THE CURATOR CAROLINA ONGARO
A curatorial residency in Moskosel
A curatorial residency that aims to research, understand and better define the cultural and artistic identity of the organisation based in Moskosel.
When. August 2018 (first part)
Where. Moskosel, within Arvidsjaur municipality (with a field trip in Luleå)
Who. The invited curator who participates in the residency is Carolina Ongaro, from London
Organizers. Northern Sustainable Futures in collaboration with ArtNorth and Region Norrbotten
From Jupiter to Arvidsjaur: considerations on a Nordic curatorial project
I am a curator based in London, operating both independently and collaboratively in London and internationally. I often work on a collaborative and conversational basis to test out different curatorial methodologies and the potency of dialogue and exchange, with a focus on the possibilities of cross-pollination of disciplines and practices. I am interested in exploring and activating hybrid platforms of artistic production, experimentation and presentation that differ from official ones, attempting a re-arrangement of hierarchies and established formats.
In 2014 I co-founded Jupiter Woods: an exhibition space, residency programme and studio facility located in South Bermondsey, London, devoted to supporting the development of curatorial and artistic research. Here I have been initiating artists’ residencies, exhibitions and long-term projects, collectively and individually; both in- and off-site. Being one of the main focus that of exchange, collaboration and dialogue, over the years we have formed collaborations with a range of organisations such as: Sorbus (Helsinki), Interstate Projects (New York), Rupert (Vilnius), Radical Reading (Athens), amongst many others. Jupiter Woods has been working as an important platform providing the artists, emerging and more established, with opportunities to test out alternative approaches to their practice, whilst we have been exploring feminist modes of organising, of working, of collaborating; setting up support structures both for our own survival and that of our peers.
Since 2018, Jupiter Woods continues this trajectory under my own direction, maintaining its mission as a platform for collaboration and experimentation; welcoming dialogue across disciplines, devoted to provide space to different voices and to the artistic community at large.
Now at its fourth year, Jupiter Woods wishes to maintain its commitment to facilitating the production and exchange of artistic and curatorial research; forging and developing collaboration across borders; and cultivating curatorial methodologies founded on relatedness, experimentation and the feminine.
With the 2018 programme, I wish to activate platforms of research and analysis that interrogate the manifold souls of knowledge and education in their relation to subject formation and embodied learning. This journey will weave through moments of research, performative elements and occasions of collective gathering that aim at generating dialogue and alternative strategies of knowing and learning. The trajectory so inaugurated will be marked by the opening of the garden as an extension of the gallery space. For this purpose, Jupiter Woods is collaborating with chats: a South-East London based food and socialising project, run by Leah Walker, Berry Patten and Dannie Russo, whose ethos is about offering a platform whilst recognising labour and fair exchange through collaborations.
Acknowledging the Periphery as a geographical, physical and mental sets of coordinates necessary to induce regenerative modes of thinking, learning and doing, a particular sensibility grounding the residency/project would encourage thus an understanding of ecology in its meanings of coexistence and co-dependence, movement and alteration far from pure and simplistic environmental connotations, activating an approach to thinking and making that intersects the personal domain, individual research and collective discourse.
Through my collaboration with Northern Sustainable Futures I wish to embark in such a trajectory, inviting a range of practitioners to spend time in this context, engaging with the locality as well as entering in conversation with one another. By spending time here through this year’s residency, I am looking at testing out these ideas and threads of enquiry; exploring the ways in which this dialogue can be initiated and taken further, within the locality and in conversation with a range of different contexts.
For Northern Sustainable Futures, I am looking at engaging my practice with Jupiter Woods into facilitating further exchange and dialogue across borders, favouring a meeting of disciplines between different localities and in dialogue with the natural and cultural landscape of Lapland. Looking at notions of belonging and mobility, Centre and Periphery, as well as facilitating interconnectivity, bonding and coalitions across networks, I am indeed interested in cultivating opportunities for different practices to respond to this particular context whilst reflecting on the validity of active engagement with the area that is both personal and collective.
A peripheral location is explored in its role of facilitating research, development and production in a balance between remoteness and proximity, international exchange and dialogue with the immediate surroundings; as well as its ability to weave novel connections to the Centre. Acknowledging the Periphery as a geographical, physical and mental sets of coordinates necessary to induce regenerative modes of thinking, learning and doing, a particular sensibility grounding the residency/project would encourage thus an understanding of ecology in its meanings of coexistence and co-dependence, movement and alteration far from pure and simplistic environmental connotations, activating an approach to thinking and making that intersects the personal domain, individual research and collective discourse.
Through my collaboration with NSF I wish to embark in such a trajectory, inviting a range of practitioners to spend time in this context, engaging with the locality as well as entering in conversation with one another. By spending time here through this year’s residency, I am looking at testing out these ideas and threads of enquiry; exploring the ways in which this dialogue can be initiated and taken further, within the locality and in conversation with a range of different contexts.
