2018 Berlin

The Independent Curators Lab & Network Berlin (ICLNB) is a collaborative initiative and platform for independent curatorial practice in Berlin. ICLNB promotes the circulation of practice-based knowledge between Berlin-based curators, a conceptual laboratory to develop a discourse around the theoretical and practical themes, questions and challenges regarding independent curatorial work in the city, as well as on a transnational level. ICLNB reflects the diversity of curatorial practices (in plural), moving beyond common understandings of the mediation of arts and culture outside, and in relationship to artistic and cultural institutions.

ICLNB looks at the diverse augmented work processes of Curating, Organizing, Producing, Managing, Mediating and Conceptualizing, among other activities in the art world. The project thematizes the nature and efficiency of constituting meaning through curatorial work. Bringing to the forefront the (at times isolated yet collective) processual labour of these activities, we aim to create a space for meta-reflection on the practice of curatorship in the specific context of Berlin’s art scene.

In 2018, ICLNB organized a series of informal meetings with curators, cultural managers and other art world professionals based in Berlin in the format of Living Room Sessions. Making use of the intimacy and vulnerability involved in hosting people in one’s own home, each Living Room Session created a safe space to share personal experiences. In a moderated discussion, topics such as process-based curating, the structure of curatorial work, curatorial nomadism, how to make one’s choices, the creative process of the curator, the struggle for funding, and how to plan ahead were covered.

ICLNB was founded in collaboration with Yael Sherill, Sapir Hubermann, Milosz Rosinski, Lisa Susanne Schorm, Heiko Pfreundt, Paz Ponce Pérez-Bustamante and Kate Brehme.