis and Possibility (The Kitchen, New York, 2011), Nervous System, (James Taylor Gallery, London, 2009), Every Story is a Travel Story (Candid Arts Trust, London. 2008). As co-founder of the curatorial collective IM Projects, she was one of the editors of the book A Fine Red Line (A Curatorial Miscellany) . In 2012, she was the first curator selected for the residency program at Impakt Works in Utrecht for her ongoing project The Mediatic Accident.

Proposal

During her residency at Vessel, Gaia will begin to explore the correlation between the expansion of the tourist industry in the Apulia region and the recent shifts in the migratory movements from and to the region, questioning the position of the artist and curator operating in the region as one of 'cultural immigrant by default'. She is interested in exploring the possibility of cultural and artistic synergies with the neighboring regions and how these might sit in relation to the model offered by tourism. The research develops from the recent group exhibition Shifting Gazes she co-curated with Christine Takengny, which took the notion of tourism as a vehicle to investigate a broader system of economic, political and cultural hierarchies.

REPORT

As part of her residency at Vessel, the curator Gaia Tedone organizes Critical Reflections on the Representation and (Auto) Representation of the region Puglia across the Media and Tourist Industry this July 25th at La Taverna del Maltese, Bari (7 pm) .

The event will use the format of a Think Tank with the local community in order to respond to the representation of Puglia created by the campaign: www.weareinpuglia.it

Anyone interested in taking part in the research project activated by Gaia is invited to contribute to the discussion through sending/posting/bringing an image in response to the campaign We Are in Puglia. The material could come from the world of art, news, politics, communication and so on.

On Thursday, Gaia together with the audience will look at the images from the campaign and at those proposed by the participants (both physical and virtual) in order to activate a space for reflection on the role of the tourist industry and the media apparatus in constructing and shaping the image and representation of a specific context and/or identity.