I Hope This Message Finds You Well I Hope This Message

In the fourth episode of the season we talked to Hendrik Folkerts, Curator of International Contemporary Art and Head of Exhibitions at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. With Hendrik we talked about the ways his former experience in curating performance and public programmes influenced his current curatorial practice and approach to exhibition-making. He sees the exhibition as a relational mechanism, manifested by his interest in scenography, staging artworks and the way bodies move through space. We also talked about Hendrik’s approach to curating and his recent projects: Seven Rooms and a Garden: Rashid Johnson and the Moderna Museet collection, and a large-scale solo exhibition Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product.

Hendrik Folkerts is Curator of International Contemporary Art and Head of Exhibitions at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Previously he served as the Dittmer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago between 2017–2021. He was also a member of the curatorial team of documenta 14 and served in Amsterdam as curator of performance, film, and discursive programs at the Stedelijk Museum.

If you have feedback we’d love to receive your email at ihopethismessagefindsyouwell@gmail.com; you can also follow us on Instagram @ihopethismessage. The jingle was made by the artist Natalia Solzano and sound engineering by Nick Thomas. Graphic design by Christophe Clarijs.

We have launched our I Hope This Message Finds You Well t-shirts, get them via our Everpress campaign: everpress.com/i-hope-this-message

The episode was recorded in January 2024.


Show notes:

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam https://www.stedelijk.nl/en
Curatorial Programme at De Appel Arts Centre https://www.deappel.nl/en/curatorial-programme/518-intro
Seven Rooms and a Garden: Rashid Johnson and the Moderna Museet collection
https://www.modernamuseet.se/stockholm/en/exhibitions/rashid-johnson-seven-rooms-and-a-garden/
University of Amsterdam https://www.uva.nl/en
Rachel Esner
Marga van Mechelen
Miriam van Rijsingen
Sophie Berrebi
If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want to be Part of Your Revolution https://ificantdance.org/
Tino Seghal
Maria Hassabi
Alexandra Bachzetsis
Stuart Comer Catherine Wood
Sharon Hayes
Wu Tsang
Every Ocean Hughes
Rashid Johnson
Ann Goldstein
The Sovereignty of Quiet by Kevin Quashie https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/the-sovereignty-of-quiet/9780813553108/
Vaginal Davis
Nationalmuseum Stockholm https://www.nationalmuseum.se/en/
Index Stockholm https://indexfoundation.se/
Accelerator Stockholm https://acceleratorsu.art/en/frontpage/
Tensta konsthall ​​https://www.tenstakonsthall.se/en
documenta 14 https://www.documenta14.de/en/
Adam Szymczyk
The Art Institute of Chicago https://www.artic.edu/

In the third episode of the season we talked to Puerto Rican curator and writer Sharmyn Cruz Rivera. As with all our guests this season, we discuss her views on the exhibition and the ways her practice aims to expand the boundaries of exhibition-making, with an emphasis on collaborations and dialogue. Sharmyn also explains to us how she listens to the exhibition, and we discuss how sound and listening resist the traditional exhibition structure of containment. We also talk about the ways communities are often taken for granted within an exhibition framework and how listening helps us tap into the world around us in different ways.

In our introductory short conversation with Eloise we talk about enchantment and exhibitions where we had that experience lately.

About our guest: Sharmyn Cruz Rivera is a Puerto Rican curator and writer based in Rotterdam. Her curatorial practice seeks to expand the boundaries of exhibition-making to make way for emerging formats of interdisciplinary collaboration, presentation, and dialogue. Her work explores the politics of identity under the conditions of modernity, colonialism, and capitalism and how subversion manifests in creative acts of refusal. She often tackles the legacy of colonisation within the Caribbean context through the lens of contemporary artistic production and strategies of redress.

If you have feedback we’d love to receive your email at ihopethismessagefindsyouwell@gmail.com; you can also follow us on Instagram @ihopethismessage. The jingle was made by the artist Natalia Solzano and sound engineering by Nick Thomas. Graphic design by Christophe Clarijs.

We have launched our I Hope This Message Finds You Well t-shirts, get them via our Everpress campaign: everpress.com/i-hope-this-message

The episode was recorded in January 2024.

Show notes:

Sharmyn Cruz Rivera https://www.sharmyncruzrivera.com/
Nibia Pastrana Santiago https://www.nibiapastrana.com/
Daniel Giles https://www.pzwart.nl/blog/2020/04/01/danny-giles/
The Josephine Baker house by Adolf Loos https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/loos-and-baker-a-house-for-josephine
Fluister de Wind Waarop at De Appel https://www.deappel.nl/en/archive/events/1139-fluister-de-wind-waarop
Lampo, Chicago https://lampo.org/
The Art Ensemble of Chicago https://www.artensembleofchicago.com/
Sun Ra
Pauline Oliveros
Max Neuhaus
Connie Fredericks-Malone https://conniefredericksmalone.com/
Fuga, curated by Sharmyn at Shimmer https://shimmershimmer.org/
Félix González-Torres https://www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/

Welcome to the second episode of the third season of I Hope This Message Finds You Well, a podcast on curating hosted by Kris Dittel and Eloise Sweetman. In this season we are focusing our conversations around “the exhibition”. With our guests we discuss its status for curating, and whether we take it for granted. We want to dig deeper into the exhibition as a location for the display and reception of artworks, a space of representation and liberation, and its limitations.

In this episode, we are in conversation with curator, organizer, and researcher Eszter Szakács. We discussed her curatorial beginnings as a curator’s assistant to making the Curatorial Dictionary and her recent exhibition Dóra Maurer – SUMUS – We Are Together at De Appel in Amsterdam. For Szakács, the exhibition is a place of learning, as she says “When the exhibition is open, the work begins”. That work is learning from her mistakes to use as the launching pad for a new research and exhibition. The organizing work of making exhibitions and events political, which she discusses in her work with OFF Biennale.

The episode was recorded in August 2023.

If you have feedback we’d love to receive your email at ihopethismessagefindsyouwell@gmail.com; you can also follow us on Instagram @ihopethismessage. The jingle was made by the artist Natalia Solzano and sound engineering by Nick Thomas. Graphic design by Christophe Clarijs.

We have launched our I Hope This Message Finds You Well t-shirts, get them via our Everpress campaign: everpress.com/i-hope-this-message

Show notes:

In this interview, we discussed & mentioned:
De Appel https://www.deappel.nl/en/
OFF-Biennale Budapest https://offbiennale.hu/en/off-biennale-budapest/
Hajnalka Somogyi https://ccs.bard.edu/people/195-hajnalka-somogyi
CCS Bard https://ccs.bard.edu/school
Lívia Páldi, https://hvg.hu/360/20230728_nacionalizmus_idegengyulolet_eroszak_Paldi_Livia_kurator_A_Mu_interju
Curatorial dictionary https://tranzit.org/curatorialdictionary/index.php/dictionary/
Lara Khaldi, https://soundcloud.com/ihopethismessage/i-hope-this-message-finds-you-well-lara-khaldi
Paul O'Neill https://soundcloud.com/ihopethismessage/i-hope-this-message-finds-you-well-paul-oneill-s2-ep5
Maria Lind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Lind
Documenta fifteen https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/
lumbung https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/lumbung/
Dóra Maurer, SUMUS – We Are Together at De Appel https://www.deappel.nl/en/archive/events/1196-dra-maurer-sumus-we-are-together
Works and Words, De Appel, Amsterdam, 1979: https://www.deappel.nl/en/archive/events/143-works-and-words
Eszter Szakács, "State-Independent Art Institutions in Unsteady States: Con/Divergences of Postsocialist and Postcolonial Contexts", Artha – Journal of Social Sciences, 2021, Vol. 20 https://journals.christuniversity.in/index.php/artha/article/view/2980/2086

Welcome to the third season of I Hope This Message Finds You Well, a podcast on curating hosted by Kris Dittel and Eloise Sweetman.

In this season we’ll be focusing our conversations around “the exhibition”. With our guests we discuss its status for curating, and whether we take the exhibition format for granted. We want to dig deeper into the exhibition as a location for the display and reception of artworks, a space of representation and liberation, and its limitations.

Today's episode is with us getting back into the swing of things, and we discuss a lot. From comments from listeners to the job of curating, vulnerability, power dynamics, what kind of feelings are allowed in the exhibition space and the space of work. We also share perspectives on the exhibition and what we think it can and cannot do.

The episode was recorded somewhere in August 2023.

If you have feedback we’d love to receive your email at ihopethismessagefindsyouwell@gmail.com; you can also follow us on Instagram @ihopethismessage and find us on SoundCloud @ihopethismessage. The jingle was made by the artist Natalia Solzano and sound engineering by Nick Thomas. Graphic design by Christophe Clarijs.

We have launched our I Hope This Message Finds You Well t-shirts, get them via our Everpress campaign: https://everpress.com/i-hope-this-message

Show notes:
Jindřich Chalupecký Society https://www.sjch.cz/en/
Happier in Hollywood https://happierinhollywood.com/
Joseph Grigely’s Conversation with the Hearing http://www.airdeparis.com/artists/joseph-grigely/oeuvres/conversations/conversations-grigely.html
Shimmer, https://shimmershimmer.org/
Byung Chul Han's The Scent of Time https://www.google.nl/books/edition/The_Scent_of_Time/FGw3DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
Temporary Gallery CCA https://www.temporarygallery.org/en/homepage-2/
Unruly Kinships exhibition https://www.temporarygallery.org/en/unruly-kinships-2/

I Hope This Message Finds You Well is back! With this trailer we are launching the third season of the podcast on curating, hosted by Kris Dittel and Eloise Sweetman.

In each episode we talk to our guests about their work, professional trajectory, motivation, and reasons to work as a curator or otherwise. In this season we focus on the topic of the exhibition – as format, medium, and device. We've talked to Eszter Szakács, Sharmyn Cruz Rivera, Hendrik Folkerts, Clémentine Deliss and others about the meaning, possibilities and limits of the exhibition.

Our jingle is by Natalia Sorzano, an artist based between Bogotá (Colombia) and Rotterdam. She's working primarily with mixed media installations, music, and performances to video. In her work she inquires how relations between human and more-than-human species, objects and spaces unfold and how they affect our subjectivity. Find out more about her work at https://nataliasorzano.wordpress.com/

Our sound engineer is Nick Thomas. https://www.studiowolphi.net/
The third season of the podcast also got a makeover, courtesy of Christophe Clarijs. http://christopheclarijs.be/

We have launched our I Hope This Message Finds You Well t-shirts, get them via our Everpress campaign: https://everpress.com/i-hope-this-message

I Hope This Message Finds You Well is a podcast on curating hosted by Kris Dittel and Eloise Sweetman. In this episode, we talk with Zippora Elders with whom we delve into the imaginative realm of curating, connecting the personal to profound questions, and her approach to navigating institutions.

Zippora Elders is the chief curator (head curatorial department & outreach) of the Gropius Bau in Berlin. Previously she was director of Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen in the Netherlands, where she has since 2016 increased the visibility of this UNESCO heritage site as a thriving retreat for contemporary art and ecological exchange under the themes of Science Fiction and Enchantment, Healing, Fertility. In 2019 she also became co-curator of Sonsbeek 20-24: On Labour and its Sonic Ecologies. Formerly she was curator at Foam, museum for photography in Amsterdam. She studied Art History, Curatorial Practice and Museum Curatorship, with extracurricularly Public Administration and Philosophy.

The episode was recorded in May 2022.

If you have feedback we’d love to receive your email at ihopethismessagefindsyouwell@gmail.com; you can also follow us on Instagram @ihopethismessage and find us on SoundCloud @ihopethismessage. The jingle was made by the artist duo Momu & No Es and sound engineering by Nick Thomas. Graphic design by Christophe Clarijs.

Show notes

Institutions and exhibitions mentioned in this episode:
Foam Museum Amsterdam https://www.foam.org/nl
Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen https://www.kunstfort.nl/
‘En­chant em­brace them you odd penin­sula, A gathering with love, for Kunstfort’ https://www.kunstfort.nl/en/exhibitions/enchant-embrace-them-you-odd-peninsula/
Gropius Bau https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/gropiusbau/start.html
Sonsbeek 20-24 https://www.sonsbeek20-24.org/en/