Curating Europes’ Futures discussion series: Rael Artel and Maria Hlavajova

Curating Europes’ Futures is a discussion series exploring contemporary curatorial and artistic practices that have critically addressed processes of socio-economic restructuring, identity politics, gender dynamics, and cultural governance within 'post-bloc' Europe.

Maria Hlavajova is Artistic Director of BAK (Utrecht) as well as Founder and Director of the 2008-2014 research and exhibition series Former West. Maria is engaged in rethinking the post-feminist/critical histories of the last decades in dialogue with post-Communist realities and postcolonial thought.

Rael Artel is a contemporary art curator and since 2013 a Director of Tartu Art Museum, Estonia. Recent curatorial projects include Is This The Museum We Wanted? (Tartu Art Museum, 2014), Let’s Talk about Nationalism! Between Ideology and Identity (Kumu Art Museum, 2010), and Public Preparation (2007-2011) which included the collaboration Be[com]ing Dutch (Van Abbemuseum, 2008). Rael's many projects have reflected on socio-political conditions across Europe, and in doing so tested the critical capacity of the arts as comment on and intervention into political, cultural, and economic events.

Maria Hlavajova and Rael Artel will also be in conversation with Katarzyna Kosmala relating to her edited collection Sexing the Border: Gender, Art and New Media in Central and Eastern Europe, at Word Power Books, Edinburgh, 6pm, Monday 23 March. For more, see www.word-power.co.uk.

Curating Europes’ Futures brings together Creative Futures Institute of the University of the West of Scotland, the Research School of Glasgow School of Art, as well as the practitioner-research networks of Variant, Framework and Mother Tongue as hosted by CCA.

www.curatingeuropesfutures.net.