Special course: Fast and furious (2023)

In the end of summer 2023 Index held a 3-day course for the International Master’s Program in Curating at Stockholm University.

Course introduction
Is it possible to work in a fast way with complex content? How to define projects and put them into practice at short notice? This short and intense course brings together the two groups of participants from Curating Art at Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation to work around concepts such as institutional frameworks, curatorial desires, project culture, methodologies and risk taking.
Starting from the position of Index as an institution with a base in experimentation, the participants will be exposed to some of the methodologies related to curatorial practices that are applied at Index. Some specific raw material in the form of recorded talks and interviews with curators, artists and directors of multiple institutions including Index, will be discussed and worked with during the sessions of this encounter.

The course structure

1. Index as an institution
-25 years of testing
-Do we want to celebrate?
-The doing. The -Ing Form
-Leaking Container / Tracking Distribution / Editorial Thinking

2. The recorded talks
-Listening and defining possible approaches to an open archive of voices
-Meta information and the active archive

3. The group dynamics
-Divide in groups for fast thinking
-Curatorial speed dating

4. Working methodologies
-With the selected material (and the information gathered during the curatorial speed dating) define a working methodology that could lead to a project

5. Testing the ideas
-Develop a project

6. Presenting the ideas
-Present the ideas for projects and pro-active discussion around it

7. Feedback
-Feedback from switched positions

Take on a different position (institution, curator, artist) and formulate quick critical feedback from those positions, as a way of suggesting / troubleshooting to help develop the idea

8. Rework and re-present

Teaching format
Lectures, group activities, workshops and presentations.

Course period: 30 August – 1 September 2023