---
title: Curating the MDEFestival 
page_type: course
track: Exploration
course_type: Short Course
feature_img: /assets/images/2023-24/year-1/t-3/curating-mdefestival.png
img_caption: Credit | Vanessa Lorenzo. My many mouths 
faculty:
    - laura-benitez
    - bani-brusadin
    - manuela-reyes
    - jana-tothill
ects: 2
---

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## Syllabus

This short course is a curatorial and organizational approach to creating the MDEF Students Festival. It will also include pre-planning the proceedings of the festival. Conceived as a pedagogical process that aims to use the approach of curatorial practices/projects and those institutions with whom the students would like to collaborate for the festival. Students will be invited to examine various structures of collectives, venues, events or festivals throughout the process. The focus of the course is to be an apparatus that produces a toolbox for curating the MDEF festival. 

**Keywords:**

### Learning Objectives

- Explore different event formats, approaches, and audiences
- Define the general theme, sub-themes of the festival and a Festival Title
- Explore & Map places, communities
- Work together to identify the working groups & events
- Find connections between the different working groups and their events
- Define the formats, audiences & collaborators of each event
- Discuss the overall agenda and approaches to communication and outreach

### Methodological Strategies

- Lectures
- Discussion of cases
- Practical exercises

## Schedule

=== "08/04 - Laura"

    - Different approaches to curatorial practice 
    - Applying design justice to festival proposals
    - Preparing a proposal basic tool kit

=== "15/04 - Laura & Bani"

    - How do you carry out “curatorial” research?
    - Sample topics to train “curatorial” research skills/habits
    - Skills: how to think through brainstorming.

=== "22/04 - Laura & Bani"

    - Building a project with a recognizable character or identity
    - Conceptual proposition
    - Format
    - Relationship with contexts (maping collectives/projects/venues) 
    - Audience and mediation
    - From the proposal to the actual project

=== "29/04 - Laura & Bani"

    - Feedback (Seeking / Whose feedback / When and what for / As an embedded methodology)
    - Defining the scope, the limits, and the endpoint of the project.


## Deliverables

Coherent structure of collective event.
Students are requested to submit all the material requested by the faculty + their reflections about the seminar on the MDEF website within a maximum of 1 week after the students’ submission deadline.

## Grading Method

| Percentage  | Description                         |
| ----------- | ------------------------------------|
| 20%         | Personal work presentation                       |
| 30%         | Exercise(s) development    |
| 50%         | Collaborative work                        |

!!! ects "European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)"

    {{ ects }} ECTS

## Additional Resources

- Bratton, B. H., Boyadjiev, N., & Axel, N. (2021). The new normal. Park Publishing (WI).
- Brusadin, B. (2021). The fog of systems: Art as Reorientation and Resistance in a Planetary-Scale System Disposed Towards Invisibility.
- Grosse, J., & Baden, S. (2023). John Akomfrah - a space of empathy.
- Hendrikx, B. (2023). Queer exhibition histories.
- Murchú, N. Ó., & Janša, J. F. (2023b). A Short Incomplete History of Technologies that Scale.
- Steyerl, H., & Hito Steyerl is a filmmaker and writer. She teaches New Media Art at University of Arts Berlin and has recently participated in Documenta 12. (n.d.). In free fall: A thought experiment on Vertical Perspective. Journal #24. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/24/67860/in-free-fall-a-thought-experiment-on-vertical-perspective/ 
- Sandhya Daemgen, Ismail Fayed, Alex Hennig, Raphael Moussa Hillebrand, Martha Hincapié Charry, Matthias Mohr (ed.). (2024). Encounters – Embodied Practices. 
- Vujanović, A., & Cvejic, B. (2022). Toward a transindividual self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy.
- [https://newmodels.io/](https://newmodels.io/)
- [https://foodscapes.es/](https://foodscapes.es/)
- [https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/]([https://newmodels.io/](https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/))
- [https://donotresearch.substack.com/](https://donotresearch.substack.com/)
- [https://theinfluencers.org/ ](https://theinfluencers.org/)
- [http://gutterfest.org/](http://gutterfest.org/)
- [https://hlt.calafou.org/en/](https://hlt.calafou.org/en/)
- [https://designjustice.org/read-the-principles ](https://designjustice.org/read-the-principles)
- [https://biofriction.org/](https://biofriction.org/)

## Faculty

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