Taking (Back) Care Workshop

This one-day workshop one-day workshop on curatorial habits of care was led by Helena Reckitt & Christine Shaw. The workshop explored the textures of curatorial care, and lack of care, in an art sector where many involved feel under-valued and uncared for.

Drawing on their own experiences of the visual art field, and guided through writing, reading and listening exercises, participants generated propositions for creating frameworks that foster curatorial care, mutual aid, and collective political practices to push back against prevailing extractivist attitudes which treat care, like nature, as a free, infinite resource.

The workshop was attended by curators, artists, students, academics, activists and cultural organisers engaged in the politics and practices of cultural labour, self and collective care and caring ecologies.

The workshop included discussions of readings on curatorial labour, creative survival, ethical relationality, interdependency, pirate care, and rematriation.

Participants worked in small groups to explore the proposition of 'Productive Refusal,' introduced by Reckitt. They then performed examples of times when they had said 'yes' to a problematic invitation or assignment, and how saying 'no' might have initiated new personal, professional, and institutional dynamics.

The day concluded with staff from Ferme du Boisson joining workshop participants to write a collective statement, 'Propositions for Taking (Back) Care.' The document was jointly written by Diego Aristizábal, Florence Cheval, Anne Degroux, Florian Fischer, Aurélie Gravelat, Marina James-Appel, Lucie Ménard , Léna Monnier, Terah Noll, Julie Pellegrin, Pusha Petrov, Christine Shaw, Septembre Tiberghien, and Yves Tixier.