TOK has received Innovation-2020 Art Prize

1 Curatorial Forum, organized by the NCCA in partnership with the Creative Association of Curators TOK, has been awarded the All-Russian Prize "Innovation-2020"  in the category "Regional Project".

This year, which turned out to be difficult not only for the art sphere, but for the entire global community, the Innovation Prize jury, which included Maria Lind, Agnia Mirgorodskaya, Olga Shishko, Jean-Hubert Martin and Inke Arns, has decided to grant the award to all the nominees and divide it among all the shortlisted candidates.  
 
We are excited to share this award with all the Innovation laureates 2020 and hope that this gesture of solidarity will be a step towards practicing care, support and horizontal dialogue within the Russian art community.

1 Curatorial Forum, initiated by Maria Katz and Natalia Khvoenkova (NCCA in St. Petersburg), was held in October 2019 and consisted of an international symposium "Transcending Realities, Overcoming Borders and Creating Structures" and a public events program Art Weekend, in which more than 20 cultural venues of St. Petersburg took part. Also, within the framework of the Forum, tours to the artists' workshops (Open Studios) were organized and an extensive program of discussions, lectures and round tables was held.

The initiator and curator of the symposium within the framework of the 1st Curatorial Forum was the Creative Association of Curators TOK. The symposium speakers included curators Bassam El Baroni, Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits / Creative Association of Curators TOK, Snezhana Krasteva, Paul O'Neill, Mariyka Semenenko, Avi Feldman, Ulrika Flink and Galit Eilat. The symposium focused on extending territories of curatorial and artistic practices as well as changing conditions of curatorial profession. Together with the local art community the Symposium participants discussed the role and impact of curatorship in rethinking historical discourses and reshaping our understanding of publicness, sharing, and solidarity in the artistic domain. 

The Curatorial Forum continues its work - the 2nd Forum will take place on November 19-22. In 2020, the forum will address educational practices in museums and other cultural institutions, such as museum pedagogy and art mediation, as well as general issues related to the production of knowledge in the field of contemporary culture.

TOK is landing its next symposium on the ground of IV Arctic Art Forum. The main theme of the symposium "Interdependence as a Condition", which will be held on October 16 - 18,  will be the state of interdependence, both as a necessary prerequisite for coexistence in the new conditions of the global crisis, provoked by the consequences of the pandemic, and as an integral part of curatorial optics. The symposium will expand the discursive platform of the Forum through joint attempts to decolonize our knowledge about the global North and discuss regional problems of the Arctic as an ecologically and economically vulnerable region. The symposium participants will be Russian and international curators, artists, philosophers and researchers who, in their practice reflect on the interdependence between government policy, economic processes, technological development and environmental change, as well as address the problem of unequal access to participation in decisions that determine our common future. The IV Arctic Arts Forum is organized by the Arctic Art Institute and will be held entirely online in 2020.