Curators: Giulia Menegale, Tīna Pētersone
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Exhibition events
23. 2. at 6 pm: Tea Party
12. 3. at 6 pm: Nonument Group: Field events, presentation and discussion
15. 3. at 7 pm: Transformative institutions: charting paths to alternative futures, symposium
26. 3. at 5 pm: Krater Collective: Feral occupations, presentation and workshop
You are kindly invited to 02_2024’s public programme, the first public output of the initial phase of collaboration between Škuc Gallery and international curators Giulia Menegale and Tīna Pētersone, taking place from 12 March until the end of the month.
For the occasion, we have invited artists, curators, and other cultural workers whose artistic and curatorial practices critically respond to the ongoing neoliberal transformation of social life and how capitalism shapes relationships within the city.
The proposal stands on a definition of capitalism as a social structure, a ‘type of society’ that organizes the systematic consumption of extra-economic resources – such as nature, care, and poorly paid labour – in favour of the capitalist accumulation of few private investors and owners (Nancy Fraser, Cannibal capitalism, 2022).
Through our continuous research and programming under the framework of 02_2024, we aim to address questions such as: How do we work in culture? How do we relate to the public and private space? How do we understand sustainability? How do we create alignments with the anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggles striving for basic resource redistribution?
Noticing the multiple crises that the rational and market views have caused across different geographies, from the Adriatic to the Baltic Sea – the regions from where we come from –, with the public programme we propose an exercise of imagination based on emancipatory and anti-hegemonic artistic and community-oriented projects that purposefully place the economy in relation to social and ecological realities, redefining the boundaries and means that the former one can have.
Giulia Menegale and Tīna Pētersone
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The exhibition 02_2024 is structured as time and space for curatorial research. With it, we are launching a new international segment of our programme, dedicating the gallery space to a two-year intensive collaboration with cultural practitioners (artists, curators, writers, choreographers, dramaturgs, etc.). Our continuing interest and work in expanding the representative form of the exhibition, draws attention to precariousness, significance and other aspects of the work behind the exhibitions themselves.
The first part* of our international collaborations is entitled 02_2024 and will take place in collaboration with the international curators and writers Giulia Menegale and Tīna Pētersone, who will put at the forefront their research and analysis of the city of Ljubljana, looking at how its infrastructure shapes not only social relations – where capital is produced and reproduced – but also politics. The proposed research focuses on art practices and curatorial methodologies that anticipate alternative ways of being in the city and can respond to socio-economic crises by reconfiguring what scholars from different intellectual and political traditions (from Black Studies, Marxism to affect theory) call “affective infrastructures”, namely: the spatial and material organisation that allows individuals to remain with or against the conditions of the capitalist political economy.
02_2024 will include a substantial public programme – follow the Škuc Gallery website and social media for upcoming events!
*The second part of our collaboration with both curators will take place in 2025.
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Independent curator and writer Giulia Menegale (1995) is pursuing a PhD in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage at IMT in Lucca. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. In the academic year 2022–23, she completed her curatorial training at CuratorLab in Stockholm. Her research focuses on how art practices can reimagine and change institutions during economic and social crises. She has curated independent projects and talks, and was curator-in-residency for various institutions, including Platea (Lodi, Italy), KORA Contemporary Arts Center (Lecce, Italy) and Remont Gallery (Belgrade, Serbia). She has collaborated as an assistant curator for Castello di Rivoli, Museum of Contemporary Art (Rivoli-Turin, Italy) and Autostrada Biennale (Prizren, Kosovo). She has written papers for academic journals and art magazines such as Flash Art Italia, Nero Magazine, Blok Magazine.
Independent curator Tīna Pētersone (1994) from Riga holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London. With more than 25 curated shows under her belt, Pētersone’s achievements include winning the “Young Curator!” prize at the Riga Photography Biennial, co-founding the art space TUR (Riga, 2021), and curating the Zuzans collection retrospective exhibition at Zuzeum Art Centre (Riga, 2023). She was selected for prestigious residencies such as the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. Additionally, she participated in the Baltic Fellowship during the Performa Biennial 2023 in New York City. She has taken part in numerous curatorial courses, including the Summer Academy in Salzburg, Lokomotiva in Skopje, and the International Summer School of Photography in Riga, among others. Currently, she works as a guest curator at ETC. Magazine in Ljubljana.
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English proofreading: Arven Šakti Kralj
Slovene proofreading: Inge Pangos
Design: Lea Jelenko
Photos from events: Simao Bessa
Exhibition view in three phases: Matic Pandel
Photos from the Krater event: Sara Rman
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The Škuc Gallery programme is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.
