Publishing as artistic practice – online course by MARYSIA LEWANDOWSKA for the School for Curatorial Studies Venice

Deadline for applying: March 4, 2023

The digital age has shown us how easily knowledge and information are now able to flow and circulate. It has rendered equally visible how hard it is especially for artists to challenge the dominant online presence with their commitment to printed matter and publishing. This workshop will engage with publications arguing for their role in creating a wider public. We will be discussing contemporary conditions of production, circulation, and distribution which insist on including questions of ownership, usership and belonging as concerns integral to the artistic practice itself. My experience with publishing lies at the intersection of art, intellectual property, and open culture involving alternative economies & digital ecologies, the commons, media & collectivity – all contributing to creating a sustainable public realm.

We will be focussing on expanding an ethics of curatorial practice, with a particular emphasis on alternative modes of research and indigenous knowledge. We might begin by asking questions like: What is the relationship between ethics, research, publishing and the institutionalised practices of curating? Can the institution exert moral agency? How does this change the way we practice as artists, curators and researchers and by extension shapes how we speak, read, write?

Through a series of interactive lectures hold by Marysia Lewwandowska, students will be able to turn to an alternative conception of publishing within artistic practices as the centre of this discussion, one which prioritises not information or formal knowledges but is embedded in the communal. We will enquire about forms of coming together through publishing not predetermined by outcomes but by a shared process of enquiry and a set of diverse interests.

STRUCTURE: The course is taught remotely and divided into 6 units. Online Study Lectures effectively run over the week – Tuesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm CET – maintaining our usual tours’ focused, intensive and immersive experience.

Session 1. Archival knowledge as public awakening.

Session 2. Exhibiting Art History. Aby Warburg - Mnemosyne Atlas.

Session 3. Artists/Publishers.

Session 4. Distributed practices. Forms of ownership.

Session 5. Online Viral Networks.

Session 6. Publication as Activism.

TEACHING: The remote learning experience includes lectures, seminar participation and discussions. The course provides unique opportunities for direct student engagement with arts professionals, as well an extensive array of discussion forums.
The teaching is intensive and supportive, with an emphasis on individual learning, and on developing a broad range of knowledge and understanding related to curating and its ethics.

FACULTY: The lectures will be hold by Marysia Lewandowska. She is a Polish-born artist based in London since 1985. She has been exploring the public functions of archives, museums and exhibitions often resulting in conceptually driven projects and films involving the property of others. These works propose new relations between forms of knowledge and ownership, activating reflections on the social and immaterial public realm. In 2009 she has established the Women’s Audio Archive followed by a publication Undoing Property? co-edited with Laurel Ptak in 2013. Her work has been presented by Tate Modern, Moderna Museet, Muzeum Sztuki, Whitechapel Gallery. The latest installation It’s About Time occupied the Pavilion of Applied Arts at the 58th Art Biennale in Venice. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has recently included the Enthusiasts Archive project in their collection. She is currently collaborating with Kunsthalle Baden Baden on re-thinking institutional practices for the post-pandemic times.www.marysialewandowska.com