How can we learn something that does not yet exist?
On the one hand, it sounds paradoxical—learning as an authority technique is often an afterthought,
verifiable and predictable practice—but actually learning is just that: learning in advance.
With my contribution, I would like to reflect on two concrete projects that use curatorial practice,
art education, radical pedagogy, situated knowledge and public art to explore a world that does not yet exist:
The Museum of Burning Questions and the Partisan Café,
both of which were part of the freethought project infrastructure at Bergen Assembly 2016.
The research and exhibition project infrastructure of freethought
provided the framework for a curatorial practice located between
public education, collaborative knowledge production and the exhibition of our research.
Nora Sternfeld is an art educator and curator. Since January 2018 she is
documenta professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel.
From 2012 to 2018 she was professor for Curating and Mediating Art
at the Aalto University in Helsinki. Furthermore she is co-director of
the /ecm – Master Program in Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University
of Applied Arts Vienna; part of the core team of schnittpunkt.
ausstellungstheorie & praxis; a co-founder and part of trafo.K, Office for Art,
Education and Critical Knowledge Production (Vienna); and since 2011, a member of freethought,
platform for research, education, and production (London).
In this capacity she was also one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly 2016.
She publishes on contemporary art, exhibitions, politics of history, educational, and anti-racism.
