SYNAPSE Curators' Workshop at HKW Berlin | call for applications

Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and Schering Stiftung invite up-and-coming curators to apply to take part in the third workshop held by SYNAPSE – The International Curators' Network. The Workshop takes place in Berlin June 30 - July 4th.

Deadline for applications: 20 January 2015

The network is moderated by an international team of curators, artists, scientists, and other experts, including the jury members Anselm Franke (curator and Head of the Department of Visual Arts and Film, HKW, Berlin), Chus Martínez (curator and Head of the Institute of Art at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel), Rachel Mayeri (artist, Los Angeles), and Cord Riechelmann (biologist, philosopher, journalist, Berlin). This third workshop will focus on modes of interaction between science and art, with a special thematic emphasis on "ape culture" and the human/animal relationship. Among other questions, it will address how scientific topics and methodologies can be approached by curators.

SYNAPSE Workshop 2015

The Curators' Workshop 2015 (June 30–July 4, 2015) takes place in the context of the thematic exhibition Ape Culture, curated by Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg at HKW. The exhibition traces the long cultural and scientific obsession with humanity's closest relatives. For a long time, in Western history of representation, apes and monkeys have been exclusively used as paradigmatic tokens of subhuman animal nature. Recent primatology however has begun to increasingly acknowledge the complex organization of ape society, and now speaks of an "ape culture" in its own right. The exhibition Ape Culture examines the way apes and monkeys have featured as signifiers in human representations and civilizational narratives. The exhibition presents a range of existing and commissioned artworks next to films and documentation from the history of science and popular culture.

The SYNAPSE Curators' Workshop uses the exhibition as a starting point in order to raise questions regarding the relationship between science and art. It will give ten curators from various countries the opportunity to explore these issues in discussions with artists, scientists, art historians, curators, and other experts. A special focus will be placed on possible translations into an exhibition format. What is the role of the documentary in a project situated at the threshold between science and art? What new formats are necessary to realize a project that presents science at an artistic location? What curatorial languages must be developed to meet academic demands on the one hand and, on the other, to express scientific findings in cultural terms?

Visits to contemporary art galleries, museums, and project spaces as well as science museums will bring SYNAPSE participants into contact with the Berlin art scene.

Image: Synapse Workshop 2013 | Presentation by Rich Pell, Center for PostNatural History | Photo: Dante Busquets