Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu (Curator und Writer, Visiting Professor, Graduate School University at Berlin University of the Arts) and Daria Khan (Founder and Curator of Mimosa House, London) on making communities and informal infrastructures visibl. Moderated by Agnieszka Roguski (Artistic Director M.1 2021/22).

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How can curatorial practice create collaborative structures? How can institutional contexts take up informal infrastructures and develop them? And how does this make invisible networks visible? The curators Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu and Daria Khan each work with different communities and infrastructures that do not correspond to the representational power of the so-called Global North or heteronormative mainstream. In conversation with Agnieszka Roguski, the two curators explore these questions from different perspectives: Övül Durmuşoğlu will talk about her projects realised this year at the Autostrada Biennial in Prizren (Kosovo) and the Survival Kit art festival in Riga (Estonia), where she deals with infrastructures of public space on the one hand and the collective memory of different generations on the other. Daria Khan will speak about the founding and curation of the independent, non-profit art institution Mimosa House in London, which offers women and queer artists a safe and empowering space for artistic experimentation and collaboration. With these political and community-building approaches, the curators describe collective, but also institutional processes – and the social conditions that they make visible.

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Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu is an independent curator, educator and writer, currently guest professor and program co-leader in the Graduate School, UdK Berlin and visiting professor in the HBK Braunschweig. Focused on the intersectional narratives around contemporary political subjectivities, she acts between singular languages and collective energies, worldly immersions and historical cosmologies. Övül has recently co-curated 3rd AUTOSTRADA BIENNALE in Kosovo, 12th Survival Kit Festival in Riga, Latvia and Die Balkone: Life, Art, Pandemic and Proximity in Berlin (2020-21) with Joanna Warsza. She is engaged with CA2M Madrid, Kunsthalle Wien and Martin Gropius Bau for her future projects.

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Daria Khan is the curator of Mimosa House, an independent non-profit art institution that she founded in 2017 in London. Dedicated to artistic experimentation and collaboration, Mimosa House supports dialogue between intergenerational women and queer artists. Daria was a curator in residency at the MuseumsQuartier, Vienna and a participant of the EUNIC programme at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. She received her MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London, and is currently undertaking the PhD Art Programme at Goldsmiths University, London.

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The talk was recorded and can be watched on our YouTube or Vimeo channel.