Eurological ways of curating music tend to ignore their own social and aesthetic contexts. In his essay, the composer Sandeep Bhagwati asks for more wakefulness in choosing that acknowledges the pluralities of musics today.
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.
Short Essay by Steph KretowiczHow 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.- Quotation by Rim Jasmin Irscheid
Curating means to involve a diverse mix of artists that reflect the space they emerge in.
- Quotation by Antye Greie-Ripatti
Curating means facilitating more than anything.
BookWhat 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.
Academic Text by Thomas BurkhalterWhat 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.
Short Essay by Basak SenovaCurating 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.
Photo Essay by Monia AcciariIn this photo essay, Monia Acciari visualizes a curatorial process attempting to reconcile intimate and public absences, loss, and creativity.- Quotation by Thea Reifler, Phila Bergmann
Curating means making working conditions as good as possible.
Short Essay by Gisela SwaragitaAs 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.- Quotation by Raphael Kariuki
Curating means discover, share, discourse.
Essay by Philipp RhensiusEven 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.
Essay by Rebecca SalvadoriWhat 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.- Quotation by Lucia Udvardyová
Not just the smartly stressed guy in a white cube is a curator.
Essay by Monia AcciariHow can we decentralise the power of curatorial spaces? According to our writer, we need to take into account irrationality as a creative process.- Quotation by Elisa Erkelenz
Curating means to be a listener in a subversive way, to take care of knowledge.
Short Essay by Sulgi LieHow 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.- Quotation by Andrea Goetzke
Curating means creating a narrative through other people’s words and works.
Short Essay by Radha MahendruHow 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.
Essay by Chafic TabbaraSelecting 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.- Quotation by Daniel «Duex» Fontana
Curating means letting things happen by chance, being unreasonable.
