Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/550022
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 AUGUST 2015 This Week 31 over imported notions of 'quality' In fact, the well-known Dutch academic Mieke Bal provided a 'bridge' between the school and last year's festival programme be- cause she participated in both, and this year, we have more interna- tional curators and a much bigger number of participating artists. In this year's VIVA, we also have an exhibition, 'The Culture of Ageing', which is being curated by Dutch curators Lennard Dost and Mare van Koningsveld, who were both curators-in-residence in Valletta last year. Two of the Maltese artists in this exhibition, Kristina Borg and Adrian Abela, participated in 'Divergent Think- ers' last year, which also formed part of VIVA. I am also aware of discussions between speakers in last year's school and local public and pri- vate entities about the possibility of future collaborations. Students who presented curatorial ideas in the school last year actually put together new exhibitions based on these ideas and showed them both locally and internationally (for ex- ample, Carolina Bartolotti's exhi- bition 'Afterselfie', which traveled to Trento after being shown in Malta). What would be the long-term benefits of having fully-trained curators in the visual arts, to the Maltese arts scene? Hopefully, this will help to professionalise the field and to change attitudes about exhibitions and relationships between art and publics. An exhibition is not about 'filling' a space, but about an informed, researched and per- haps even poetic relationship with whatever is being exhibited and with whoever has been involved (physically but also 'culturally') in the making of the works and the ideas they convey. I am not only referring to re- search in an academic sense. I am thinking about the time and dedi- cation that people put into the things they are passionate about, as against the haste that we ex- perience so often in finding cost- effective 'solutions'. Art needs time to develop, and it usually doesn't adapt easily to the straitjacket of preconceived 'outcomes'. So I really hope that the professionalisation of the field we hope to achieve does not be- come yet another box to tick in the realm of funding schemes. Art should never be reduced to a man- agerial exercise because its most exciting moments always happen when perceptions are shifted or challenged. How would you describe the as- sembled international partici- pants of VIVA this time around? What makes them amenable to the Maltese scene? We have some very inspiring artists and curators who are par- ticipating in this year's VIVA and Curatorial School. Amongst the curators, we have Adam Budak, who has worked at the Hir- schhorn in Washington DC and is Chief Curator at the National Gallery in Prague. We will have the well-known Turkish curator Fulya Erdemci, two Egyptian cu- rators, Mai Abu ElDahab and Bas- sam el Baroni, the French curator and academic Paul Ardenne and Simon Sheikh, who is a professor of curating at Goldsmiths. Amongst the artists who are particularly relevant to the Mal- tese scene, I'd single out Zineb Sedira, who has been nominated this year for France's prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp. Her video piece in one of the exhibitions we have deals with the contradictions of immigration and emigration in the Mediterranean, which obvi- ously has a local, political mean- ing too. We didn't have a landmark in- stallation like 'Zieme' this year. Why do you think this is, and what can we look forward to in VIVA this year? Austin Camilleri's sculpture was indeed a landmark sculpture, but it would be useless and impossible to replicate it. This year we will have a large installation in Pjazza Regina by emerging artist Aaron Bezzina which will probably at- tract some attention, despite the fact that it is quite literally a 'low- profile' piece. Amongst inter- national artists to look out for, I could mention the famous Israeli artist Yael Bartana, for whom we are building a very specific 'con- tainer' to house one of her video installations at St James Cavalier. I'm also keen about an exhibi- tion of Palestinian video art be- ing curated by Iury Lech, director of the festival of audio-visual art 'MADATAC' in Madrid. And we are already looking forward to the future: we have an agreement with MADATAC that will export the video works of four Maltese artists to Madrid in the coming months. So, this year's VIVA is already bearing fruit. Prospective participants in the Curatorial School must submit a filled-in application form, down- loadable via the link: http://www. viva.org.mt/#curatorial-school and a recent CV by August 4 2015 at noon. Results will be notified by August 6. For further informa- tion contact the Valletta 2018 Foundation on 2124 2018 or at projects1@valletta2018.org Shots from last year's edition of the VIVA Curatorial School • Photography by Elisa Von Brockdorff