Behind recipes it's talking: Lecture by Rike Frank

It is precisely because of the power that exhibitions have in assigning or opening up meanings, in creating contexts and situating viewers, that standardized exhibition methods and formats as well as display conventions need to be critically rethought and potentially subverted.

Julie Ault, Three Snapshots from the Eighties: On Group Material, 2007, in: Lucy Steeds, Exhibition, 2014.

Coming together for 3 hours, we will discuss the terminology linked to exhibitions, to exhibiting – to show, present, propose, to offer, argue, demonstrate, to expose, narrate, subvert, to give, occupy or inhabit time and space! The situation will promptly complicate by entering a field – the curatorial –, negotiating the materialization of research, the role of references and of framing, of community, location, time and timing. Discussion, disagree and doubt will be elemental tools to identify methods and strategies, to start a conversation, to voice a practice, and to develop further plans together.

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Rike Frank is a curator and writer based in Berlin and Oslo. She is currently Associate Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Art of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and programmed the exhibition space at the Academy of Art Leipzig from 2010-2012, including a solo show by the Austrian filmmaker and photographer Friedl vom Gröller (2012) and the group show “Variations of a Theme” (2013); she was curator of “Textilities … and Roses, too (2015) for the Ratti Foundation and participated in Curated by (Vienna, 2014); with Grant Watson she initiated the long-term research and exhibition project “Textiles: Open Letter”, exploring the seminal role of textiles in contemporary art and art history; presentations included the group exhibition “Abstractions, Textiles, Art” (Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, 2013), the conference “The Haptic Space” (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2012 with Sabeth Buchmann) and a series of seminars (bulegoa z/b, Bilbao, with Leire Vergara).

As a writer her texts have appeared in Afterall, artforum, Texte zur Kunst, Camera Austria and springerin. Publication projects include, as author, editor and co-editor, Textiles: Open Letter (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2015), Timing—On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014), Sketches of Universal History: Compiled from Several Authors by Sarah Pierce (London: Book Works, 2013), and Constanze Ruhm: ‘Coming Attractions’ (Vienna: Schlebrügge.Editor, 2012). In 2016 and 2017 she co-organized the two-part public seminar entitled Of(f) Our Times: The Aftermath of the Ephemeral and other Curatorial Anachronics dedicated to exhibition histories. Rike Frank is Corresponding Member of the Secession, Vienna and an advisory board member of the Tromsø Kunstforening.