PERFORMING CURATION 2024

PERFORMING CURATION is a programme that experiments with the margins of possibility for the creation of shared curatorial spaces between citizens and art institutions.

In its third edition, PERFORMING CURATION invites those interested to participate in two days of exploration around the current Iberian performance scene and to choose one of its artists to be programmed at the Santa Mònica arts centre in 2025.

On the weekend of Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 October, PERFORMING CURATION 2024 programmes a seminar on contemporary performance practices and a session from which to choose an Iberian performance artist to be programmed next year.

The PERFORMING CURATION 2024 seminar on contemporary performance practices will be given by curators and performance art researchers Pedro Alberto Cruz, Semíramis Gonzalez and Marta Pol Rigau, each of whom will give a masterclass on one perspective of contemporary performance art.

The PERFORMING CURATION assemblies held since 2022 have programmed performances in Barcelona by Cangrejo Pro, Begoña Grande, Cacao Diaz, Elena Carvajal / Fran Martinez, Paloma Orts, Neus Masdeu or Marla Jacarilla at MACBA, Fundació Joan Brossa, L'Estruch or Santa Mònica.

PERFORMING CURATION 2024 will take place at Santa Mònica as part of the ARTefACTe4 conference, a device for the promotion of contemporary performance practices that operates as a laboratory of new cultural institutionality. A CLUB9 project.

• Saturday 19 October, 16h - 19h, seminar.
• Sunday 20 October, 11am - 3pm, seminar.
• Sunday 20 October, 16h - 19h, assembly.

By Pedro A. Cruz Sánez, Semíramis González and Marta Pol Rigau 

Pedro A. Cruz Sánchez is a lecturer in contemporary art at the University of Murcia, art critic and theorist, and poet. His books include: Marcel Duchamp. La sombra y lo femenino (Bellaterra, 2016); Arte y performance. Una historia desde las vanguardias hasta la actualidad (Akal, 2021); and Raza, género y moral. Lo limpio y lo sucio en el arte contemporáneo (Abada, 2023). In the master class she will give at PERFORMING CURATION, she will offer a survey of some key names in contemporary performance -Tania Bruguera, Regina José Galindo, Santiago Sierra, Andrea Fraser, etc.-, from which she will analyse how arctic performative practices have monetised systemic power strategies in order to subsequently deconstruct them and reorient them towards overtly critical ends.

Semíramis González is an independent Asturian curator based in Madrid. She holds a degree in Art History from the University of Oviedo and a Master's degree in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture from the Reina Sofia Museum, Complutense University. She is currently the curator of "Vision and Presence", a cycle of performances by women artists at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum and a lecturer on the PHotoESPAÑA Master's Degree in Photography Projects, the Master's Degree in Art Business at the CEU San Pablo University and the Master's Degree in Cultural Management at La Fàbrica. At PERFORMING CURATION 2024 she will give a lecture on contemporary feminist performance art practices in Iberia.

Marta Pol Rigau has a PhD and a degree in Art History from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, a specialisation course in Post-War and Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Educational Studies, London, a philosophy degree, a Masters in Cultural Management and a Postgraduate Diploma in Cultural Management and Policies from the University of Barcelona, and a scholarship for a stay at University College Dublin. He has received the Fundació Espais de Girona Prize for Criticism (1997) for the texts of the cycle Absences and Without Number-Action Art (1996) and the first prize in Visual Arts of the Temps de les Arts 2020 for the programme ARBAR 2020 Performative Proposals. In PERFORMING CURATION 2024 he will give a lecture on action art in Iberia.