Curating Education, Staging the CV: Learning at Former West

Abstract

In the context of Former West: Documents, Constellations, Prospects—a long-term international research, education, publishing, and exhibition project (2008–2016) that “engages in rethinking the global histories of the last two decades in dialogue with post-communist and postcolonial thought” and employs a series of curatorial formats between the discursive and the immersive—a so-called “Learning Place” was conceptualized by theorist Boris Buden at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures), Berlin, in 2013. Almost two hundred students from international universities constituted the central part of the audience, present for seven days, twelve hours per day, of theoretical and artistic contributions by nearly fifty theorists, artists, curators, and activists through over thirty workshops and panel discussions. According to Buden’s concept, Learning Place aimed at a critical examination of the ideological construction of the CV through a provocative-pedagogical trick that refers to Viktor Shklovsky’s concept of “making strange.”