The conference approaches the main issues and questions regarding the production of knowledge in the arts and in curatorial practices. From a critical perspective, Boaventure Ndikung and Paul Goodwin will discuss the tensions and conflicts between South and North dichotomies, geographical divisions and assimilations, and the urgent need to decolonize the process of curating and producing an art exhibition.

Bios

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is an independent art curator and biotechnologist from the Republic of Cameroon. He has been living on and off Berlin since 1997, where he works as artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary Berlin from which he is also founder, and as editor-in-chief of SAVVY Journal for critical texts on African contemporary art.  As a curator, he was a curator-at-large for Documenta 14 and is a guest curator of the 2018 Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal. Recent curatorial projects include “Every Time A Ear di Soun” — a Documenta 14 Radio Program, SAVVY Contemporary, 2017; “The Conundrum of Imagination”, Leopold Museum Vienna/ Wienerfestwochen, 2017; “An Age of our Own Making in Holbæk”, MCA Roskilde and Kunsthal Charlottenborg Copenhagen, 2016-17; “Unlearning the Given: Exercises in Demodernity and Decoloniality”, SAVVY Contemporary, 2016; “The Incantation of the Disquieting Muse”, SAVVY Contemporary, 2016.
He is currently a guest Professor in Curatorial Studies at the Städelschule Frankfurt.

Paul Goodwin is an independent curator, urban theorist and professor based in London. His curatorial, research and writing projects extend across the interdisciplinary fields of contemporary art and urbanism with a particular focus on African diaspora artists and visual cultures. As a curator at Tate Britain from 2008 to 2012, he directed Tate Britain’s pioneering Cross Cultural Programme, a multi-disciplinary platform dedicated to exploring the impact of globalisation on contemporary art in the UK. Goodwin has also curated and co-curated a number of internationally significant exhibitions. Recent exhibitions include: “Transfigurations: Curatorial and Artistic Research in the Age of Migrations”, MACBA Barcelona, 2014, “Ghosts”, Hangar, Lisbon 2016, “Chloe Dewe Mathews: In Search of Frankenstein”, 2016 and “Olaf Breuning: Save the Climate!”, 2017, Verbier 3D Foundation Sculpture Park, Switzerland, “Untitled: Art on the Conditions of Our Time”, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK, 2017. He is currently Professor of Contemporary art and Urbanism and Director of TrAIN (Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation) at University of the Arts London.

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