The Norient Special Politics of Curatorship is based on the book of the same name. It gathers essays, academic articles, poems, interviews, and photo essays seeking to disentangle the ubiquitous term curation from any formalized definition and to overcome the idea of having centralized control over an artistic product. The 32 contributors attempt to open up the term from a linear and often single-voiced method, offering to understand curating also as a queer, non-binary, or a mundane, individual activity (tabs on the browser, personal YouTube channel or radio channel switching, TV zapping) that includes one’s own experiences and perceptions. Edited by Philipp Rhensius and Monia Acciari.

  • Gatekeeping (photo: Lars K Jensen/Flickr).
    Gatekeeping Without a Gate
    Short Essay by Steph Kretowicz
    How to run an independent web platform without being too much of a «gatekeeper»? AQNB co-founder and editor about the platform’s struggle to archive a depicted scene by entering a cycle of mutual influence rather than (mis-)using curatorial power to make top-down statements.
  • Curating Means Involving Artists
    Quotation by Rim Jasmin Irscheid

    Curating means to involve a diverse mix of artists that reflect the space they emerge in.

  • Facilitating More than Anything
    Quotation by Antye Greie-Ripatti

    Curating means facilitating more than anything.

  • PoC-Cover.
    Politics of Curatorship: Collective and Affective Interventions
    Book
    What happens to curatorial practices when treated as multi-voiced, pluralistic, and process-based? The 32 contributors from all over the world, ask what curatorship could be when it is freed from its elitist notions.
  • Tahrir Square in Cairo – This was the main picture on the first Norient Website.
    Norient: From Tastemaking to Multimodal Storytelling (Part 1)
    Academic Text by Thomas Burkhalter
    What role and methods can a Western person adopt when curating contemporary music from a global perspective? In his ongoing endeavor to understand the world through music and sound, Norient founder Thomas Burkhalter suggests 13 curatorial principles. Read the first six here.
  • 3 views from the CrossSections_intervals Exhibition at Kunsthalle Exnergasse. (Photo: Matthias Bildstein & Basak Senova, Vienna 2018)
    A Curatorial Technique: Devising Process and Improvisation
    Short Essay by Basak Senova
    Curating exhibitions has often been a one-dimensional endeavor. Here, the curator Basak Senova suggests an approach that prioritizes constant feedback between artists and audience, as well as improvisation.
  • The Public and the Intimate: Documenting a Curatorial Process #2
    Photo Essay by Monia Acciari
    In this photo essay, Monia Acciari visualizes a curatorial process attempting to reconcile intimate and public absences, loss, and creativity.
  • Curating Means Learning to Sail
    Quotation by Thea Reifler, Phila Bergmann

    Curating means making working conditions as good as possible.

  • A medium that accelerated music piracy: the cassette tape (photo: StockSnap/Pixabay 2015).
    The Crime of Listening to What You Want
    Short Essay by Gisela Swaragita
    As a child, our writer made mixtapes out of recorded radio shows. In this personal essay, she explains how she disobeyed the station’s official music curation.
  • Curating Means Discover, Share, Discourse
    Quotation by Raphael Kariuki

    Curating means discover, share, discourse.

  • Sometimes a distorted image is more real than a clear one (Photo: Pxhere 2016).
    The Silent Mass I Carry Around
    Essay by Philipp Rhensius
    Even at a time of fragmented digital selves, people often align with a single self-description, suppressing their multiplicities. In this essay, our author attempts to re-sample the embattled term (self-)curation, in search of its supposed emancipatory potential.
  • «I liked the idea that there was a creative & graphic gesture... something born entirely from this experience.» (Design: Rebecca Salvadori 2021).
    Like a Fragrance in a Room
    Essay by Rebecca Salvadori
    What happens when curation resists any form of guidance? For Rebecca Salvadori, one of the curators of Norient Festival, this led to a silent rush of creativity. A claim for positive disorientation.
  • Guy in a White Cube
    Quotation by Lucia Udvardyová

    Not just the smartly stressed guy in a white cube is a curator.

  • Hyderabadi oil lamps used during Diwali (Shared by Hrishikesh Ingle in 2019).
    On Exposing the Curatorial «Us»: Curatorial Notes #1
    Essay by Monia Acciari
    How can we decentralise the power of curatorial spaces? According to our writer, we need to take into account irrationality as a creative process.
  • A Listener in a Subversive Way
    Quotation by Elisa Erkelenz

    Curating means to be a listener in a subversive way, to take care of knowledge.

  • Still of the trailer of Memoria (Kick the Machine Films, ZDF/Arte & Piano 2021).
    Haunted by an Invisible Sound
    Short Essay by Sulgi Lie
    How does sound shape visual perception in a movie? Watching «Memoria» by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, film scholar Sulgi Lie is shaken by a heavy bass that has no visible source.
  • Curating Means Creating a Narrative
    Quotation by Andrea Goetzke

    Curating means creating a narrative through other people’s words and works.

  • Is there a body-self that links the tangible and intangible and keeps us whole? (photo: Pxhere 2018).
    Music as Embodied Practice
    Short Essay by Radha Mahendru
    How does a body-self express itself in a digital sphere? In her reflection on a 12th century poem and the singing at anti-CAA protests in India, our writer reassesses the body in pandemic times.
  • Trust Your Instincts
    Quotation by Chico Dub

    Trust your instincts but sometimes let go of your ego.

  • Screening Space of the Cinema «Filmtheater» in Munich (photo: Cinemamuenchen/Wikimedia 2017).
    My Difference Between Watching and Seeing a Film
    Essay by Chafic Tabbara
    Selecting a film for a festival requires us to look beyond pure preference. In this essay, Chafic Tabbara, film critic and co-artistic director of Norient Festival 2022, shares his thoughts on curating films for cinema in the age of online streaming.
  • Curating Means Being Unreasonable
    Quotation by Daniel «Duex» Fontana

    Curating means letting things happen by chance, being unreasonable.