STEP 48 | EXPLORE, EXPERIENCE, ENCOUNTER with Sarah Merten
The residency at Yellow Brick was an interruption and a break from my usual working life as a curator, which is strongly structured by a project logic with a clear output. My motivation was to get to know a different city and art scene and to spend a longer period of time in a place that was previously unknown to me, without having a specific curatorial project associated with it.
I visited many art spaces, exhibitions and events. I came into contact with artists and cultural workers and learned more about their practice, their projects, their motivation and their living and working conditions. I saw friends again, met new ones and spent time with them. I became familiar with Nea Ionia and other neighborhoods, got to know the city on foot, by public transport and by car and found places that I kept going back to.
My stay in Athens was therefore driven from a desire to explore, experience and encounter with the city – rethinking through the residency also the logic of production constraint and output. Reflecting about my own curatorial practice and about finding ways to resist utilization, about creating spaces of togetherness, about finding ways to rest and to deal with uncomfortable feelings and contradictions that arose along the residency.
I documented my experiences in various formats, some of which became public, e.g. on Instagram and as part of an Open Studio Evening. The Open Studio Evening titled “Invitation Gestures” marked the closure of my stay in Athens. It was a relaxed get-together, sharing food, drinks, space, time and thoughts. It was an invitation as a curatorial gesture of creating and sharing space, a gesture of offering and returning the many welcoming encounters I have experienced during my residency at Yellow Brick. During the open studio evening, beside myself, Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki shared thoughts about the idea of Yellow Brick as a place of invitations and Olivia Wiederkehr presented her publication “Common Actions” which is also linked to the concept of invitations.
is a curator and art historian based in Zurich, Switzerland. She is interested in different strategies of art mediation, the question of how (art) history is written and negotiated, as well as questions about the conditions of work, care and pleasure in and with art.
