The Elemental Turn: Practicing Urban Curating, Turning the Compost, HfBK Hamburg, July 12, 2024

The notion of urban curating as a distinct and newurban practice first emerged at the turn of thecentury. The term was introduced by urban plannersand architects to envision alternatives to master-planning. At the time and for disciplines operatingoutside of the museum and the art world, curatingheld the promise of alternative approaches to urban planning. At the same time, independent culturalworkers including independent curators, in particular anti-patriarchal, anti-colonial, feminist, and queer practitioners, developed substantial critiques of curating highlighting that in the modern museum is implicated in colonial epistemic and material violence and that contemporary curating isakin to gatekeeping in neocolonial conditions of the globalized art world.
Given these historical implications, how cancurating – curare/care – be turned into criticalanti-colonial, anti-patriarchal, feminist, queer urban practice? And how does curatingaddress social and ecological urban injustice, the afterlife of colonial and patriarchal violence, and, more recently, the condition ofa wounded, damaged, broken planet and theongoing climate ruination caused byextractivism, exploitation, petro-masculinity, and authoritarian rule.