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Fellowship

Fellow 2018/2019

Katayoun Arian

Katayoun Arian is a researcher, curator, DJ, and writer with a background in art history (Leiden University, Leiden) and a Master’s degree in organization science (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam). Her projects range from exhibitions, discursive events, and screenings to reading circles and other forms of interdisciplinary and collaborative work including music-related events. Curatorial projects include the platform Fwd: Gher Space, Amsterdam, 2017–ongoing; Grada Kilomba: Illusions, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 2017; I Speak in Tongues, 37PK, Haarlem, 2017; Voices Outside the Echo Chamber: Questioning Myths, Facts and Framings of Migration, 2016, and The End of This Story (And the Beginning of All Others), 2015, both Framer Framed, Amsterdam.

Fellowship Research Trajectory

As part of a series of gatherings convened by writer, researcher, and curator Katayoun Arian, Conversation Circle: Decolonizing Globalized Dutch Contemporary Art Institutions? aims to collectively reflect on the increased discourse about de-racializing and decolonizing contemporary art institutions and cultural practices. During these “circles,” participants collectively discuss with invited speakers the ways current types of institutional engagement with decolonial curatorial models, artistic forms, and knowledges could potentially conceal institutional business as usual and prevent actual reform from happening. Institutions generally impose order, control, standardization, and foster a general culture of resistance toward critique and dissent. What are the ethical considerations to decolonizing art institutions? What happens when social movements, artists, theorists, and curators of non-Western backgrounds are invited to institutionalized platforms to present their ideas and work? In what ways does their praxis coincide with (or negate) a re-examination of organizational functions and forms? What are the implications of global neo-liberal economy on organizing in the arts and culture sector in the Netherlands?

The Conversation Circle is also a space for fostering extra-institutional kinships, solidarities, and forms of organizing necessary to reform cultural institutions and practices as artists, theorists, and curators. The Conversation Circle strives to create a collective space for learning and listening.

Regarding Curatorial Activism, the Role of History and Archives

As part of the 2nd Tehran Curatorial Symposium: Curator as Translator, January 2019, Katayoun Arian was invited by organizer, Fereshte Moosavi to speak on curatorial activism. Drawing parallels between the role of history, archival practices, activism, and the decolonial turn, she views the space in which the act of translation unfolds to act as a […]

Sruti Bala: Decolonizing Theater Studies and the Anecdote

Dr. Sruti Bala leads a discussion on decolonizing Theater and Performance Studies and the use of the anecdote during the Fellows Workshop on 21 November 2018.

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